Comics Industry Reacts to Vice's Inflammatory Top 10 List

Comic book creators are speaking out against Vice after the website published 'The Ten Best Comics [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

Comic book creators are speaking out against Vice after the website published "The Ten Best Comics of 2017," penned by Vice Art Editor Nick Gazin.

"This hasn't been a great year for comics," Gazin writes. "In fact, I wasn't even able to find ten good comics for this top ten list."

"Making a list of the top ten comics of 2017 was difficult since ten good comics didn't get published this year," Gazin says in his opening paragraph, before calling picks made by the AV Club "mostly worthless garbage."

"The reason for these lists is to discuss creative works that were made this year that have some lasting value, not to be a distraction or an advertisement," Gazin adds, prefacing his eight selections.

Gazin points to Simon Hanselmann's One More Year, Sammy Harkham's Crickets No. 6, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets #2 and Love and Rockets #4, Will Elder's The Million Year Picnic and Other Stories, The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 omnibus by classic Marvel Comics creators, Johnny Ryan's Sex Crime 4, and Jay Disbrow's Monster Invasion edited by Craig Yoe.

The list leaves spots nine and ten intentionally blank.

"I worked through 2 miscarriages to design comics this year and friends battled depression, cancer and loss among other distressing circumstances to create incredible work," graphic designer Emma Price wrote on Twitter. "Go f—k yourself @VICE and your sensationalist bullsh—t. How dare you undermine so many people like this."

"In a year filled with new voices, daring, passionate projects from all corners of the industry, @VICE should be able to do better than this," wrote Batman and Dark Nights: Metal writer Scott Snyder. "New readers often look to big sites to find ways into comics. [Especially] in tough times - this kind of incendiary move is just disappointing."

"Hey, someone at VICE is a hipster snob," Battlepug writer and artist Mike Norton wrote, adding in a comment Gazin's list is "a travesty."

The Nib editor and cartoonist Matt Bors called the piece "an embarrassment," with Archie and Gotham Garage colorist Kelly Fitzpatrick remarking Vice managed to "piss off the entire comics industry in two sentences."

"Vice didn't like 10 good comics this year? That's cool," Punisher and The New Mutants writer Matthew Rosenberg wrote. "I didn't like 10 things in Vice this year. They'll survive. We'll survive."

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