[thesurrealari]

The New York Public Library recently came out with its top 100 books published in 2021.

There were a number of graphic novels on the list, including one from one of my favorite current comics writers, Jeff LeMire (it’s a Barbelian book from his Black Hammer universe; I have not read it yet).

The complete list can be found here:

https://www.nypl.org/spotlight/best-books-2021

[buddyscalera]

Here is a direct link to the adult-level comics:

https://www.nypl.org/books-more/recommendations/best-books/adults?year=2021&f%5B0%5D=terms%3AComics

What’s crazy is how few of these I have even heard of. Why don’t we hear more about these independently published titles?

Tagging @thesurrealari @maryamsmarkers @andy-seabert @comic-book-advocates-com @evan-scale

[thesurrealari]

I think there are a number of factors:

The first being that Librarians are awesome and its their job to find cool books which might not be getting the pub they deserve and put them on lists like this.

Second, though, I imagine it matters what circles you run in. There are some books from traditional big indies, like Image and Dark Horse on there (and I was aware of the Barbelian book because my LCS owner turned me on to Lemire’s indie stuff), but there were books on there that wouldn’t be highlighted at a comics shop. Random House had a book there. They cater to a more traditional book store audience, not a comics audience, as well as a university press book, which would be a different audience entirely.

I also noticed some foreign titles on there (Humanoids, for example), so they are bringing together books from many different worlds.