1. CANON ANNUAL 2024 (Colin Blanchette) Mail
Have you ever had a dream where you find an out of the way comics shop with bins of comics and comics related books that you always wished existed and were within reach before you woke up and they vanished? Well, this is a book I would have glanced at in those elusive fever dream bins.
Colin Blanchette first tackled THE COMICS JOURNAL'S "100 Best Comics of the 20th Century" in a ten-part video series that I spotlighted on this very blog November 30, 2022. Unfortunately, Colin's channel was deleted along with this important series of videos a few weeks later. Fast forward a couple years and Blanchette (with CANON cohort Alex Eklund) has not only started reconstructing this 10-part video series, but he has doubled down on researching every aspect of the list in TCJ #210 in this special giant-sized CANON ANNUAL.
We start off with an excellent homage to Seth's original cover to TCJ by Noah Van Sciver. The few characters depicted from the 21st century set this apart from the original cover, as if we are looking back on the comics of the previous century from our current vantage point.
I say I'm a pretty big nut for THE COMICS JOURNAL, however even I never gave much thought to the mechanics behind compiling this impossible list that no one outside of the Journal offices even wanted. Colin begins his deconstruction by interviewing the five surviving list makers (as well as Eric Reynolds and Seth who made lists at the time that were not counted against the final list). We begin to get a good sense of the typical seat-of-the-pants way things seem to have been done at the Journal. Tom Spurgeon was editor of the Journal at the time and seems to be the ringleader of the enterprise, with Gary Groth and Kim Thompson hammering the eight lists commissioned into a unified whole. There doesn't initially appear to be any rules as to what the list makers could put on their lists but that eventually narrowed to English-language North American comics and cartoonists only, leaving British, bande desinee, and Manga off the final list. I love the various viewpoints revealed through the interviews (especially supposed odd man out Ray Mescallado whose list is an interesting anomaly), and the inimitable wide range of the individual lists that Blanchette was able to dig up.
I was not initially enthused by the conceit of the dialogue section where Colin and Alex go entry by entry through the entire "100 Best Comics of the 20th Century" list. At first glance it fairly reeks of navel gazing, twice over. Well, that probably would have been the case if it weren't for the chemistry between Colin and Alex. In fact, as far as a general audience goes I think this feature makes the whole book more accessible. I was immediately drawn into the conversation as I read along, agreeing and disagreeing on the why's and where's of each entry on the list. It's a really ingenious move to humanize a 25+ year old list that's probably not familiar to a lot of people today. Personally, it helped to hear that neither gent was intimately familiar with every work on the list, makes for a more relatable case when their opinions clash with their readers.
No discussion of TCJ #210 would be complete without at least a mention of Dave Sim's CEREBUS being left off the list. Colin Blanchette goes a step beyond a step further and solves the mystery. The slippery mechanics of the final list come to light in Blanchette's research, CEREBUS the complete series and individual runs received votes multiple times by multiple list makers. You'll have to buy the book for more specifics. I'm satisfied with the answers that he has dug up, especially since the process that excluded CEREBUS is the same process that led to multiple entries for Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.
I would be fine if the book ended there, but Blanchette and Eklund dig deeper with lists of their own! "Where Are They Now?" and "Deceased Cartoonists and Writers That Appeared on the Top 100" covers all the creators on the list. "Notable Omissions" is a compilation of a second 100 titles from all the extant individual lists, whining in Blood & Thunder, as well as the editors own personal preference (list nerd that I am, this is one of my favorite sections). Wrapping this motherfucking beast up is a compendium of statistics that are at least invaluable in showing the biases of the list 25 years later.
i don't know if there is a widespread audience for this niche in the comics world. However the first printing sold out according to the website. So what do I know?
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