It’s interesting–when I sat down to do my Best of 2011 list for ongoing comics titles, it occurred to me that 2011 was a very odd year. With DC relaunching almost their entire line and Marvel renumbering, retitling or relaunching titles themselves pretty often, there was a legitimate chance that any “Ten Best” list for the year might be made up entirely of books that started this year.It didn’t happen, of course, but this list comes damned close, with only one title (Vertigo’s I, Zombie) having more than twelve issues (of its current volume, of course) on the stands before the end of 2011.Please note, this is one critic’s opinion. As with any such list, this is an entirely subjective endeavor and most readers will disagree with the list in its entirety even if they agree with many or most of the titles; feel free to use the comments thread to tell me how wrong I am, but try and be polite about it. Remember that even though I’ve got some controversial picks in here and maybe ignored some of your favorites, I’ve tried to ground it in critical and artistic acclaim. Titles that I enjoy very, very much on a monthly basis (such as Justice League International or Savage Dragon, the two I read before anything else) didn’t make the list, partly in order to make way for titles like Action Comics and Animal Man which are not as dear to me but simply excellent examples of sequential art, based on the consensus of just about every fan and critic alive. There is, of course, nothing that I dislike on this list, though; the aforementioned titles would certainly be in any top 20 I were to make, if not the top ten.There will doubtless be some sense that Marvel has been slighted here as well, and certainly part of that is that I’m simply not a regular Marvel reader. I tried to pick up a few issues of books like X-Force, Amazing Spider-Man and FF in order to see if I was missing something. The fact is, 2011 has been a great year not only for DC but for comics at large. There isn’t a lot at Marvel that speaks to me as a reader nowadays, and there’s simply too much excitement built up around the New 52, and too many great books coming out of it, to artificially try to create parity in the review process. By all means, Marvel readers, chime in with your suggestions for what fantastic books I’m overlooking. 2012 is right around the corner and who knows what will be the best books of that year? Certainly this list would have been inconceivable 12 months ago.Ultimately what this list comes down to is that the book has to be a good comic. These comics are smart, well-done, entertaining and on a good day move sequential art along as a medium (or at least stand out as a great examples of the genre they’re in).
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Image courtesy of Marvel Studios.
