Review: ‘The Best American Comics: 2008’ edited by Lynda Barry
The Best American Comics: 2008
Series editors: Jessica Abel and Matt Madden; edited by Lynda Barry
Houghton Mifflin, October 2008, $22.00
The “Best American” series has been around for decades, starting with the acclaimed annual collection of short stories and expanding in recent years to such newer emanations as [[[Best American Nonrequired Reading]]], [[[Best American Spiritual Writing]]], …[[[Travel Writing]]] and, of course, [[[Comics]]]. This is the third year for this particular Best American series, and it sees the cast of editors completely change over.
The way the “Best American” books seem to work – as much as they are explained to us mere mortals – each series has a “series editor,” who takes on the tough work of reading or looking at everything eligible in the given year, and culling down that list to something manageable for the marquee-name “editor” to select the final contents from. (For example, for the most recent annual editions, the series editor of [[[Short Stories]]] is Heidi Pitlor and the editor is Salman Rushdie. Similarly, Adam Gopnik edits Essays this year, Anthony Bourdain Travel and George Pelecanos Mystery Stories.) For the first two years of Comics’s existence, the series editor was Anne Elizabeth Moore, who was somewhat controversial for reasons that always remained murky to me. She’s been replaced this year by the team of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, for no stated reason – though it does seem unusual for that to happen so soon.
The big-name editor this time out is Lynda Barry, following Chris Ware last year and Harvey Pekar in 2006. And, again, the editor profoundly affects the content of the book. Pekar leaned towards long, autobiographical stories, often with a political slant. Ware continued the trend towards autobiography and memoir – it would be hard to avoid that tide in comics, this decade – but he also brought in the expected formalist streak. And now Barry changes the mix again, with more comic strips (Matt Groening’s [[[Life in Hell]]], Derf’s [[[The City]]], Kaz’s [[[Underworld]]], and Alison Bechdel’s [[[Dykes to Watch Out For]]]) and many excerpts from longer works (Nick Bertozzi’s [[[The Salon]]], Cathy Malkasian’s [[[Percy Gloom]]], Gene Luen Yang’s [[[American Born Chinese]]], and Seth’s [[[George Sprott]]]).
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