YiR (Part 2)

Comics!

Best Ongoing Series

Y, The Last Man gets my vote. You would think the concept of the last living male on the planet would either become some sort of sexual fetish comic, or be incredibly stale after only a few issues, yet with almost 18 issues in the bag it's still the best floppy being published. Creators Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra (and most recently guest artist Paul Chadwick) are just amazing, and I honestly cannot get enough of this book. Vaughn somehow fuses politics, humour, science fiction, love, and death flawlessly, and you couldn't ask for more beautiful art. I'm sure (like Preacher) this will likely be a finite series, and I can't wait to see where it ends up.

Worst Ongoing Series

Has to be Uncanny X-Men. The few issues that I actually read were horrible, as is most stuff published by the big M.

Best Mini

Tough call here, but I'm going to go with Dark Days. Niles and Templesmith are the perfect fit for horror comics. Not since the days of EC has there been this much excitement surrounding the genre. If you're looking for a truly terrific terrifying tale (Hi Stan!) this is the only place to find it. Well, there is the first book, 30 Days of Night, which was just as good!

Worst Mini

The only mini-series I quit reading was Transformers: Generation One Vol. 2, so it gets the award. It was pretty horrible.

Best Trade

Blankets is the best BOOK (notice I said book not comic book) I've read in a very, very long time. Honestly, I've never felt like no book ever deserved the amount printed on the cover more than this book, hell, I'd have gladly paid double if I'd known it was that fantastic. If you haven't read this, you are truly at a loss.

Worst Trade

Well, I read the issues, but since the trade got released this year, I'm going to say Millar's Dark Knight strikes Again. This was one of the worst purchases I've ever made, period.

Best Single Issue

It's a tie!!!!!!!!!

Grant Morrison's New X-Men #146 , if for no other reason it left hundreds of fanboys going "What The F***!" Morrison spent two years setting his ducks in a row, then blew them up with a hand grenade.

Then there's Mark Waid's Fantastic Four #67. If Morrison's issue was a grenade, then this was a rocket launcher. Putting Doom back where he belongs, at the top of the food chain, Waid surprised the hell out of me with his ending.

Worst Single Issue

Whatever issues of Uncanny X-Men I decided to pick up. Ugh.

Best New Series

Supreme Power. J.M Straz and Gary Frank are perfect together, and it shows. I cannot wait until the final pieces are set and the group comes together. While nowhere near the Wathchmen, this might just be the next best thing.

Worst New Series

Silver Surfer. Picked it up for a friends art, said friend disappears, weird things happen, bottom line: it's predestined to fail.

Biggest Surprise

The consistency of the 80's revival. Kidding. I'm going to say Robocop, simply because it really did take me by surprise. It's gritty, violent, disturbing, and surprisingly (HA!) very reflective of today's society. Makes you wonder how good the movies could've turned out.

Biggest Let Down

Another Tie!

First there was 1602, where one of the best writers of the medium took all of the Marvel characters and set them in the 1600's. What should've been Neil Gaiman's exciting return to comics became the most diappointing event since Millars DK2, and in some opinions, surpassed even that.

Then there was the crossover event that was decades in the making, JLA/Avengers. Marvel and DC finally get their big names in a book together, and could've attracted some new readers too. Turns out it's yet another book aimed at people who'll only understand it if they've been reading the books for years. Way to go!

That's pretty much it for comics, except to say thet the TMNT book deserves honorable mention, as I've totally enjoyed it this year...all 6 issues!