SAVANT:: Essay

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What if someone came to me and said "Alright, SAVANT has convinced me that I should be reading comics. What comics should I read to get a feeling for the full spectrum of Good Work that is being done today?"

I tried to avoid mini series, one shots, OGNs, etc. here. I wanted these to be books that come out at least fairly frequently. The magic number/cut off point was 10; they're in no particular order. Canonical works may always be found in ESSENTIAL.

Here: this is my love letter, dipped in gasoline.

1. Metabarons, Jordorowsky/Jimenez, Humanoids Publishing.

The phrase "Kirby-esque" gets thrown around a lot these days. Usually it's code for Big Weird Action, usually involving the word "cosmic" at some point. Crap, I tell you. Kirby wasn't about action, or outer space, or funky machines-not really. Jack Kirby's work was fueled on ideas. Many books try for Kirby-esque, and most fail.

Except Metabarons.

This book has more throwaway ideas in a single issue than most books have in their entire runs. A space-opera on a Herbert-scale, Jordorowsky and Jimenez have crafted the comics equivalent of psychic epilepsy. The gutters imply more action than any run of any Marvel/DC/Image book, ever.

This book is breathtakingly insane. It makes almost everything else look boring and terribly old-school.

2. Authority, Millar/Quietly; Wildstorm.

Authority is the only superhero book that matters. Millar crafts hero adrenaline and widescreen action so fierce that it makes you feel bad for other books. His knack for characters is dead on-and, unlike other writers who all too often fall into the I'm-Writing-Character-Dialogue-Dialogue School of Writing, Millar just does it, and makes it all look effortless.

And don't even get me started on Quietly-- his art is maximist detail porn for OCD-types. When he dies, I'm going to sever his hand and pickle it with bear semen. Don't really know why, just seems like the right thing to do.

This is capes and cowls for the next century, the Unforgiven of superhero work: the last definitive statement of the genre so clearly realized and executed that everything else pales in its wake.

It gets no bigger; it gets no louder than Authority.

3. Transmetropolitan, Ellis and Robertson; DC/Vertigo

Violent, profane, shocking and funny, Transmet is a rare thing: a book about a writer, writing; and politics, specifically the politics of America. I can't express the glee it gives me to see that Ellis is trusting his characters enough to be themselves-Let Spider Be Spider, so to speak. Transmet has flourished into more than the Hunter Thompson in the Future riff of its origins: this is the saga of an outlaw journalist screaming against the future, only to find that by the time he's come up with answers no one remembers the questions.

This is a book about the idea of freedom, free speech, and power, and how Americans are content to have them all taken away. A love letter between cynics, Transmet is required reading for anyone too apathetic to care about the world around them, or anyone too furious not to care.

It is also of note that Darrick Robertson evolves before our eyes, every month. I wonder if he's actually getting taller.

4. Black Hole, Charles Burns; Fantagraphics.

This book can and will get you laid, period. It is the sexiest book on the market, the most stunningly beautiful as well. As thrilling as getting to third base the first time, and cheaper than the beer you bought to get there. It's a book about teenagers, rock and roll, and growing up.

Most of all, it's about sex. From the dentata-implications of its title, to the teen-plague metaphor that's central to the story, Burns effortlessly sculpts-and when you see his work, you'll agree that's the only word for it-an angst-nervosa love song to the horrors of growing up that hums and resonates off of every page. And he does it so well that as you find yourself surrounded by mutating outcast teenagers and silent hill-zombies, you will think to yourself YES: This Is How It Felt.

Black Hole is the essential pop-artifact of comics. The only thing missing is the soundtrack.

5. Popekunst, Paul Pope. Usually 3-10 books a year, from either Horse Press of DC/Vertigo.

Pope, one-half Jack Kirby (the energy) and one-half Mick Jagger (the swagger), creates work by worldbuilding at exactly two speeds: Yes and No. When he's dry, he's dry. But wait half a year and he'll deluge you with bigger, better work than what came before. He's also of note, I feel, because he's not ashamed of exposing his idiom as an essential part of his process and thus, his product. Stylehopping evolution, page by page. Watch him get smarter.

The guy's writing is even stylized. No one talks like a Paul Pope comic. Because he's made everything up.

From THB to his rock noir spacechase Heavy Liquid, Pope is the only guy out there giving Burns a run for his money on the comics-as-pop-art-object battlefield. And never mind the pornography of ink-Pope's work is so skilled and relaxed that you never realize just how confident it is. The guy stockpiles worlds inside his rock star brain, every grain of sand, every cloud.

6. Acme Novelty Library, Chris Ware; Fantagraphics

If Burns and Pope a slugging it out in the Pop Art wing of the Comics Museum, Chris Ware has a wing all his own. I envy the poor, unenlightened bastards out there who have yet to lose themselves in this work. A piece of structural complexity rivaled only by Los Bros. Hernandez and Grant Morrision's Invisibles, Acme is one of those rare pieces of work that can be about sadness, dysfunction, and alienation without wallowing in it. It's a book that makes you feel-- really truly feel things while you read it.

Ware's technical craft is untouchable, and it took him awhile to get the storytelling up to speed with his plentiful visual skills. As recently exhibited in the Pantheon Books Jimmy Corrigan collection, Ware himself is his own worst critic and fully acknowledges the book has rough patches. But as Ware started to grow into his own legend, his skills evolved, too. The last hundred and fifty, two hundred pages are as profound as any work produced in the medium. The thought and production that goes into every issue of Acme makes the book a must-have.

7. Promethea, Moore, Williams, and Gray; Wildstorm/ABC

Every month I try to get this book's hooks out of my head, and every month I fail. Every month I prepare myself to be embarrassed terribly by this book, and every month I fail. Every month I force it to the bottom of the new book pile, and every month I regret that I have to wait another thirty days.

This is a book about magic and imagination and creativity itself. Keep reading. Never in a million years would I ever imagine myself reading this book. Magic? Imagination? Creativity?

While not as profound or intricate as Moore's 'mature' work, Promethea nevertheless is notable as a book in love with language and ideas. Moore, Williams, and Gray have made a book about myth itself, full of the awe and wonder that goes along with how we, as a species, craft our world through our stories. Sparks fall off of every page.

I have a theory that Moore writes Promethea so that he'd never have to answer the "where do you get your ideas" question ever again. Promethea answers it monthly.

8. Powers, Bendis and Oeming; Image

To write like David Mamet means more than writing piles and piles of dialogue that goes nowhere and says nothing, which is a common mistake many fledgling writers make. Mamet's work and style-illuminated beautifully in the seminal On Directing Film-is always about beats, moments... giving words, no matter how small and how sharp, power and importance.

The engine of Powers is Brian Michael Bendis. The man writes dialogue that's metronome sharp, always spoken by characters that pop off the page the first time you see them. And with Powers, he's made a book that is a joy to read, just to roll the words around in your mouth. Bendis has broken free of the Mamet-esque trappings that perhaps informed his earlier work and has created a cast and

A hybrid crime/superhero comic, Powers blends the genre seamlessly thanks to the art of Michael Avon Oeming. Using a highly graphic animated style, Oeming's technique furthers the axiom of the book, diffusing the sometimes harsh reality of Bendis' dialogue with a popart melange that makes superheroes a common, unsurprising event within the gritty world of very real homicide cops within a very unreal world.

Powers is the book that people will be talking about very, very soon, and will be talking about for a long time.

9. Deadenders, Brubaker, Pleece and Stewart; DC/Vertigo

This is the closest thing to a romance comic being published today. It may not be a surprise, then, to find that Deadenders is getting the reputation of being everyone's Girlfriend's Favorite Book.

Equal parts 1984 and Teenage Wasteland, Brubaker, Pleece, and now Stewart are taking their time weaving a tale of an oppressive future and the drug addled, sex-crazed scooter riding teens therein. It's as punk rock of a book that you'll read nowadays. Brubaker writes kids that talk and act like kids: they fuck and fight and get fucked up because their lives are so grim there's nothing else to it.

After a somewhat uncertain start, Deadenders has really started to blossom into something fantastic.

10. Palookaville, by Seth; Drawn and Quarterly

This is what it feels like to be haunted.

(This is by no means a comprehensive, best-of-in-my-opinion list of books. There are many, many books out there I want to read but for one reason or another have not. One day, one day one day. Or something like Chester Brown's stuff, which I find maddening in pamphlets but brilliant once collected.

There are other notable books that I enjoy quite a lot, but for one reason or another didn't include. Too taste-specific, not enough issues out for me to really get my head all the way around it yet, too continuity-mired, etc. Berlin, Rumble Girls, Penny Century, Luba, X-Man, Generation X, Top Ten, and so on. I love you all and I'm sorry! I regret nothing!)