My Top 10 Favorite BD of 2018

Once again, I can’t do a “Best 10.”

For starters, I hate people who pretend they know what the “best” of anything is. Everyone has different tastes. Everyone has different reasons for what they like.

The second someone tells you something is the best, run the other way.  For starters, I’d place bets that they haven’t read it all, so their opinion is under informed, at the least.

Second, I’m reading from a back catalog of 60 years’ worth of comics. While most of what I read in the last year is relatively recent, I don’t know which books were actually released in 2018.

And were they released in 2018, or just released to digital platforms in 2018?  The first book on this list came out in 2018, but it collects comics from 30 and 40 years ago.  Where does that qualify? I don’t want to keep track of all that.  That’s all a categorization game I don’t want to play.

I can only go by <strong>what I happened to read in the last year</strong>. Some of it was actually released in 2018, but not everything.

The following is my list, not in any particular order, of the ten BD I liked the most in 2018. Ask me again tomorrow and I’ll likely have a different list.  Life is funny like that.

One note: Asterix was excluded from this list, otherwise it would have dominated.  Maybe I’ll do a Top Ten Asterix books someday…

Andre Franquin’s “Die Laughing”

If I put this list in any order, this book would likely be the #1 book of the year.  It came out in print from Fantagraphics in the spring, but I just read it recently.  You can read my full, gushing review here.

This is Andre Franquin’s darkest work — morbidly hilarious single page gags taking on everything from religion to hunters to the military, and more.  It’s a great reflection of its period (late 70s/early 80s), and also just how much hasn’t changed.

Even if you aren’t taken by the humor. Franquin’s art in this book is amazing.  Picture his usual style, but inked with a ballpoint pen by Frank Cho.  The level of detail in here is insane.

I have to think this is a book that current professional artists wold love, if they knew it existed.  It feels like an artist’s artist’s kind of book.

In the meantime, here’s a quick sample:

Undertaker v4: “The Shadow of Hippocrates”

Ralph Meyer’s cowboy series (written by Xavier Dorison with colors by Caroline Delabie) is the most beautiful western being produced today.  

His storytelling style is cinematic, but also maintains all the features that make comic books great. It feels like his art is influenced by the classic muscular Marvel artists of the 60s and 70s.  I can see some Buscema or Romita in his structure here.

This is the second part of the second storyline in the series, involving a malicious doctor who uses his knowledge of medicine to get what he wants at any price.  He’s a villain of the highest order — the kind who can make an argument that what he’s doing is right, even when it feels so very, very wrong.

Picture Negan, but with fewer swear words.

The Undertaker has a history with him, and his pursuit of the doctor and his attempt to take him down once and for all might come at a heavy price.

At the end of this book, nothing about the series will be the same. 

I haven’t formally reviewed this particular book in the series yet.

The whole series is great, and I’d easily recommend reading them all.  Don’t start at volume 4, though, since you’ll be halfway through a storyline.  If you’re interested, here are my reviews of the first three books:

Invincible v1: “Justice and Fresh Vegetables”

This is one I’d recommend based on its inventiveness.  The whole series takes place with a nine panel grid, where the superhero, Invincible, can jump through panels to get what he wants.  It leads to some mind-bending time travel situations.

I don’t know how long this “gag” will feel fresh or interesting, but Pascal Jousselin keeps it inventive and playful throughout this first volume.  I hope he can keep it up through a couple more….

Click through on the cover to my review for some examples of how this meta-trickery works.

The Campbells v5: “The Three Curses”

“The Campbells” is on my short list of favorite BD series of all time.  Jose Luis Munuera does an amazing job at creating interesting characters, chopping up the timeline to present a story with maximum dramatic impact, and then adding lots of funny elements to it all.  

On top of that, his animated style of art for the series is a joy to look at, page after page.

This is the concluding volume, bringing everything from the past four volumes to a final, decisive ending before jumping ahead a few years to show us how everyone turned out.

I stand in awe of the work Munuera did with this series, and can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

This series is another reason why I make a “Favorite” list of comics and not a “Best” list of comics. This is not a series that any critic will ever put on their Best of 2018 list, for fear of looking like a commercial stooge.  They’d be afraid of looking too mainstream and favoring material that isn’t political or sociological enough.  “The Campbells” is too… commercial.  It’s well drawn and colored beautifully and played for laughs, and that’ll never be good enough for them.

Bah!

“The Campbells” isn’t what critics are looking for.  I think, however, it’s an entertaining read that a lot of people would like.

Stern v2: “City of Savages”

I liked the first volume of the series well enough.

But I love this second book.  It’s the one where Frederic and Julien Maffre throw everything on the page to see what sticks. 

Stern travels to Kansas City to buy some books and gets caught up in a hilarious madcap series of misadventures that leaves him horseless, shoeless, broke, and beat up.  

That just pisses him off enough to get even.

I can’t believe I just put two books in my Top Ten that star an undertaker, of all things.  That’s the fun and adventure of European books, though…

Frank v3: “The Sacrifice”

Although I got off to a slightly lukewarm start with “FRNK,” I fell in love with the book by the time its initial four volume run finished.

I went back and forth in my mind about whether to name the third or fourth volume for this list.  The fourth volume does a great job in bringing the overall story arc together, and has a few of the funniest moments in the series.

The third volume makes the list, though, because it feels like the biggest turning point in the series for me. It’s when the light hearted boy-out-of-time story started to feel real and emotional.  

Frank goes through the ringer in this book, but he also gets to use his smarts and his futuristic knowledge to his advantage. It’s a mix of all the different parts of the series used perfectly in one book.

It starts with his own difficulty in killing animals for food, and ends on a much more serious note.  

I don’t want to spoil anything, but this is where “FRNK” became a great book for me, and that’s why it made the list.

Glorious Summers v3: “Little Miss Esterel”

You should, of course, read every volume of “Glorious Summers.”  Zidrou and Jordi Lafebre take an “ordinary” family and create a saga that spans 50 years and builds upon itself with each new book.

At first, it seems like a repetitive thing: With each book, the family drives from Belgium to France for a vacation. Certain elements repeat with each book.  

The stories don’t take place in chronological order.  The more you read, the more you’ll fit the pieces together, whether it’s the arc of the father’s comics career, or the mother’s, or the lives of their four children or the grandparents.

While four volumes in the series are out in English now, I’m giving the nod in this list to volume 3.  It’s a great standalone story and it answers more questions in the timeline of the family.

The family heads off to France again, but this time Maddie’s mother is running the show.  Her choice in vacations doesn’t exactly match Pierre’s, and some amount of friction shows through that.

This book combines the humor with the emotional well, and puts more pieces into place that help you glue together all the books into one larger timeline.

And Lafebre’s art is just gorgeous.  It’s like nothing else out there right now.

Maggy Garrisson

Yes, I’m lumping all three books into one pick, since this is one large story that just happens to unfold over three volumes.  No single book has a complete story.

Maggy Garrisson is a great character study.  She didn’t want to be a detective; the job chose her.  But, when the bills come due and money is short — anything for a buck!

She’s in over her head here, but she’s street smart and can handle herself.  Even when you know she’s making bad — or at least complicated — decisions, you can’t help but like her and root for her.

Lewis Trondheim stages the mysteries and the crimes well, finishing the story in the third volume strongly.  I would love to read more about Maggy, if Trondheim ever feels the urge.

Stephane Oiry is the perfect artist for this book. He draws believable characters, but more than that, he draws realistic scenery and camera locations. This feels like a crime movie or television show.  Everything is focused on what the story needs to continue.  Every panel feels well considered and purposeful. It’s not bold and splashy, but it works.

Orbital v6: “Justice”

During the first week of July, I reviewed all seven volumes of the “Orbital” series.  It was a marathon writing session leading up to that.

It’s one of my favorite series of the year, but which volume stood out the most to make this list?

I’m giving it to volume 5, where all of the events of the first four books in the series come to a head.  It’s a political firestorm that leads to Mezoke making a fateful decision and then making a run for her life — and Caleb’s, as well.  This is the turning point in the relatively young series, and Sylvain Runberg plays the chessmaster well.

Serge Pelle’s art is also spectacular.  Besides the wonderful alien designs, he draws an insane chase across the city that feels like “Fifth Element” meets “Star Wars” with a touch of “Valerian.”  It’s a very impressive issue for him, in a series that often feels driven completely by his amazing art.

Betty Boob

This is likely the only book on this list that will crossover with your typical “critics” list of books in their end of year rundowns.

I’m a sucker for silent comics, and this one runs almost 200 pages. It helps that it’s an imaginative take on a serious and all-too-common problem.  

It’s about a woman who loses a breast to cancer.  It changes her life in profound ways.  She loses her boyfriend and her job.  She runs off to find herself, and does so in a most unexpected way. It’s dreamy and it’s farcical, at times, but the emotional core is real.

Vero Cazot writes the story, and Julie Rocheleau is the artist for this one.

IDW grabbed the license for this book — think of the money they saved on translating a silent comic! — and published it as “About Betty’s Boob” in a print edition.

But, Wait, There’s More!

Narrowing down over 100 reviews (and more that went unreviewed) is a tough gig.  Some titles got left behind… The Runners-Up list will come in the days ahead. Stay tuned for that.

In the comments below, please tell me which album was your favorite this year. Maybe I forget one…

And if you’re looking for still more great BD, then might I recommend taking a look at the 2017 list? Those books are still excellent, as well!