Best American Comics: the Notable Comics of 2012 (and a giveaway)

As is abundantly clear to those who follow this site, Matt and I are the series editors for the Best American Comics (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). That means that, every year, we try to get our hands on every comic published by a North American cartoonist (which is the USA, Canada, and Mexico), or anyone who makes his or her home here, and then read them all to sort out the best 100 or so comics of the year. (Of course, we can’t possibly see everything, but we try.) These best 100-120, we then hand on to the year’s guest editor, who picks his or her favorite 25-30, which go into that year’s volume. Then, Matt and I get to make our list of everything else we think comics readers should have read that year. It’s called the Notable Comics list, and it comprises virtually all the comics we sent to the guest editor that weren’t picked, as well as a number of others that we think are noteworthy for various reasons, but that we didn’t send to the guest editor.

Over the five volumes we’ve been edited (in progress on the sixth), we’ve tried to shine a spotlight on this list. As most guest editors point out in their introductions, the selection process, when it gets down to which stories make the cutoff for the volume and which don’t, can be alarmingly arbitrary. Often, we and the guest editors would love to include 50 stories in the published volume, but there just isn’t room. But when you combine the notable list with the stories that are printed, it might be a little more possible to talk about representing what’s we actually think is best in a given year. Also, when looking for good comics to read, why limit yourself? We’ve always hoped readers will delve a bit into the list to find more great stories once they finish reading BAC.

Below, we’ve reprinted the full list of the Notables from the 2012 volume, which was guest-edited by Françoise Mouly. We’ve also added extensive links and images of the covers to intrigue you and to help you track the works down.

And for two lucky readers: a head start on collecting all 100!

WE WILL GIVE AWAY two sets of about 10 mincomics and self-published books from this list. Which ones they are will be a surprise! Comment on this post between now and Friday October 12 at 12 pm EST, and you will be entered in a drawing to win one of the two piles. Note: In order to be able to offer this prize to all readers internationally, the winners must pay postage for the package via Paypal. Please enter only if you’re willing to do so.

Note: we do moderate comments, so if you haven’t commented here before, your comment won’t show up immediately, but it is in the queue! Also, make sure you use a good email address to log in to comment so we can contact you if you win. It won’t show up publicly.

Just to be extra clear, these are not sets of every book on the list, they are sub-sets of several of the minis and self-pubbed books. Good luck!

–Jessica and Matt