Hugo 2014: Best Graphic Story
Given the thousands of comics and graphics novels published every year, not to mention web comics, it’s really surprising the nominees weren’t better. I suspect there’s a strong aversion to including any superhero comics in the group. There’s no other way to explain their complete absence from the nominees, especially given that any midlist mainstream Marvel/DC title is the equal of all but one of the nominees.
The good news is that there’s a clear winner here. “Time†by Randall Munroe (XKCD) is easily the most original and interesting of the batch. Give yourself an hour and go watch it.
Saga, Volume 2, is readable and fun; in a comics sort of way; but hardly great SF. It’s what TV SF would be if it didn’t have to worry abut a special effects budget. It’s worth the hour or so it takes to read it, but it’s not going to change your world.
The Meathouse Man is just gross, and maybe that’s the point; but this sort of horror is, IMHO, better done as text fiction than in pictures. Not bad, but hardly best of the year material.
“The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who” is flat out bad. Perhaps it got in because it was the best Doctor Who comic published all year, and Who fans stuffed the ballot box. Doctor Who comics have never been go0od. Some series just don’t make the transition from screen to comics page well, and Doctor Who is one of them.
“Girl Genius, Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne & The Sleeping City” I also found to be unreadable. Maybe it makes sense if you’ve read volumes 1-12, but it made no sense to me.
