2012 in review: comic books

My reading of comic books is far from comprehensive. Because of that my list is nothing close to a 'best of 2012' but rather a 'best of what I read in 2012'.

• I read almost exclusively what's in at the public library. That means I rarely get the newest but rather get things a few months old and in somewhat limited selection. Our library is spectacular, marvelous, and amazing, but there are always lots more comic on the 'to read' list than there are at the library.
• I read way more DC/Marvel superhero comics than I read anything else. The ratio is probably ten to one or even higher. There are, I'm sure, tons of outstanding non-superhero graphic novels out there. I just don't check them out as much as I could.
• I tend to re-read things that I very much enjoyed. Some of these things could make my 'best of' list every year. I'll try not to do that unless some part of the series was new to me this year.

So, without further ado...

• GI Joe: Death of Cobra Commander - GI Joe and Cobra are huge organizations with seemingly hundreds of thousands of members making for a wildly rich cast of characters. This also means that things happen that aren't initially, obviously connected to the vast plot of Cobra Commander's eventual demise. Turns out that they're all connected and make for a marvelously rich storyline and a much more indepth Cobra motivation than we ever got from the cartoons.
• Invincible - The seventh ultimate collection of Invincible was published this year, taking Mark, his father, and his younger brother away from Earth to fight the full-out Viltrumite War above the surface of Viltrium on behalf of the Coalition of Planets. It's more knock-down, drag-out, non-stop action. And time passes back on Earth while all this is happening. This is not a series where nothing happens. People die, others get depressed and fat, and Mark goes a bit off the rails by the end of this volume, throwing his lot in with a villain whom he had previously helped lock up.
• Locke & Key - Clockwork - This one was actually new this year and the penultimate volume of the brilliant Locke & Key series. The tension is ratcheted up, and I am desperate to get my hands on the next volume. Joe Hill has this story wrapped as tightly as it's possible to do. Love it
• Nextwave: Agents of HATE - There aren't enough funny superhero comic books around these days, but this twelve-issue maxi-series from Marvel hit the right tone with a weird combination of spy and anti-hero genres, good guys being hunted by the agency that they left behind. Good stuff
• Powers - full series here...the newest volume (Gods) takes the horror of living in the Powers world up a notch with Gods upon Earth nearly destroying the Eastern seaboard. This might be taking the questions of what distinctions there are between gods and the series's titular powers to a ridiculous extreme. The again we also get some possibly HUGE changed to Walker's relationships with Calista and his alien bosses. This isn't the finest volume in the series, but Powers's weak link is a pretty great collection. Plus I re-read all the volumes leading up to Gods, and they're phenomenal - especially 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time.
• Spider-Man Blue - The Loeb/Sale partnership struck again with this great volume. I complain often about comics treading the same landscape as most superhero origin stories have been told to death. This is, though, the one time when the same ground should be tread. The retelling of Spider-Man's first year - focusing on his time falling in love with Gwen Stacy - is spectacular. The framing device of Peter feeling titularly blue works marvelously well, and the artwork is stunning. Yeah, it's ten years old, but it was new to me this year.
• Tale of Sand - Look, it's the only non-superhero comic on the list. Enjoy it while it's here. This is a completion of one of Jim Henson's final projects, and it's a gorgeous work. Yeah, it's a bit non-linear and experimental, but it's a bit weird. Certainly worth a look because it's pretty oustandingly attractive.  This one's for the art lovers out there.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Prelude - Bendis pretty well knocked this entire hundred-sixty-issue run of Ultimate Spider-Man out of the park. He created a brilliant character who spent the fourteen or so years of his teenage years learning how to be the best hero and man that he could...and then he left us. Taken before his time...
• Ultimate Spider-Man: Fallout - I wrote that the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man was the lynchpin of the Ultimate world, and it makes sense that his death would be a traumatic event for so many different characters. The writers here do a marvelous job allowing the various heroes to grieve both publicly and privately. It's a moving collection.
• Honorable mention - JL8 / Little League (it's a webcomic, but it's some of the best comic writing out there right now), Superman: The Black Ring (great Superman comic without Superman but with robot Lois Lane), Batman: Noel (my review was pretty crap, so I have no idea why I liked it so much, but it must've been pretty good, I guess), Blue Beetle (I read the full, pre-cancellation series this year and was pretty impressed with the slow growth of the first set of writers...and less so about the second set).