My Top 10 Favorite BD Albums of 2019
It’s that time of year again where I look back on everything I read in the past year and try to pick out a Top Ten.
I don’t claim to have a Ten Best albums of the year. I haven’t read everything, and what I read out of Europe is often all over the map as far as its original publication date goes. I have to read what they translate for me at this point. I hope to get past that eventually, but learning a new language is a painfully slow process…
I had a tough time narrowing down this list. A few books immediately jumped out at me and screamed to be added to the list. Those were easy.
The next “tier” of titles was a little more complicated. I had to go back and re-read my own reviews to remember what I thought of some of them to help break the ties.
In the end, though, I have a list of ten titles that I think are worthy of being on a Top Ten list, and will appeal to a great many people. Obviously, they won’t all appeal to everyone, but I bet you could find a book on this list that would be right up your alley. I encourage you to try one of these out to see what else is out there. There’s truly something here for everyone, if you look deeply enough.
Stick around to the end of the list, because I’ll also be sharing the two books that just missed the cut. There aren’t enough to merit a full-fledge “Just Missed” article this year, but there were two books that it pained me to cut.
These books are not listed in any particular order. Click on the covers to go to the reviews, where applicable. (There is one book on this list that I never reviewed.)
Black Water Lilies
I don’t think this one will come as a surprise to anyone who saw my review of the book in December. I think it’s a tremendous book. It’s a murder mystery with a twist that shouldn’t work in comics format at all.
I tried to dance around the fact that this book has a “twist” to it in my original review, but now the gloves are off. I know there are some people who will only give this book a shot because they’re looking for the twist. At this point, I won’t judge. I just want you to read the book.
If you have someone in your life who dips their toes into the world of comics, but reads lots of thrillers or mysteries, give them this book to try. As a comics fan, yourself, there’s a lot to appreciate in this book and its storytelling style.
The art is beautiful, the writing is strong, and the final 140+ page book never feels like a slog to get through. I never looked at what page I was on to see if I was getting anywhere.
It’s an impressive book.
Spirou in Berlin
I had a hard time getting into Spirou. It took a few books before I better understand what it was: an adventure book starring Spirou and his pal from the magazine, Fantasio. There’s also a pet squirrel named Spip involved, and frequent friend, the Count of Champignac.
Don’t worry too much about the set-up and just enjoy the adventures.
“Spirou in Berlin,” though, nails every part of that in its first few pages. It establishes all the characters and their relationships in short order. It propels you into the adventure in late-1980s Berlin. And Flix*’s art is terrific throughout the book. His shaky double ink line and solid construction of characters and panel layout make it a book with visual appeal in every scene, no matter how dry it might sound on paper.
I wrote up a special review of this book, just because I think it’s the perfect starting point for a reader new to the world of Spirou. It might not be Tome and Janry, or Andre Franquin, but it does the job so well that I can’t help but recommend it.
Stern v3: “The Real West”
I didn’t write a review for this one. I didn’t have enough to say to justify it, not because it wasn’t any good. I was bouncing off the walls because it was so strong a volume. But in an effort to keep spoilers out, there’s not much I can say that would be constructive.
It’s just a great book that feels like a classic American western movie from the 1950s. A stranger comes to town peddling his new book, which is an instant attention grabber for noted bookworm, Stern. But then hell comes into town in the form of a group of gunman coming after the author on a professional and personal mission/vendetta.
The story quickly turns into a hellish gunfight throughout the town, with dire consequences.
“Stern” is an impressive series in that it feels like three completely different worlds in three volumes. This one is a suitable end to a first cycle of stories for the series. I hope the Maffre Brothers come back and do more, though. Stern is an interesting character, and the Maffres always find fun new angles to tell stories with him.
Shangri-La
This one feels a little different. It’s a very manga-influenced sci-fi saga. It’s complete in one heavy 227 page tome from Mathieu Bablet.
Humanity has left the earth to live in a giant space station controlled by one large corporation that acts as the de facto government. They control the population through their cell phones, often unwittingly.
As you can imagine, there’s a big social commentary thing going on here, but that’s not the point of the book. It’s all coming from the point of view of a worker on the station who stumbles upon more of what’s actually going on and pushes further to discover it all. That puts him into some tricky situations with some very powerful enemies.
Along the way, Bablet’s art has an eye for detail and techno-fun stuff that’s a treat for the reader’s eyes. It’s an impressive book to look at, particularly in the spaceship and space station designs.
Taxi, v3: “The Devil’s Trench”
This is the year I discovered the art styling of Alfonso Font. One month, SAF Comics showed up and dumped four of his books on an unsuspecting English language audience. Three of those books were in the “Taxi” series, and the fourth was a comedy/horror anthology book called “Dark Stories” that, while visually amazing, went a bit too far in being “dark” for my tastes.
Taxi works for the newspapers in the 1980s and has a tendency to go off on side missions of her own to find exciting new stories to sell newspapers. In this book, she’s tracking down a drug cartel and pokes and prods in a few places she probably shouldn’t. She gets in trouble and has to find a way out while taking down the drug kingpin at the same time. It’s a real team effort, but it’s another fun one.
Of those three “Taxi” books, it’s the third that succeeds the most. It’s worth reading them all, but the last one is where Font’s story is clear and simple enough to make a satisfying read to accompany Font’s unbelievably strong art and storytelling.
Font is great at composition and establishing shots. Keep an eye out for those as you read through any of these books.
Here are my other reviews of Font’s works:
Asterix v38: “Asterix and the Chieftain’s Daughter”
The more I look back at the latest installment in the venerable Asterix series, the more I like it.
It’s not a perfect book, but I love the comedic timing and the non-stop action of it all in the second half. Ferri knows how to structure a story and Conrad knows how to tell it visually. Conrad also does a mean Uderzo impersonation. You can still see bits of Conrad mixed in there, but this is about as close to the series’ classic style as I want to see anything come. I don’t want a complete copycat in there. I like Conrad’s slight twist in proportions and movement.
Asterix may be a mere shadow of what he once was under the pen of Rene Goscinny 40 years ago, but it’s still fun to come back to the characters every couple of years for a new adventure. This one does an excellent job with that.
The Late Life Crisis
I think I read one of Florence Cestac’s books each year. This is another entry in Cestac’s oeuvre, most of which (that are available in English) tell the story of a different woman in each book at a different stage of her life.
In this case, the woman is nearing retirement, and dealing with her frustrations with life coming from both her husband and boss. She’s fed up to the point where she changes her life radically. It’s funny, inspirational, and a good read.
I love Cestac’s big nose style, and I love the way she tells her stories in a nine panel grid with an amazing amount of honesty and bombastic energy. These are characters who live in the extremes, and Cestac’s cartooning portrays it wonderfully.
Other books by Cestac that I’ve reviewed:
I only have one of her books in English left to review, “The Post-Midlife Crisis.” That’ll give me something to look forward to in 2020! What are the odds that it makes the next Top Ten list?
Spellbound v4
This is a book that Jose Luis Munuera drew some time before his bravura turn as writer/artist on “The Campbells.”
It is a darker tale featuring conflicting characters who do awful things to one another in the name of the kingdom and family honor, etc. It’s also a world where good falls in love with evil and vice versa, and both sides find themselves turning into the other along the way.
I pick out the fourth book, in particular, because its ending surprised me. It went in a completely different direction from anything I could have predicted. But it worked.
Also, by the time the fourth book rolled around, it really felt like Munuera and series writer, Jean Dufaux, had worked out the tone of their story. It was dark and gothic at times, yes, but had a wicked sense of humor to it.
Munuera’s art style here is unmistakably his, but with the coloring from Sedyas, it looks very different. There’s a lot of Photoshop work going on in this book, often verging on overdoing it. Thankfully, it stops short of distraction, but it is a unique and veeeeery glowy style.
Authorised Happiness v1
This book is the repurposing of scripts from a failed television project. That alone should make me hate it. But it’s filled with too many interesting concepts and ideas to hold its origin against it. Jean (“Largo Winch”) Van Hamme adapts it well for comics, and Griffo’s art is perfectly fit to the realistic level of storytelling.
This is the story of a world in which the government has taken over for the good of everyone. In the three short stories of this book, we find out what that utopia involves for people who don’t follow the rules of the government-mandated health care system, the government-controlled vacation scheduling, nor the jobs that involve not asking what the point is of what you’re doing.
It’s the inverse of the typical populist ideal of all-for-one and one-for-all. This book is the Twilight Zone of Totalitarianism. When freedom is taken away for the good of all, bad things inevitably happen. These are the kinds of stories you don’t see being told today, and they’re an interesting way of looking at a situation differently from current conventional wisdom.
The second volume in the series has three more short stories illustrating the problems of the world, and then everything comes together for the third and final volume, in which things get even weirder by the end…
The whole series is a worthy read, but I’m picking this first one for having the most impactful short stories of the set.
Freaks Squeele v1
I’m not a manga guy. There’s stuff from Japan that I like — “Akira”, “Lone Wolf and Cub”, “Gon”, and the little I’ve read of “Maison Ikkoku” come to mind — but I’ve never gotten lost in those books at all.
But I love Freaks Squeele, which is as strongly manga-influenced as anything I’ve ever seen out of France. It’s mostly in black and white, complete with all the stylistic quirks. Lots of speediness, random color sections, realistic detailed backgrounds with cartooned, but well-detailed characters in the foreground.
Visually, it looks awesome and pulls you right in..
Thankfully, the story and the characters are just as entertaining and inviting. This series is a cross between “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Harry Potter.” It’s about a school that helps teach those with unnatural powers how to use them and how to navigate all the stuff that comes with them — like costumes and media interactions.
The book follows three characters at the bottom of the social ladder and their attempt to make it through the school year with each other’s help.
Three books are out today. I’ve read the first two and reviewed the first one. They’re both great. If you like teenaged angst and superpowered characters finding themselves and navigating those crazy years of self discovery, you’re going to like this book.
The Two Runners-Up
The book that would finish #11 on this list is “The Undertaker” v4. It’s the second part of the second storyline for the series, and it features one of the best villains in comics that I’ve ever read. Plus, Ralph Meyer’s art is some of the best in comics these days. The man knows how to layout a page and compose a panel.
The other book that just missed the list was “Alone” v8. I like the series a lot, and this book is a real high point in the second half of the books available in English to date. It’s a story that makes the 12 year old in me cheer — a good ol’ fashioned run-and-gun action sequence amongst the kids with real drama and peril.
Previous Top Ten Lists
If that’s not enough, here are all my Top Ten lists from the past couple of years:
