The Best American Comics 2009,   ISBN:9780618989652

Customer Rating: 

I enjoyed the wide variety of visual and writing styles presented in this collection. However, my impression was that there were too many dark, strange, and/or enigmatic selections. I was often left searching for the point (maybe reading them in the morning rather than at night would have helped). My grade B+.

Customer Rating: 

If you are a fan of comics, cartooning, and all forms of American creativity, this is one of the few books that you should be sure to pick up every year.

This is an anthology of various cartoonists that is the comic versions of the short story anthologies that come out every year and generally are one of the few places where you are find great, creative, and new writing that is worth reading.

This years issue is edited by the Harvey-Award winning cartoonist Charles Burns and he does an excellent job, starting with a wonderful introduction and following with comics by a wide range of artists including Kaz, Mimi Pond, Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb, Tim Hensley, Laura Park, and Koren Shadmi. Along with these great artists are many many more making up over 300 pages of excellent reading.

These anthologies are excellent because even if you read the entire thing and find only one cartoonist that you like, it is hard to think that you would have discovered that cartoonist anywhere else and now you have a newly found artist that speaks to you. This is another A+ collection and I do not see them going downhill anytime soon. Cartooning is starting a new era in what they can do and say, and this book contains a wide-range of those selections. It is worth every penny.