Some great memoir comics and a series of Susan Something strips I can't stop thinking about, counteracted with some gross-out comics that were definitely not for me.

Finding it too joyless, heartbreaking, and obvious in its need to shock, I have to admit that I couldn’t finish Phoebe Gloeckner’s acclaimed comics/prose hybrid book, “Diary Of A Teenage Girl.” With this in the back of my mind, I was wary picking up the new 2018 edition of “Best American Comics” because my enjoyment of the series tends to be directly related to how my tastes lines up with the guest editor’s. Happily, Gloeckner’s choices for this volume of the anthology serve as a great reminder

It's good to see all the different styles in the form. But I can't say anything in this particular selection moved me or made me interested enough to seek out more of the author's work.

My enjoyment of this series really depends on how closely my sensibilities match those of the guest author. In this case, not so much...

Conflicted about this one. On the one hand, it really focused on women’s voices and experiences in a way that no other book in the series has so far (though a couple came close). But on the other... boy, there was a lot of absolute garbage.Predictably, I did love the “megapets” (or whatever) bit.

I approached this volume with trepidation after last year's disastrous entry, but I'm pleased to see some selections in here from books I might actually consider putting on a best-of list myself, especially Guy Delisle's Hostage or Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. (It wasn't good for me, but the critically-acclaimed My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 is also included.)There is still too much fixation on being an alternative comix sampler or indie pub...

There are some fantastic entries in this volume, from creators I wouldn't otherwise have discovered. That's what I want from a collection like this, and it's why I gave it 3 stars instead of 2.I wanted to give it 2 stars because this is mostly excerpts from larger works, and while they give us a sense of what those larger works are, I was left feeling unsatisfied over and over again, like I was just getting into a show and someone grabbed the remote and changed the channel.I know it's tough to c...

[Pandemic Goal #23: Get the “to read” pile under control. Somehow I read the “Best of...2019” before this 2018 volume. Ah well.]A collection full of creativity. I didn’t love all of the selections, but even those I didn’t not love had a unique point of view that I could respect. And the artistry throughout was stunning and/or shockingly aggressive and/or beautifully meticulous. A lot of emotion.

Not a dud in this collection. Not for the faint of heart.

Gloeckner picked a surprisingly wide array of comic styles that open the possibilities of meaning, interpretation, and the notion that (almost) anyone can be a graphic artist. It's hopeful, inspiring, dark, depressing, and more..making you want to find the original pieces and get the backstories of ALL the authors. But I love "The Best American Comics" collection no matter what so ?

I love this series. I’ve been reading it since 2006 and for the most part they are consistently outstanding.This edition gets 4/5 mainly because of a few weaker entries but generally the comics are very good. This year I had bought and owned submissions by the following, all of which were great: Gabrielle Bell, Tara Booth, Guy DeLisle, Emil Ferris, Sarah Glidden, Jesse Jacobs, Joe Ollmann, Keiler Roberts, and Ted Stearn. Interestingly, my favourite entries were from books I’d already read. Surpr...

Well, that was depressing.I know there’s immense creativity and artistry in this collection, but so much of it is ugly - grotesque bodies, stories full of gory violence (usually a metaphor, but not always) and self-loathing, comics perhaps as therapy for the person who writes and draws them, but I walk away from the collection feeling sickened and sad rather than stimulated or enlarged in spirit. Is there another medium where we value emotional authenticity so highly over proportion, beauty, emp...

"Oh Phoebe Gloeckner is the editor this year... this is going to be FUBAR." and it is.

"I love comics. Comics is (Comics ARE?) a perfect language, robustly evolving and expanding like any other living language. The pictures say what words could only struggle to express, the words tell us things that images could only describe in awkward pantomime" (Gloeckner xi). My favorite entries including "My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book 1 (Excerpt)," "Susan Something in: Megapets," and "Playground of my Mind (Excerpt)."

I love finding new artists through these anthologies.

Inherently 5 stars since reading this got me doodling comics again. Newly OBSESSED with the pattern painting comics of Tara Booth (it me) and creepy-cute ethereal furry brown abstractions of Margot Ferrick. Previously-established obsessions reinforced: My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, Megg Mogg & Owl by Simon Hanselmann, Crawl Space by Jesse Jacobs. Stoked to see that Julian Glander makes comics--stumbled on Lovely Weather We're Having in the Steam store and thought it was hilarious...

As per usual, this is a really mixed bag. A lot of my favorite selections I had read in their entirety (Sarah Glidden, Guy Delisle, Simon Hanselmann, Jesse Jacobs, Keiler Roberts, Emil Ferris), or was aware of the work already (Tara Booth). This collection functioned less as a source of discovery of new work for me. And a lot of the work I wasn't familiar with was pretty unpleasant with gratuitous violence.

Just OK.However, the excerpt from Julia Jacquette’s Playground of My Mind was outstanding. I’d like to read in full her graphic memoir about growing up in a Columbus Park Towers apartment in Manhattan, and the modernist playgrounds (1960s and 1970s) she played in as a child. Her illustrations are wonderful.

An improvement over Ben Katchor's old white dude comics edition from last year, but I wish there was more grounded material. The trend over the last few years has skewed toward more avant-garde/weird for the sake of weirdness stuff that doesn't resonate with me at all. Gloeckner does, however, do a great job putting together a diverse collection of work. Even if it's pretty hit or miss (leaning more on the miss side of things), it's a neat book to flip through.