Kibbles ‘n’ Bits — 12/21/09

Things are slowing down…and so are we.

§Joe Sacco’s amazing FOOTNOTES IN GAZA, one of the most important books of the year, is out tomorrow, and the AP runs one of the first of many talking about the book’s The Matter of the Day

Sacco said in doing so he is trying to create a balance to what he calls the United States’ pro-Israeli bias.

A scene in “Palestine” shows an Israeli woman asking: “Shouldn’t you be seeing our side of the story?” Sacco’s cartoon self replies: “I’ve heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my life.”

§ The Daily Cross Hatch surveys several comics types like Tom Hart and Robin McConnell on the best comics of the decade. Even familiarity with only half of the named books would show what an amazing 10-year-period this was for comics.

§ AND YET, Comics Alliance continues its stinging 15 Worst Comics of the Decade list, moving into the Crisis Era and all that was blechhhh inducing.

As an artist, Deodato Jr.’s hands are clean when it comes to the horrific events of the story, but there’s no arguing that his realistic linework served as a magnifying glass to the slash-fiction horror that is imagining Norman Osborn in flagrante delicto.

§ Lev Grossman looks at the best characters of the decade and a couple of them are from comics. The Venture Bros. and Firefly are faring well in these kinds of roundups.

§ Of all of these roundups, the most spectacularly masochistic must be Graeme McMillan’s The Most Important Events Of 2000-2009, Comic Style which shows that it was a horrible, horrible decade of trauma for the Earth in these parlous times.

§ Dan Kois at NY Mag has his best comics of 2009 list.

§ You may be sick of all the talk about GIRL COMICS, but howabout Kelly Thompson talking to editor Mariah Huehner.

§ Sad news regarding Cesar Feliciano: his young daughter has passed away.

§ But happy news from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction.