A brief and unprofound review of 2008

Between one thing and another, 2008 has been a decidedly mixed year for comics. The Big Two continued their All Crossovers, All The Time policy, which led to me losing interest rapidly (my attitude to crossovers typically being "wake me when it's all over"); the controversial Minx imprint died the death which I had seen coming from the start but apparently everyone else found surprising; Tokyopop drastically downsized its business, with its OEL titles being particularly badly hit; and the various global economic rumblings had an effect on the bookstore market, which had a lot of publishers making nervous mumbling noises while smiling fixedly and assuring everybody that everything was just fine, no, really.

And Cable & Deadpool got cancelled, which made me a sad panda.

Meanwhile, there was a lot of top-notch comics-creation and publishing going on, in a quiet, unassuming sort of way. My own comics-reading time got eaten into in the last quarter of the year by a combination of starting a new and rather demanding job and rediscovering my love of musical theatre, which has taken over my brain in a slightly alarming way. (I'm writing this with a DVD of Oliver! playing in the background.) All the same, I was vaguely aware of interesting stuff happening in the comics business, even if I never seemed to have the time or energy to investigate that stuff for myself. I read 140 graphic novels this year, and that's not counting webcomics, floppies or re-reads. Not all of them were new, and not all of them were good, but enough of them were both new and good that I can be pretty cheerful about The State Of Comics. The market's fucked, to be sure, but when has the English-language comics market not been fucked, one way or another? It's the talent that matters, and boy howdy is there a shedload or twelve of talent out there. Some of it's being channelled by economics into unproductive directions, and some of it's languishing unsung and uncelebrated, and some of it's being used to do things I find inexplicable; but there's so much of it. And so much of it is finding places where it can burst forth into bloom in unpredictable and wonderful ways. I can't be pessimistic, because it seems to me that comics has reached a critical mass at which the medium can't die, because no matter what happens in the market, the creators will find ways to make their talent work for them.

I have no predictions for 2009, because predicting the future is a mug's game. But I am optimistic.