The Best American Comics 2013

Acclaimed cartoonist Smith (Bone, RASL) collects 30 pieces in this year’s anthology, and his taste crosses plenty of genres: Alison Bechdel, a former editor of the collection, has a heart-wrenching excerpt from her memoir Are You My Mother?; in another space-time entirely, a lost time traveler ponders Star Trek episodes while wandering in dinosaur country in Malachi Ward’s brilliantly funny “Top Five.” A scene from Craig Thompson’s Habibi reveals the plight of a woman forced into a sultan’s harem, and a young giant hunter confronts her scariest challenge—going it alone after her friends realize she has lied to them—in the kid-friendly fantasy Giants Beware, by newcomer duo Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado. Artistically, Sam Alden’s work on the wordless The Haunter and Joseph Lambert’s Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller are standouts. The cartoonists included show plenty of gender diversity—women make up over a third of the total creators—but there is less racial diversity in evidence. The current narrative strength of the comics medium gets a solid showcase in this year’s volume, which should inspire much further reading. (Oct.)