The 2015 best comics omnibus marks the 10th anniversary of the series edited by Bill Kartalopoulos, and this time he manages to secure novelist and comics enthusiast Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude, Omega the Unknown) to curate the collection. Lethem, who admits his preference for " 'termite' comics... those that nibbled around the mainstream's edges," has brought together an eclectic mix, including excerpts from the highly regarded Jules Feiffer, comics journalist Joe Sacco and 2014 Eisner Award nominee Cole Closser.
Leading off the "guys [that] taught me what my parents' world was like" section are excerpts from Feiffer (Kill My Mother) and Roz Chast, whose Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? presents a painful first-person account of one daughter's grief and relief as Alzheimer's takes its unforgiving toll on her parents. Lethem's love for storytelling highlights some of the most thoughtful pieces in the collection. These include Julia Gfrörer's "Palm Ash" (a story, set in Roman times, of religious persecution and retribution for a secret baptism gone horrendously wrong) and Megan Kelso's "The Good Witch, 1947" (which spotlights a single mother's struggles after being fired from her postwar job). Lethem also nods to his reputation for genre bending with his three selections in Chapter 10's "Brainworms"; each one hovers on the precipice of weird and otherworldly, defying categorization and offering the greatest freak out potential.
Not all of Lethem's choices will resonate with readers, but the ones that do will provide considerable food for thought. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant