My top five D+Q books

Well, it's not really my top five. What am I a sucker? I'm not even going to get into that game of playing favorites. Let's call this my top five list of books that I think are worth getting that weren't on the lists compiled by the readers of The Comics Reporter. I was involved as designer or editor or something on all these titles and they all still surprise me and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that so many people could make so many great lists and leave these titles off:

1. Red Colored Elegy Seiichi Hayashi
(I really love this comic so much. I think it's perfect and the fact that I had been reading comics for so long and a book like this could come along and get me so excited about the form still amazes me. And it was done at a time when everyone else was still doing comics about sending naked ladies into space or trying to score some kef. Also, design-wise, head and tail bands are different colors (WHAT?!?!) and check out that "invisi-band" on the back.)

2. Hot Potatoe Marc Bell
(While putting this book together Marc Bell and I often referred to it as his tombstone. I honestly don't think there's a better cartoonist/illustrator/fine-artist monograph out there. Oh, how I wish we could have afforded the sound chip that would've said "Ewww Gahd!" everytime you opened the book on top of the wraparound sticker that you still haven't removed from your copy.)

3. Haunted Philippe Dupuy
(Don't we need more middle-aged man mid-life crisis comics out there? Sure we do. Philippe's cartooning in this book is so great, so loosey-goosey. He just follows his whims and it works and works.)

4. Oh Skinnay! Clare Briggs
(Not only does this book have one of Jeet Heer's best comics essays of his career but it also is an amazing document of a time long gone and a style of cartooning that has long fallen out of fashion. Someday I hope we'll be able to do a best of from the seven-volume Briggs Memorial box set.)

5. Talking Lines R. O. Blechman
(Oh, comics, you weird world where some hacks are revered like gods and geniuses are ignored. Honest to god, this is an amazing body of work that first saw print in major national publications so why do we need to talk about it. Well, we need to talk about it because it's everything we hold dear in comics--personal, funny, wise, and on and on. Also, design-wise, I totally got to use a vinyl cover. When will I get to do that again? And the cover art wraps onto the endpapers! Amazing.)

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