Houghton Mifflin’s “Best American Comics 2009″ is coming out in a couple of weeks and I got my hands on an advance copy just a couple of minutes ago. If you’ve not read the three earlier editions of this series, well, I can’t suggest it highly enough. Pound-for-pound the best sampler of current trends in comics from this continent.

Matt Madden and Jessica Abel return as editors again this year, but the selections for this edition were made by another personal favorite of mine, Charles Burns.

Just flipping through it at the moment, but I hope to have a review of some of the comix up within the week to encourage shoppers. (No spoilers. Promise.) I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time!

Welcome to TopShelf 2.0.

As some of you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately figuring out whether or not to like webcomics. It’s a silly question really. Rather like an icecream vendor weighing the merits of the stick versus the sugarcone. Comix are, despite how they’re delivered into the hands of the reader, a unique kind of artform.

The main point, whether in print or on-line, is to get picture stories into the world for people to enjoy. There are some formal differences between these two types of distribution of course, making this an exciting time to work in comix, but the essential reading experience is still there; artists using a unique blend of word and image to tell stories or express feeling.

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I’m sitting back on my first chapter and it’s good to make a start. Legend has it that this novels has many levels and more than a few nooks and crannies to explore – that might be the understatement of the year, but I’ll let you who have been there already be the judge of that. I’m thinking that this first chapter may be lulling me into a false sense of security as in itself it didn’t seem terribly difficult to read. I’m fairly sure I’m not picking up everything but it began and ended and made some familiar narrative sense, so I’m grateful for that at least.

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Well, deep into the wee small hours of the night, I opened my new book and began reading chapter one – page one! Heh! I’ll relate that experience later but I’ve just been prompted to tell you about some wonderful musical links that closely relate to our subject at hand. Now I have to admit here that I’ve been a fan of Kate Bush for an age and held her album The Sensual World close to my bosom as a one of the highlights of her career – but now I find there are references to Ulysses I’d never even guessed at. You do learn something every day after all! How very sobering.

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Throwaway Horse, LLC will be presenting new, weekly installments of its comix adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses at our web site, www.ulyssesseen.com,  beginning October 5, 2009 and running through December 7, 2009.  In addition to giving readers 40 new pages of the comic, Throwaway Horse will add new features and a new schedule of regular content.

The comic will now update on Mondays with four new pages.  The Reader’s Guide, our online annotation for solving some of the mysteries of the novel page-by-page, will follow with daily analysis Tuesday through Friday of each week.

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