Repost: Covering Cerebus

The Newsarama comics blog just put up a list of various critics' choices of the best comics criticism of 2007. One of those critics, Derik A. Badman, was kind enough to choose my eight-part series, Covering Cerebus, as his favorite. To celebrate this, I thought I'd repost links to the series for anyone who missed it.

You can read the Newsarama best-of list here. Derik has a list of his runner-ups here (including, yes, another Attempts entry, my piece on page four of City of Glass); Derik also posts his thoughts on the Newsarama post here.

If anyone already read the Cerebus series, and is looking for more comics criticism by me, I think my best work in this area are the twelve entries to date in my series on 100 Great Comics Pages. (Derik asked me in email if more are forthcoming; the answer is: yes, definitely; but probably not soon -- they take too long, and this is a busy semester for me.) I also have some thoughts on teaching graphic novels, in particular Howard Cruse's marvelous Stuck Rubber Baby, here.

Meanwhile, here are the links to my series, "Covering Cerebus":

Part One: In Which I Walk the Standard Line
Part Two: In Which We Get to the Good, Although Recommendation is Withheld
Part Three: In Which the Covers Are Used to Illustrate the Books
Part Four: In Which I Continue to Illustrate the Books with the Covers
Part Five: In Which Further Books Are Judged by Their Covers
Part Six: Books. Covers. Judgments. Further.
Part Seven: In Which Covers Are Discussed Apart From Their Contents
Part Eight: A Conclusion, in Which Recommendations Are At Last Made, with General Ruminations about the Nature of Love
Appendix: Cerebus Links

(Anyone looking for an abridged version can safely skip parts five through seven, and still have the rest make sense.)

Thanks, Derik! And everyone else -- Enjoy!