The Best Comics of 2001

This week I present my year-end awards for the comic books. These awards only include published comics, and not comic book websites nor retailers. This is my first shot at this type of column, so here goes:

The first category is "Most Hyped" comic books for 2001. These comics actually had to be published in 2001, so a hyped book like the upcoming Justice League/Avengers crossover does not count for this award. My Third Place award in this category goes to "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" graphic novel from Frank Miller and DC comics. This book is long anticipated (13 years or so?), as it is the sequel to "Dark Knight Returns". Good publicity and fine job to DC in getting the word out on this one.

My Second Place award in this category is "Crux #1" by CrossGen. Talk about hype! CrossGen contacted everyone including the pizza delivery guy. CrossGen put out an excellent promotional campaign.

My First Place award in this category again goes to DC for "Green Arrow #1". The return of the extremely popular character "Oliver Queen" as Green Arrow was truly an ad campaign of enormous proportions. Fine promotional poster, and the return of a very popular character does not hurt. This campaign seems to have paid off as Green Arrow is in the top 20 in sales every month.

Okay, here's one for the small press folks. You could call this best small press series, or "Best Comic You Probably Never Heard Of" category. My choice for #1 in this category is "Wierdsville" by Franco Aureliani and Blindwolf Studios. Blindwolf is doing some quality entertainment, and I suggest you check out their books at http://www.blindwolfstudios.com . While you are there, check out "Cray Babies" and "I Dream of Jeannie" art by Art Baltazar. The man has tremendous talent.

My next category is "Best Comic Book Executives". The Third Place award goes collectively to all the folks at DC for putting out consistently good books. Second Place goes to Mark Alessi for continuing with his business plan at CrossGen. The hiring of Chuck Dixon is another coup for Mark Alessi, and he introduced three new comic book titles this year with "Crux", "Ruse", and "The Negation". Keep up the great work! My First Place award goes to Quesada and Jemas at Marvel. This is partly for all the effort they started in "Marvel Knight" and in "their "Ultimate.." comics. These men have put Marvel Comics back in front in sales, usually taking 9 of the top 10 titles in monthly comic book sales. They are incredibly in tune with the public, and have gone out of their way to hire the people who said they would never work at Marvel again. This list includes Chris Claremont and now includes Jim Shooter. That's right, Q & J have done it again, bringing Jim Shooter to write an upcoming miniseries for Marvel. Jim produced so many negative feelings, and already has a non-comic full time job. This makes his hiring even more incredible. Last, and certainly most importantly, Q & J put out the 9-11 benefit comic "Heroes" in record time, and it's one and a half time larger that a regular comic book.

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