by Kevin Czap
Hey gang. Not enough time for a proper blog post today, but for those worrying, I’ll have two heavy-hitting convention reports coming up in the following weeks, so stay tuned for those.
In the meantime, I wanted to maybe get some people involved with something that’s been on my mind. The end of the year is always a big whirlwind for me, and I am basically calling it a year by mid-November. So fittingly, my minds been going back over the past year and marveling at how momentous 2011 has been so far. Part of this recollection is thinking about all the great comics that have come out. What I propose is we use the comment thread here to list the comics that came out in 2011 that got you the most excited.
Now, end-of-year lists are nothing if not a dime-a-dozen, so I hope we can make this one a little different. We all there have been those huge releases that everyone lost their marbles over (Hark, A Vagrant, The Death Ray, yadda yadda). That’s all well and good. I think it’d be cool, though, if we could hear of some titles from off the beaten path. Tell me about the hidden gems that flew under the radar but still totally turned your world upside down.
My hopes with this is that if we all share the lesser-known comics we happened upon, other folks will get hip to them and check ’em out. This way we can all help promote these deserving works that don’t already have a lot of hype behind them. Even if it’s just one! I’d love to hear from you guys.
See you next week (or earlier [wink]).
comixcube.com 
Mine! Though it’s a webcomic.
So mostly Gaylord Phoenix, which I discovered not too long ago.
Not sure these are my “best of” yet, but a few potential ones (or at least overlooked ones in most cases), leaving out “big” stuff like Ganges 4, L&R New Stories 4, and Big Questions:
Dark Tomato by Sakura Maku (Domino)
Disgusting Room by Austin English (Sparkplug)
Jardin Botanique by David Turgeon (Colosse)
Astral Talk edited by Aidan Koch (Publication Studio)
Comedie Sentimentale Pornographique by Jimmy Beaulieu (Dargaud) (and thus I trip the spam filter)
Deborah Turbeville: The Fashion Pictures (Rizzoli)
Blast Furnace Funnies by Frank Santoro (self-published)
Unspent Love by Shannon Gerard (Conundrum)
Also ignoring my favorite manga and various reissues/reprints.
Though I guess Unspent Love isn’t really overlooked since it just came out this week.
“Remake Special” by Lamar Abrams (AdHouse)