The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

For the latest in our annual Best of the Year selections today’s guest is a good friend of the blog, a noted indy comics creator and a well known figure on the UK comics scene where he is especially noted for his ability to entertain children and adults alike with his glove puppet show, as well as one of the UK indy creators who has been flying the Brit comics flag across the channel in la belle France, David Baillie:

FPI: Can you pick three comics/webcomics/graphic novels which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

David: Dave West and Marleen Lowe’s Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man was the best thing I picked up at Thought Bubble this year. Proof that the small press is beginning to outpace the mainstream comics guys, and that doing it for love can produce better comics than doing it for rent money!

Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ Unwritten is, I think, the finest comic Vertigo has put out in years – and I’m saying that as someone who generally likes their output. It feels like reading the sort of quirky and cool stuff that got me excited about the medium in the first place.

David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp was a game changer this year. Not only one of the most beautiful books published in recent memory but a wonderful piece of literature that you can be confident of handing to a Doubting Thomas, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be impressed. A novel of ideas is a rare thing, and a graphic novel of ideas even more extraordinary.

FPI: Can you pick three TV shows and/or movies which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

David: David: Charlie Kaufman’s Synechdoche, New York was more of a life changing experience than a film. If you haven’t seen it there’s nothing more to be said, and if you have seen it I don’t need to tell you anything.

Battlestar Galactica finished this year and split sci-fi geekdom right down the middle parting. I watched the finale in a penthouse artist’s studio in Paris with Dan Goodbrey and a couple of bottles of red. Afterwards, we bickered for an hour about what had actually happened. I’m scared to watch it again sober.

Up was proof that Pixar can do no wrong. Anyone who made it through the first fifteen minutes without crying is either a Cylon or dead. You choose.

FPI: Can you pick any books which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

David: I don’t think I read any books this year that were actually published this year. My favourite reads were the amazing Ted Chiang short story collection – Stories of Your Life. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road really impressed me as well, although I don’t think I really appreciated it until a month or so after it had sunk in. I read John Byrne’s Slab Boys Trilogy of plays and instantly starting mimicking his style, if that still counts as flattery. And I’m currently digging into the biography of Paul Erdos, who was the world’s only itinerant mathematician. It’s called The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and it’s much more fun than I’m making it sound.

FPI: How did 2009 go for you as a creator? Are you happy with the way you got your work out this year?

David: I kind of retired from comics this year. Not that anyone noticed. Last year’s 200 pages dwindled to a barely-alive 7. Part of that was down to a change in my personal life and the rest because I was waiting for the next evolutionary step in my work to present itself and it never really happened.

I’m over the moon with the Casita Variations installation project myself and Mr Goodbrey produced for the Avicenne Hospital in Paris, though. I also wrote some stuff for theatre and TV that, even though nothing was actually produced, did get shortlisted for a couple of awards and competitions.

Oh and I was very happy with the Kev Walker interview I conducted for Judge Dredd Megazine a couple of months ago.

FPI: What have we got to look forward to from you in 2010?

David: I’ve asked Mystic Meg and she hasn’t got back to me yet.

Personally I’m looking forward to the Necessary Monsters trade, the next Felix Castor novel, Iron Man 2 and Angouleme.

FPI: And one final, special question – since it’s not only the end of the year approaching but also the end of the decade, is there any comics work you’d especially pick out as one of the best you’ve read this decade?

David: Everything Chris Ware touched. 100 Bullets and Y The Last Man. Marvel’s X-Statix. Fred the Clown. Casanova. Asterios. If I had to pick one it’d be from that list. I think it’s been an amazing decade for comics and we’re lucky to be alive to read it all.