CBR's Top 100 Comics of 2012, #74 - 50

[WhitOro]

DOROHEDORO is fu**ing brilliant you guys. It's pure genius, really, a bizzare, very dirty and very bloody fantasy. The best I could describe it is saying that it's like a Vertigo-Horror wrote by Tim Burton (when he was still making good movie).

Seriously, check it out.

[Billy Batson]

DOROHEDORO is fu**ing brilliant you guys. It's pure genius, really, a bizzare, very dirty and very bloody fantasy. The best I could describe it is saying that it's like a Vertigo-Horror wrote by Tim Burton (when he was still making good movie).

Seriously, check it out.

Pffft, with that kind of a name? Yeah right.

[Jonny_Anonymous]

In what planet is Venom better than the Walking Dead? and why is Scalped so low? Both of these should be in the top 20 at least.

[Libaax]

Not everything, but some of the things that are ranked higher in the CBR list.
Buffy season 9 considered better than the end of Irredeemable plus WatXM and Aquaman, for example. Or the latest issues of Fables better than the end of Scalped plus the three aforementioned series.

Strange rankings, to put it mildly. That's why I wondered what their criteria are.

They always prefer the new hyped superhero series and long popular bestseller series like Fables over Scalped type comic. This kind of list is only worthwile to get know smaller comics you havent heard of and who is ranked in top 100 somewhere.

[Libaax]

Friends With Boys sounds interesting. I'll probably check out Wasteland via TPB eventually. I bought a few earlier issues out of the bargain bin but never read them. The interest was always there though. Silence Of Our Friends sounds awesome. I've heard The Nao Of Brown plugged too many times to not check it out. Of course there was more there to interest me, Scalped is high on my to-read list. The only title listed so far that I actually follow is Walking Dead.

The last year of Scalped wasnt as brilliant as the first half but its a series with more realness,great writing than many more popular series in CRB with their writers,fans. Scalped has more impact in its 60 issues than many hyped,award winning series from the big two.

[WhitOro]

Pffft, with that kind of a name? Yeah right.

You're joking I hope. Never judge a book by it's title.

[charlesjbaserap]

Buffy has been just plain awful. Angel and Faith has been a great read, but Buffy has been an endless series of PSAs, though I'm not shocked some of the reviewers here loved it. To say it was "bold" for the abortion storyline is ridiculous. It was a cop out, through and through. They did it to cause a NONtroversy and then wouldn't follow through on it so they could have their cake and eat it, too. It's hackneyed at best.

http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2012/12/...demise-of.html

"It was lauded as bold and gutsy that they had the balls to do this—especially after exactly one issue where she experimented in being a lesbian, as if it was a choice to be gay, that was never addressed again—and much was made of it. And then the gimmick really kicked the readers by revealing all that hand wringing and controversy wasn’t for Buffy—it was for a robot that only thought it was a pregnant Buffy. Control-Alt-Delete could have solved the problem, I imagine.

"Now that vampires aren’t around—with no magic they’re zompires now; really, they are—Buffy is kind of aimless, and the writing is mirroring that and now there’s a new slayer named Billy. And he’s gay. Because the years of the Slayer being a girl and about female empowerment now mean nothing and anyone can be a Slayer. It’s not Billy’s sexuality that’s the problem; it’s the professed agenda driven piece his creation is, admitted by Jane Espenson herself in an interview on Comic Book Resources.

"The character has no depth and is written in a series of One to Grow On clichés, from being bullied by big white Republican jocks to being raised by his kindly old hippie liberal grandmother, and the revelation that the coolest guy in school he’s been crushing over that could never possibly be gay totally is and loves him back.

"It’s hackneyed and lazy writing at most, and really does a disservice to the inclusiveness its striving for.

"By all means, put a gay character into a book and add a bit of real life—after all, we’ve had Willow and others for years in Buffy already. And people who know me know I’ve had a long history of championing gay rights and the close bond I shared with my uncle who lost his life from HIV two years ago. But they’re doing it in the gaysploitative way we’ve seen Astonishing X-Men and Earth 2 go, where the sales mean more than the quality. They’re doing it in such a heavy handed way that it comes off as cheap and one dimensional, ignoring well developed characters like Wiccan and Hulkling of the Young Avengers, or Apollo and Midnighter of Stormwatch, or Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer and Stryker.

"There’s a place for politics and social commentary in comics.

"Whether it was Superman’s eventual emergence as the epitome of the immigrant success story or the X-Men’s mutant rights charge mirroring the race issues of 1960s America, it’s been a part of comics for years.

"But when you admit it’s with an agenda, when you sacrifice good writing for something that reads like a fanfic PSA, you’re not doing anyone any favors. Creating a one note character, or manufacturing a nontroversy you didn’t have the balls to go through with doesn’t make you revolutionary.

"Buffy used to be smart, it used to be witty. Now it’s just a shell trying hard to stay relevant and someone needs to put a stake in it if that’s all it’s got any intention of being."

[astrakhan]

Normally I wouldn't do this, but you need to change an error in #74, because the typo changes the meaning. Crystal has a romance with RonAn the Accuser, not RonIn, the identity used by Hawkeye (amongst others). I got confused until I saw the cover image posted alongside it.

EDIT: Thanks for fixing it!

[Brandon Hanvey]

Strange rankings, to put it mildly. That's why I wondered what their criteria are.

Basically the list is made up by polling the writers, columnists and bloggers who work for CBR. It's usually around a couple dozen.
Each person turns in a list of 10 picks which are ranked 1 to 10. Then the person in charge of the list gives points to each ranking and totals them up to get the final rankings.

[Gary_B]

Hellboy in Hell is ranked #68? Ridiculous. The comic is a masterpiece of page layouts, composition and colour use and writing is no slouch either.

[Middenway]

I'm very surprised Hellboy in Hell didn't crack into the top 25.

[maskedavenger]

What...no Invincible included?