I'd say "better late than never," but in my experience, like Gandalf, The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon is never late, nor is he early -- he posts his Best Comics of 2009 list precisely when he means to. And it's a good one, divided into sections on reprints, overlooked gems, books about comics, and your basic best books of the year. Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated, and Al Columbia's Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days comprise his top three.

I come away from the list thinking two things. First, from about his #7 choice up to Number One, that's a pretty brain-crushing line-up of major works; it's not difficult to picture a stretch of five years not yielding that kind of harvest. I mean, Josh Cotter's astonishing Driven by Lemons ranks only at #15 -- I ranked that book a lot higher on my own list, but that you can make reasonable arguments for that kind of placement given what else is out there speaks to the richness of the field right now.

Second and relatedly, Spurge wraps things up with a few paragraphs on books that didn't make the cut for whatever reason, one of them being simply not remembering them all. "It's a fantastic time for an art form when you can just forget about some of its quality works," he says, and I would agree.