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Massachusetts cartoonist Melissa Mendes has a knack for comics that not only center on kids, but present the world from their points of view with an unromantic honesty. Her first major work, the Freddy Stories collection, and her most recent project, the serialized webcomic The Weight both show off her prowess, and Lou, a collection […]

Lots of stuff so let's get to it! § Sometime Beat contributor Laura Sneddon looks at 2013 in Comics and even though this list is mostly front of the Diamond catalog, there's a lot to be excited about.

Two comics subscription services that were closed at the time I mentioned them in my Best of 2012 post have both been re-opened. Both Oily Comics and Patrick Kyle’s Distance Mover are accepting subscription orders, so get on it!

Every year I publish my list of favourites, and every year I always realize I’ve forgotten a few due to absent-mindedness or, more likely, my cluttered office. So here are a few more, which I’ll append to the original list:

Oily Comics

There’s something quite special about the unadorned, simple black-and-white mini-minicomics that show up every few weeks from Chuck Forsman’s subscription series, which offers comics from a number of cartoonists like Melissa Mendes, Michael DeForge, Max de Radiguès, and more. They’re small things, and short to read, so unlike the growing pile of unread books by my bedside, they are actually inviting rather than intimidating when it comes to reading them. And they’re cheap and disposable enough that they don’t feel like precious objects. They feel like little gifts when they come in the mail. It appears that subscription memberships are currently closed, but at the very least you can head over to the Oily Boutique and order the books a la carte for a buck a pop.

Distance Mover by Patrick Kyle

Patrick Kyle released the collected book of his comic series Black Mass this year, but for my money I’m much more excited by his latest series Distance Mover, which like Oily Comics, I’ve been getting in the mail every month as a subscription. Each little book is a risographed art object, and I enjoy seeing Patrick’s work grow more abstract and even further from the traditional norm than Black Mass which already eschewed panels in favour of a freeform fill-the-page-with-drawings method. Each issue in the mail comes with goodies like extra prints or zines. Subscriptions are likely closed as the series nears its end, but you can order books directly from Patrick’s site, and read the first three issues (in black and white) online.

Diary Comics #4 by Dustin Harbin

Dustin’s Diary Comics made the list in previous years when they weren’t even this good — the great thing with a project like this is being able to literally see the artist improve over time. This fourth issue comprises more of Dustin’s just-like-the-title-says diary comics, and his drawing chops remain as honed as ever, but it’s the multi-page story Boxes that is the real zinger here. In it Dustin reflects on the diary comics themselves, and how comics have affected his day-to-day perception of the world around him, for better or for worse. Yes, meta journal comics about drawing said comics aren’t anything new, but Dustin’s gifts for thoughtfulness and introspection make it a special thing, and a powerful unexpected product of having distilled his life into four panels, a page at a time, for the past few years. You can read Boxes online for free (full disclosure: I am featured in the story), and buy all of Dustin’s books and prints at his online store (which currently offers 35% off orders of $50 or more with the code DHARBMAS).

Nancy is Happy and Nancy Likes Christmas by Ernie Bushmiller

I knew my list didn’t feel right without any reprints of classic comic strips. Nancy seems to be a love-it-or-leave-it strip, and I am firmly in the Love It camp. Nancy is the granddaddy of the gag strip. Often surreal, and always impeccably drawn, there is nothing quite like it. D&Q got a head start in publishing John Stanley’s Nancy comic books, which are certainly fun, but these Bushmiller strips are the real deal — perfectly constructed comic strips with not a line or word wasted. It’s been said it’s harder to not read a Nancy strip than it is to read one, and for that alone these books are a virtual masterclass in cartooning.

Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal

In a list of Great Cartoonists Who Weren’t Cartoonists, Jim Henson would top the list. Is there a better example of simple, contrasting character design than Bert and Ernie? Jim Henson famously kept a journal with simple one-line entries. It was a proto-Twitter account that, of course, is now a Twitter account. This book, Imagination Illustrated, compiles the most notable entries in chronological order and fills the pages with sketches, drawings, photographs, storyboards, and ephemera to create a scrapbook of the Muppet creator’s professional life, and is the perfect piece of nostalgia for a Muppet-loving child of the 80s like myself.

Oily Comics has re-opened its subscription service. This has got to be the most in-your-face publishing shape I’ve seen, a subscription to small, short minicomics by a rotating stable of creators, including Chuck Forsman, Sammy Harkham, James Hindle, Warren Craghead and more. I still haven’t done it myself—I never have $30 at the right time—but I know eventually it’s going to happen. Heck, I’m vain enough that a Michael Deforge designed membership card with a hand-drawn portrait of me by Chuck or Melissa Mendes is practically worth $30 by itself.

BY JEN VAUGHN – Forget Kickstarter! Let’s talk OLD SCHOOL SUBSCRIPTIONS! Micropublisher Oily Comics has a DEAL for you. Center for Cartoon Studies alum, two-brick Ignatz winner and future Fantagraphics author, Charles Forsman is offering a subscription service for a few more hours! Days after subscribing I received a package full of comics. BAM!

Being a Friends of Oily Comics means you get a monthly shipment of comics made each month featuring the works of D&Q’s former jane-of-all-trades Jessica Campbell, Andy Burkholder, Melissa Mendes, Belgian cartoonist Max de Radigués, Aaron Cockle, Dane Martin, and soon Joseph Lambert, Warren Craghead III, Marian Runk, Alex Kim, Dan Zettwoch, Sammy Harkham, Zach Worton, Michael DeForge, and more on the way. How can you say no to that? Preview page of Charles Forsman’s comic:

$30 gets you monthly shipments from July-September, $50 gets you monthly shipments from July-December and a suh-weet patch for that bag/jacket/hat. Oh and a Michael DeForge-designed card and original portrait. Check mine out! Read more here and Order now!