While I really, really hate the year-end wrap up thing...

Alan David Doane does one that's fucking brilliant. Not only does Alan provide his "best of" list for the year (including this note on Eightball #23: "All right, my review of this issue was a little over the top, arctic shitknife and all. Forgive me for being a little excited, great comics just have that effect on me."), but he talks to a variety of comics-related people to get their thoughts on the year that was (and technically, still is) 2004, including Eric Reynolds, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Tom Spurgeon, Chris Butcher, Shawn Hoke, Jim Rugg, Brent Warnock, Rob Vollmar, Jason Marcy, Dirk Deppey and Chris Allen. I'd provide some comment on it, but it would be a lot of "yes, yes, I agree," so that would be a waste of time. And yes, that goes to show that Chris Allen is right, in this roundtable, when he says "there's a little too much of THIS guy's comments about THAT guy's comments about THIS meaningless hype item rather than a lot of serious discussion about important issues. That's hard to do when you're geared towards instant, daily commentary rather than giving longer thought to a topic before responding."

If you read one year-end wrap up, make it this one.