Five Faves In Five

A list of five comics I’ve read in the last five years* that stand out as my favorites.

It’s been roughly five years since I got back into making, collecting, and reading comics. Like many others I’ve talked to and read in that time, I was a lapsed comic book collector / reader, and a combination of YouTube videos during COVID downtime, catching up on the MCU films, and getting older and succumbing to nostalgia lit a fire under my ass, making me remember how much fun comics are and how much I missed them. I’ve read a lot of shitty comics in the five years since, but a lot of really great ones too. What follows is a completely subjective, somewhat random list of five comics (either series, trade paperbacks, or single issues) that stand out to me as the best things I’ve read in the last five years.

Terror Assaulter: OMWOT by Ben Marra.

A wild, depraved, dumb & really smart at the same time, action-packed, hilarious riot of a book. A satire of 80s action films and War-On-Terror era America, from the plot to the dialogue to the art itself this comic is just layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of irony, without trying to be cool. I learned a lot from this book about all the different little things you can add to your comics to make them funnier; might be my favorite thing I’ve read in the last five years.

Prison Pit: The Complete Collection by Johnny Ryan

I’ve been a long-time Johnny Ryan fan, going back to when he was self-publishing Angry Youth Comics, but Prison Pit was released during my long self-exile from comics so I missed the original series. I was ecstatic when Fantagraphics released the entire saga in an affordable paperback and as soon as I got it I sat down and read that bastard in one sitting.

The book is around 700 pages of the “hero,” a blood-drenched miscreant called Cannibal Fuckface, as he wanders through an intergalactic wasteland dispatching a variety of mutants and monsters he crosses paths with in a gloriously vulgar and gory manner.

Another book that taught me a lot, another all-time favorite.

I Hate This Place Vol. 1 by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin.

This book collects the first five of a ten issue series. The world-building to start this story is some of the best I have ever read. There was a point 3 or 4 pages in where I had had to stop & reread it, and then thought to myself “wow, so in these few pages the writer and artist have shown me (NOT told me) that the young couple at the center of the tale are about to be embroiled in a bloody story of survival involving criminals, aliens and zombies. Great art and excellent writing go along with the superb world-building. One of those books that reminded me how awesome comics can be.

Kill Or Be Killed by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

When I got back into comics I started seeing a lot of praise for the graphic novels by these two. I tried a couple — “Pulp,” “Reckless,” and one or two others — and I enjoyed them. I love a good crime story and these are all really well written and drawn, but I wasn’t blown away….until I read the first TPB of Kill Or Be Killed. After I flew through that first volume I immediately bought the remaining three.

In KOBK, we follow the story of unhappy college student Dylan, creeping towards his thirties and dissatisfied with his life, who attempts suicide after a relationship goes bad. Dylan soon finds that he only survived with the help of a demon who informs him that he must now kill one person a month or be killed himself. Deciding to go along with the demon, Dylan first targets the leader of a pedophile ring before moving on to a series of mobsters and various other Very Bad People.

The writing and art are both superb. KOBK is action-packed, with the tension and violence ratcheting up more and more as the story progresses, and it makes you examine the morality of killing really awful people. If you just want to be entertained KOBK will do the job, but there’s more to think about there as well.

Brother Power The Geek #1 by Joe Simon and Al Bare

This is a pretty random entry on this list; the first of two issues of this very short-lived character (I think he has appeared in maybe ten issues of various DC comics over the course of six decades), first appearing in this book in 1968. I was intrigued by a review I read of this comic, thinking it sounded weird enough that I would really enjoy it. I hunted down a copy of #1 for myself and, you guessed it, I really enjoyed it.

Brother Power was a mannequin that had been left behind in a long abandoned tailor’s shop which was later taken over by a group of hippies. One rainy night the hippies arrive at the shop soaking wet and one of them puts his clothes on the mannequin to avoid shrinking. The mannequin is forgotten about, has some oil spilled on him, and is later struck by lightning, bringing him to life Frankenstein-style. The rest of the book is Brother Power avoiding humanity while simultaneously trying to protect innocent hippies and other bystanders from a fantastically-conceived gang of late 1960s biker stereotypes.

I can’t exactly say Brother Power The Geek is a “well-written” book, but it is written in a kind of stream-of-consciousness manner that I find very fun and entertaining. There’s no real story arc, our hero comes to life and then he stumbles over here and meets some nice people, hides out for a bit, then staggers over there and meets some bad people, and so on. With the context of reading this almost 60 years after its creation, it’s really interesting to see how Simon handled the numerous hippy characters in the book; the hippies are pretty goofily written, but I never sensed any judgement or condescension toward them. Al Bare’s art is really great in this, too. A very weird and fun and memorable comic, right up there with my favorite comics I’ve read in the last five years.

That’s my list, and I’m sticking to it. Do you agree with this list? Do you think I’m some kind of knuckle dragging sub-literate based on what I’ve mentioned here? Add your own list, I’d be very interested to see your favorite comics!

Aric

A Few Honorable Mentions:

Hate Revisited by Peter Bagge; Conan The Barbarian (the new Titan Comics Series) by Jim Zub and various artists; Maple Terrace by Noah Van Sciver; Get Fury by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows.

*It may have been six years. I don’t know, I didn’t write the exact date down. It feels like five years, so let’s just go with that.