I agree with the first paragraph here, but my point is more that even if comix are influenced historically by comics, why can’t there be an outlet for only comix? There are a million places to find comics everywhere you go. There aren’t a million places to find comix everywhere you go. If the one virtue of the BAC series are that they’re giving a wider range of exposure to nonsuperherocomics, why should we take away space from the unknowns and fill it up with superheros that you can already get everywhere? I mean, it’s not like we all live in Hicksville (I wish).

In my mind I’ve always separated contemporary “serious” comics (or comix) into two categories: those clearly influenced by (and responding to) the history of mainstream comics (Burns, Clowes, Los Bros, etc.) and those existing outside of a strictly comics sphere of influence, adopting more of their narrative and visual techniques from film and graphic design–as well as other comics that follow such traditions–like Molotiu and other people whose names I don’t know, because personally that subgenre of comics doesn’t really interest me. Chris Ware is an example of someone who maybe straddles the line. As I said, my tastes incline much more toward the former.

I guess one could make the argument that BASS rarely includes sci-fi/fantasy works, but I don’t really buy it. It just emphasizes how ridiculous it is to have an anthology that allegedly encompasses an entire MEDIUM rather than a genre.

For example, and perhaps this is a wholly personal bias that I should seek to remedy, but my experience with “superhero comics” has done absolutely nothing for me, so if, for instance, I were to have picked up a BAC anthology when I was in High School (they didn’t exist then, but hypothetically) & flipped through it only to find that it was half filled with superheros, I would undoubtedly have set the anthology down. My aversion to superheros has more to do with machismo and ideas of power & control (and imperialism etc.) than anything related to talent or innovation as an illustrator, author, or designer. When I refer to a divide, it is a more thematic or ideological divide, it’s a shortcut.

My opinion of BA anthologies in general is not high in the respect that I don’t find them fascinating to read now, BUT I think they are a jumping off point and that they can be eye-opening. I’d like to believe I’m not being pompous when I assume that the general public is not aware of most of the people included in any of their anthologies, but perhaps most aware of the person they choose to edit each yearly collection. Alice Sebold is the editor of this year’s BA Short Stories, for god’s sake. Has anyone ever read a short story by Alice Sebold? Nope. They don’t exist. (I’m, of course, writing hyperbolically – as I’m sure she’s written and published short fiction, but am pretty sure no one who’s serious about short fiction as a form really cares, and I certainly don’t, not even enough to take the time to see if it exists).

In this series, I think the editor functions as the eye-catcher to a pretty wide audience, in the hopes that more people will pick up the book and expand their horizons. I know that’s how Best American Non-Required Reading worked for me. I was a freshman or so in college and I saw that that guy I liked, Dave Eggers, edited a collection of stuff he liked to read, and then I fell down the rabbit holes of George Saunders and Zyzzyva and Adrian Tomine.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that these series might not be as much for people who are knee-deep in culture/ counter-culture (which seems to be fast-becoming, if not already, popular culture), as it is for people who still hear ‘comics’ and think “X-Men” or possibly, the more enlightened ones, “Persepolis.” And it’s possible that these collections work in a similar way to the Grammy’s, (though I think BA is a few steps up from them) where I would be flabbergasted if anyone I knew who called themselves real music followers agreed that Taylor Swift had the best album of the year.

When I hear Charles Burns say, “For the most part, the artists in this book were already well known to me-that’s just the way it works; these days, if you’re a reasonably talented cartoonist, it’s hard to stay under the radar for long,” I hear him apologizing in a way. His job wasn’t to pick the up and comers, the people who were pretty awesome but still getting their sea-legs. His job was to pick the best. And he’s probably been buddies with most of the people in this collection for forever, and he’s probably sorry to all of the little proteges who he wishes he could have included but who aren’t the launchpads he’s looking for, who are two or three steps down the line. Maybe Charles Burns is smart enough to know that you need to read Art Spiegelman and Gilbert Hernandez and Chris Ware to orient yourself before you can appreciate the worlds of Grant Reynolds and Jeremy Tinder and Corinne Mucha. And maybe he’s also responding to the fact that when he started, his books had to sit next to Superman and, maybe if the bookstore was forward thinking, Sandman, and that was only if there was that one geeky guy on staff who was weirded out and charmed by a dude who buries bones in “Dog Days” or the religious fanaticism of “Burn Again” and snuck those titles into the weekly order.

Pretty sure it’s easier for comics artists now no matter how you cut it. Most bookstore have more “graphic novels” than they do comics anymore, for sure. And there’s a lot more design/ side-work available seeking a comic-aesthetic, rather than cartoon.

Charles Burns knows what he’s doing, and he knows what he was asked to do as an editor. He’s explaining where he’s coming from.

Not sure if I see the usefulness of the comics/comix distinction. Maybe it’s because, as a comics artist, I spend a lot time focusing on page composition when reading, and I think, for instance, there’s a lot of similarity between what Jack Kirby did and some of the work in Molotiu’s anthology. I think the similarity of compositional technique breaks down any barrier that might have been established by commercial dissemination or even cultural history.

Also, I’ve also considered a pretty striking degree of difference between comix & comics. Marvel, DC, and Vertigo would fall into the latter, whereas Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, and PictureBox would fall into the former. Neither is inherently better than the other, but they’re completely different “things” that just happen to be using similar methods (though in many cases the only similarities is that there are illustrations in both), and to combine them would be really too vague of a field. I’d rather the BAC series started taking on abstract comix than superhero comics.