2009 Leftovers

With the start of a new decade, I thought before things really get rolling again next week, I'd clear out some of the last round of reviews, year-end lists and other miscellani that cited IDW books, in no particular order:

The Star-Clipper Blog looks at one of the decade's big trends in comics, zombies, and singles out both ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS (#1) and WORMWOOD, GENTLEMAN CORPSE (#5) in his top five list.


Along those lines, Google Alerts has made me aware of a band called The Flaming Tsunamis, who have a song called "Zombies vs Robots." I don't think either of us were aware of each other but in reading the lyrics to their song, it sounds like as good a soundtrack to the ZvR comics as anything.


In Spain, there's a Spanish version of a comics news site like Newsarama or Comic Book Resources known as Zona Negativa.com. While they focus primarily on Marvel and DC, too, their very favorite comic book of 2009 was LOCKE & KEY. Here's a version of the site run through Google's Translator. It's an inelegant translation but you still get the gist of the piece, where Diego Matos, the author of the piece, say some really nice things about the comic.

Speaking of Comic Book Resources, they completed their Top 100 Comics of 2009 list today, and among the books that made the cut were THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAVIOR 28 (#35), LOCKE & KEY (#34) and PARKER: THE HUNTER (#3).


And at Newsarama, in their own list of Best Comics of 2009, each of their writers gives his Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal picks. Brendan McGuirk there chose GROOM LAKE as his third-favorite book of the year:

Every comic should have an angle. The blend of story and art should uniquely set it apart from all other rival books it fights on the stands for space. With a quirky story and even quirkier art, Groom Lake fits this criteria to a “T,” and earns its spot among the year's best comics. Chris Ryall and Ben Templesmith's science fiction, Area 51 send-up is without compromise. Templesmith does some of his most clean and direct sequential narration here, on a story with perspective weird enough to suit his nuanced line work. Ryall, similarly, is totally and tonally in his element writing this tale of sarcastic secret agents, bumbling fools caught in too deep, and little green men who can't wait to light up. Groom Lake is the kind of book one hopes for when trying a new title; one which distinguishes itself. The humor is dark, the art style is unmistakeably apropos of the story being told, and this year, Groom Lake brings home the bronze.

In that same listing, Troy Brownfield chose PARKER: THE HUNTER as his Silver Medal-winner.

Adding to PARKER's end-of-year acclaim, Heat Vision Blog also picked PARKER as one of the Best Comics of 2009:

The Hunter (IDW)
Darwyn Cooke leaves the superhero world behind but not his beloved '50s and '60s in this graphic novel adaptation of the hard-boiled Donald Westlake book. It’s pure film noir: gritty, violent and sexy with characters that are unsympathetic and have their fates coming to them. The first 20 pages are wordless, relying purely on strong storytelling while the settings -- a space-age lobby, a modern apartment, a seedy subway, a jungle hideaway -- are just as well-thought out in their art direction and a character in itself. Cooke at the top of his game.

Finally, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAVIOR 28 received some final acclaim, too. At Newsarama, the series was given a Gold Medal from Ross Burlingame:

It’s a pity that this book didn’t sell well, because it feels like this generation’s Kingdom Come or Watchmen. A brilliantly-written book with pitch-perfect art, it melds politics, superheroes, Kirby-inspired art and an insider’s sense for the absurdity of superheroics. Originally written as a story for Captain America in the 1980s, but rejected by Marvel editors who thought it would upset the apple cart too much to have their flagship hero abandon vigilantism in the name of global peace activism, the story has been gestating for nearly thirty years before writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Mike Cavallaro put together a proposal—and IDW approved it in an afternoon. The resultant five-issue miniseries was full of great, profound moments and compelling characters, and had arguably the best and most memorable first issue of any superhero miniseries since the aforementioned Kingdom Come.

And now, onward to 2010! Happy new year, everyone.