Since it may well have been lost in the shuffle over the Christmas period – especially as we posted with uncharacteristic frequency during the same time – we thought we might as well give a quick reminder that we’re looking for comments to include in the next episode of our Graphic Novel Book Club podcast.

For the uninitiated, GNBC is our online comics reading group, in which every month (or so) we set a chosen book and five discussion points, and invite our readers/listeners to join us in reading (or re-reading) the book and talking about it afterwards. You can email in your comments, and we’ll read a selection out in among our own discussion.

If you want to catch up on previous episodes, we’ve so far discussed The Unwritten, Ultimate Spider-Man, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century and The Walking Dead. You can also subscribe on iTunes or Podomatic, just to ensure you NEVER EVER MISS ONE.

And if you’re interested in contributing to the next episode, we’re looking at the 2004 DC miniseries Superman: Secret Identity, by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen. Although the original TPB is out of print, the four issues have been reprinted recently by DC in a pair of 96-page omnibus editions – and the whole thing is also available on Comixology. It’s also, in case you’ve never heard of it, very very very very very good indeed. If you’re interested in giving it a whirl – or if you’ve already read it – and want to join in with the discussion, here are our five pre-set topics:

1. Is this a story about superheroes, or a story about ordinary people told with the trappings of the superhero genre?

2. Ostensibly, the book pitches as a “superheroes-in-the-real-world” story. How much does this actually hold true, and how does it compare to other entries in the genre? Does Clark’s world feel like the real world, or is it actually as fictional as the DC Universe?

3. As an exploration of the character and ethos, how does this compare with other “definitive” Superman stories?

4. Does Lois work as an analogue for Lois Lane, or does she serve a different role in the story?

5. How well might this concept translate to other characters, especially in light of the announced plans for a thematic sequel about Batman?

You can either leave your answers as a reply to this post (or elsewhere on the web) – or, if you want to keep ‘em quiet until broadcast, simply email us at gnbc@alternatecover.com. Don’t feel bound by those questions, either – feel free to send us any comments, criticism or analysis on the book that comes to mind. We’re looking to record the episode on or around 24th January, so please try and have any contributions in by then.

Ultimate Spider-Man is a great comic. It’s been a great comic for over ten years, now. But is it a comic that we’d ever have thought might make the top of our “Best of the Year” list? Possibly not – because, as good as it is, it’s always been a comic that’s just there - solidly excellent every month, but never really standing out.

But in 2011, it stood out. Boy, did it stand out.

Of course, the book’s year can be divided into two distinct segments – and it would be remiss not to look at the final months of Peter Parker first, since although it’s largely for the Miles Morales issues (to which we’ll come shortly) that this has made the top spot, it’s fair to say that even before then, the book was one of the best superhero reads out there. The tail end of the Black Cat/Mysterio arc was perhaps the only slightly disappointing part of the book’s run this year – as much as I liked the new Ultimate version of Mysterio, the story surrounding the Kingpin’s magical macguffin thingy didn’t really feel like the sort of thing a Spider-Man book should be doing, and had an unsatisfying resolution (I’m hoping, mind, that having escaped without us learning anything at all about him, old smokey-head will become an adversary for the new Spidey in times to come).

At this point, the comics had a “Death of Spider-Man: Prelude” banner on them. But even at this point, I don’t think the majority of us really believed that Peter was going to be killed off (for what it’s worth, my prediction was that he was going to kill Norman Osborn, and in guilt give up his Spider-Man identity for a while before reinventing himself/coming back). What this means is that although at the time the Chris Samnee-drawn issue #155 felt like a pleasant interlude, in retrospect it’s entirely heartbreaking. Here we find Peter on the up, for the first time in a while – making peace with J. Jonah Jameson, getting sweet new webshooters designed by Tony Stark, and finally getting back together with Mary Jane. At the time, it seemed like the start of a brand new era – and maybe it was Brian Bendis’ intent that we’d think that. In fact, as it turned out, it was a cruel tease of what might have been, but served instead as his last moment of true happiness.

In retrospect, the execution of the Death of Spider-Man arc – from a publishing point of view – wasn’t as good as it could have been. The main problem is that fully half of the story played out in a different book entirely – Marvel having been swayed by the PR move of having Mark Millar involved in a big event story again – but fortunately, barely any of the Avengers vs New Ultimates material was actually all that relevant to Peter. In fact, since it’s really two stories running parallel, you can ignore the irritating scrap between other heroes (aside from the fact that it is kind of handy to know just why Peter gets shot at the moment he does) and instead follow Ultimate Spider-Man‘s story of Norman Osborn and the Sinister Six’s final revenge on Peter.

Although it does suffer slightly from some pacing issues (the middle few chapters are a little samey), it’s nevertheless a story packed with a growing sense of menace, and a number of twists and turns (the sudden death of Dr Octopus is almost as shocking as the events of the final issue). And while it’s a little odd seeing Mark Bagley back on the book after all this time, the work is strong, and it’s hard to argue (as good as the artists that followed him have been) that it was entirely appropriate that he should return to draw the character’s final bow. The last issue, #160, is suitably dramatic, and gives Peter a fantastic final “hero moment” – it’s only a shame, again from a publishing perspective, that it ends so abruptly with the moment of his death, and that the subsequent (and highly emotionally-charged) funeral sequence would take place in the separate Ultimate Fallout miniseries. But this is nitpicking, and not reflective of the quality of the story itself – which was just as high as you’d expect throughout.

So, then, ended the Ultimate Peter Parker era. And as much as many of us trusted Bendis on this book, there was a healthy amount of concern come September over whether or not putting an entirely new character behind the mask and webs could ever work. Fortunately, it only took the first issue to blow that scepticism out of the water – because as it turns out, the relaunched Ultimate Spider-Man is nothing short of magnificent. In the five issues released this year, we’ve been treated to a full and involving origin story that has simply been a delight from page one.

Some may have complained that it took as many as those five issues just to get Miles Morales into the costume that we kept seeing on the covers – but the character himself is so engaging, and the world around him has been built so well, that I honestly didn’t even notice over the first few issues that the book was lacking the simple detail of him actually being, you know, Spider-Man. If anything, the manner in which he comes to take on the costume, at the end of issue five, is so satisfying that I’d say ultimately it was worth the wait anyway.

The true masterstoke on Bendis’ part has been in understanding exactly what a “legacy hero”, if they’re ever to exist, should be. They should be entirely new and original in their own right, while still having a justifiable reason to have the name of the original character slapped on the front cover of their book. Ultimate Spider-Man achieves this perfectly. The setup around Miles is drastically different from that of Peter, from his family circumstances to his friends to his personality. He’s been fantastically well-established in such a short space of time that he feels like he’s been around for a while – but he’s as far as can be from just being a retread of Peter. And yet everything that the comic is about is so instantly, recognisably and perfectly what a Spider-Man comic should represent. And scenes like the beautiful tenement fire rescue sequence in issue #3 are just pure, perfect, inspiring superhero comics.

As regular Alternate Cover readers will know, myself and James are about as die-hard a pair of Spidey fans as you’re likely to find. So we’re exactly the sort of comics reader who might have been outraged at the replacement of Peter Parker. But Miles Morales is not only a brilliant, likeable, heroic character – he’s exactly the kind of guy who should be allowed to call himself a Spider-Man. The emergence of this fantastic new character, coupled with the expert craft and storytelling of both Bendis and the increasingly-stratospheric Sara Pichelli, mean that Ultimate Spider-Man isn’t just an unmissable comic – it’s a comic that actively brings a huge sense of joy every time an issue comes out. And that’s why, after over a decade of consistent high quality, it’s actually reached its highest ever point this year – and marked itself out as our undisputed favourite comic of 2011 in the process.

We’re pretty wary of putting comics on our “best of” list when they’ve only released a few issues in a year. For us, “best” doesn’t just mean technically outstanding and original, it’s also a measurement of entertainment value as spread over 12 months – and if a series is late, absent or slow, that counts against it. It’s why the otherwise brilliant Avengers: Children’s Crusade didn’t make the cut, for example, or why we felt it too early to put Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men on the list separately.

The thing about Casanova is that in only two issues, it’s managed to do more than some comics manage in a lifetime – not just in terms of technical skill, but in its tapestry of concepts, characters and plots. Written by Matt Fraction and drawn, in this instance, by Gabriel Ba, the best compliment I can offer Casanova is to say that it’s truly a comics-readers’ comic. It panders to no-one, dares you to keep up with it, doesn’t look back if you fall behind. At a time when the world’s creative industries are obsessed with providing accessible material with as much popular appeal as possible, it’s refreshing to find a creative team willing to treat its audience as if they’re as intelligent and enthusiastic as they are.

It’s tough to decide what the real strength of Casanova is. Its pace and density. Its originality. Its humour. If I had to pin down the one thing about Avaritia that gave me most pleasure, it would be the meticulous control of the comic’s tempo. Where some writer-artist teams get you raving about a fantastic spread or plot twist, this one excites you with details as minute as a page transition. Turning from a 20-panel action sequence set in 16 different realities where universes die in the gutters, to a languid post-coital splash. It’s the kind of reckless gear change that should make a story flip over itself, turn into a fireball and skid roof-first across the tarmac. But somehow, it doesn’t.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Casanova: Avaritia is that in a year where Fraction’s Marvel output has ranged from “disappointingly pedestrian” to “complete misfire”, it somehow manages to be the absolute best work of his career. We could speculate why, but the fact remains that we saw two Matt Fractions in 2011. The writer of Fear Itself, Thor and Iron Man, a reasonably good creator struggling to live up to even those mild terms, and the writer of Casanova: Avaritia, an absolute genius deserving of mention alongside the likes of Morrison, Ellis and Gaiman.

If I were a professional comics writer, I’d utterly hate Casanova, if only because every issue would make me think “great, another brilliant storytelling device that I’d never have thought of, and which I can’t use for another decade without looking like a cheap imitation.” As a reader, I’m just happy to see those ideas put down once. It’s really only being kept off the top spot by the technicality of having delivered only 2 issues in 12 months – but the fact that merely the first half of the third arc is enough to make us call it one of the best reads of 2011 should tell you how strongly we both feel about this comic. Outstanding stuff.

Following our not-in-any-particular order entries, James and I have each chosen a “runner-up” comic of the year. Here’s mine, and James’ will follow tomorrow before we post our unanimous choice for the number one.

I’m always wary of comics that I’d describe as, for want of a better phrase, “broadsheet fodder”. You know the kind. They’re all very worthy, are probably rooted in some kind of family issues and/or trauma on the author’s part, and are usually technically very excellent but don’t always make for the most entertaining of reads. And they’re usually published by Jonathan Cape.

When it first appeared on my radar, I took Nelson to be one of those. As worthy a project as it seemed, I wasn’t sure if it would be something I’d be desperate to read. Fortunately, the reason it first appeared on my radar was that Gosh! Comics were giving away a limited edition signed Frank Quitely bookplate with it. That, coupled with the discovery that all proceeds were to go to Shelter – an organisation I’ve got a particular affinity for myself – was enough to guarantee that I’d buy it no matter what.

Fortunately, my initial writing-off of it as something of curious interest from a comics-as-form point of view, but not necessarily a fascinating story, were way off the mark. Because Nelson is brilliant – a spectacular collaboration that shows the British comics community at its most lively and imaginative.

If you don’t know the concept, it’s this: a 250-page anthology by some of the best of (both established and up-and-coming) British comics talent, telling not 54 individual stories, but 54 chapters of the same story. Each individual vignette – ranging from one to five pages each – covers a single day in the life of Nel, from her birth in 1968 (or actually, to be pedantic, from her conception in 1967) to the present day in 2011. We check in with her year-on-year (although not on the same day each year – and there are slightly more stories than years, so some are doubled-up on), through assorted ups and downs. Sometimes the chapters mirror the social context of the time (as you can imagine, the 1980s pages are especially good for this), sometimes they’re closer and more deeply personal. In fact, there’s a dazzling array of storytelling and artistic styles on display – no chapter ever feels like the one before or after it.

And yet despite this – and here’s the big surprise – it hangs together astonishingly well as a narrative in its own right. Whether it’s down to the careful editorial hand of Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix – names I previously knew mainly from work on Roy of the Rovers and Sonic the Comic respectively, but who will deserve any and all plaudits that come their way for putting this thing together – or simply that each successive writer/artist paid due care and attention to what had gone before them, or a combination of both, I couldn’t say. But this doesn’t feel like an anthology in which fifty-odd creators do their own thing and work at cross purposes – it feels like one solid, coherent story. The character of Nel, in particular, is consistent throughout – and while, of course, each creator chooses their own angle to focus on, there are a number of themes and developments that run through the book, as if laid out by its curators from the start.

To pick out individual chapters is perhaps futile, as none of them are technically poor in any way whatsoever, and it’s more a matter of which aspects of the story tend to strike a chord with the particular reader. Nevertheless, I did find a little more joy in the early part of the book – all of the creators called upon to portray Nel as a child do so with an expert hand, and the narrative strand of Nel having her dead brother Sonny as an imaginary friend is one of the more intriguing and touching. Of this section, Jamie Smart’s 1971 two-pager is a particular delight – cute and hilarious by equal measure.

In the second half, the highlights are generally more from a visual point of view – not that there’s anything wrong with the story, but Nel ends up settling into perhaps a slightly more normal life than might have been expected from the earlier chapters. It means that as we follow her through the ups and downs of assorted relationships, the tone is usually more reflective than dramatic – and surprisingly free of “issue”-led moments (although perhaps the only major nod to the charity that benefits from the book’s profits comes in Jon McNaught’s sombre and quiet 1993 chapter – a rare shift of focus onto another character told in a very Chris Ware-esque style). Generally, again, the artistic judgements are likely a matter of personal taste, but I especially enjoyed Kate Brown (rude and hilarious),   Will Morris (a gorgeously-coloured tale of LARPing) and Roger Langridge (er… Roger Langridge).

Even if it weren’t as good a read, or as well-constructed, as it is, Nelson would still be one of 2011′s mandatory reads, purely for the uniqueness of the experiment. That the experiment is a successful one means it’s genuinely one of the best comics of the year – and one that every single creator involved in it, without exception, should be proud to have on their CVs.

If you had told me last year that Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force would soon rival the best X-Men comics ever produced, I admit, I’d have been skeptical. Prior to his arrival on the series, Remender’s work hadn’t really clicked with me. Although it was clear from the first issue that his X-Force run was going to be good, it wasn’t until issue #4, released in January this year, that people started to realise we were reading something very special indeed.

Uncanny X-Force’s year is defined, of course, by the 8-issue Dark Angel Saga. Named (in what seemed like hubris) for the Dark Phoenix Saga, it follows Angel’s descent into madness as his Apocalypse-created “Archangel” persona claws its way to the surface of his psyche. When he finally tips into world-ending megalomania, it falls to X-Force to stop him. Which they do (of course) – but not without great cost.

The story of love torn apart by power out of control may seem similar to the Dark Phoenix Saga, but even if that’s true the results are every bit as affecting and epic as the original. We have witnessed defining moments for the likes of Psylocke, Fantomex and Angel, and at the same time, we’ve been reminded of how great superhero comics can be. When I reviewed the finale of the storyline at CBR, I said the following:

Although it says “X-Force” on the cover, this is clearly Psylocke and Angel’s story. It’s love and death, as transcendent and epic as it can be. When the final blow is struck, the moment is heartbreaking, beautiful and euphoric in the way all the best death scenes are. And then it’s unexpectedly heartbreaking all over again. The final page? Nothing short of a technical masterpiece in its own right. Artist and writer in perfect unison.

There’s no part of this issue that can be called half-hearted or unsuccessful. Even praising its dialogue, its visuals, its plotting, comes across as an inadequate deconstruction. While these elements are all superb in their own right, it’s a comic that’s vastly more than the sum of its parts. When you put it down, you won’t be remembering how great Deathlok’s lines were, or the plot twist Fantomex unveils, or even how well Opena and Ribic drew every page. You’ll come away from it feeling emotionally bruised, with a hole only the next part of the story can fill.

In many ways, it’s tempting to end a review like this by claiming that the story is so good, it has transcended its genre, as if superhero comics can’t really work this well without being something else. But what are superhero comics for, if not this? They’re modern myths, playing out classical themes on a grander stage than our own world allows. Characters living, loving , and dying for our entertainment, showing us truths about our own lives.

There was one further point I didn’t find room for, though, and that’s how part of Uncanny X-Force’s success is due to the dialogue it had with its fans. It managed to be fan-servicing without compromising on its content. The Dark Angel Saga didn’t just tell a self-contained story; it was built on old ones. Remender weaved those continuty threads (the Age of Apocalypse, the Horsemen, Archangel’s various transformations, Weapon Plus…) in ways that supported and expanded the narrative, rather than limiting it.

The truth is that in superhero comics, readers want to see a little of something familiar. Something that respects the stories that came before, and ties this new one to them. After all, if we weren’t nostalgists, we probably wouldn’t be reading superhero comics at all. Perhaps this is why the San Francisco era of X-Men had such a hard time generating excitement – it’s too different, too new, too detached from everything prior to it. Remender found a way to tell a new story, supported by the framework that was already in place. And that, alongside everything else, was what made Uncanny X-Force one of the best comics of the year.

It seems a little odd to preface discussion of one of the best comics of the year by saying it was a bit of a disappointment, but I’m going to do it anyway: The New York Five was one of the best comics of the year, but it was also a bit of a disappointment.

Not from a technical point of view, of course. This is Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, one of those rare but thrilling writer/artist combos who are brilliant enough individually, but exponentially better as a pair. On Wood’s part, the dialogue and character work are as strong as in the original New York Four book, while Kelly makes himself arguably the greater draw with absolutely faultless work throughout. In particular, some of his full-page splashes are exquisite, with a superb level of detail and his trademark depth of character and expression. Irrespective of what goes on in its pages, here is a comic that confirms Kelly’s status as one of the utmost finest artists currently working in the field, and it continues to be a travesty that he’s not getting more in the way of high-profile work.

It’s clearly, then, a brilliantly crafted comic. So, why also a disappointment? Well, regular readers may recall that when I discovered the original series around this time last year, I wrote that the main flaw in the book was that it seemed to be setting up plot strands that weren’t fully dealt with, and that the other lead characters besides Riley hadn’t really been given enough page time. The latter problem is rectified to an extent – at least in terms of percentage, there’s a much more even split. But four issues-worth of Vertigo-length issue simply doesn’t feel like enough space to fully explore the characters – and so, although a number of intertwining plots are going on in New York Five, much as in the original run they don’t feel like they’ve been “done” to the fullest extent.

And worse, unlike New York Four, there’s no promise of follow-up entries in the series. This series is firmly and definitively an ending – and yet it doesn’t feel at the outset like that’s where it was heading. We do learn a little more about each of the girls – with the possible exception of Riley – and yet it feels like all of their stories are hurried to a conclusion. No more so than in the case of Olive, the character who expands the group to “five” – we’ve barely learned anything about her before it transpires that the role she’s to play in the story is to have her death have a sobering effect on the others. But other strands feel underdeveloped, too – Ren’s pregnancy story seems to leap from “becoming pregnant” to “falling out with boyfriend”, and feels like it could have had a lot more in the way of twists and turns. Lona’s stalking plot, meanwhile, peters out without ever actually hitting the expected climax. And am I the only person who expected there to be a bit more of an eventual point to the psych evaluation sessions beyond exposition?

Perhaps I’m at fault for having the expectation that the story was going to be about four girls’ relationships with one-another throughout their college life – as it turns out that, all along, the story was about a fleeting group relationship over the course of a single year. Or perhaps it’s deliberate on Wood’s part – the fact that the rug is pulled out from under the reader serving as an analogy for the fact that we never expect those first college friendships to be as short-lived as they invariably are. But it does feel like he had a lot more to say, both about these characters and about the city for whom the book also served as an alternative tourist’s guide – and I can’t help but wonder if, either from a publishing point of view or due to some manner of losing interest, New York Five was truncated from its original conception.

Then again, if the main disappointment about a series is that there isn’t enough of it, it speaks volumes for its overall quality. Despite feeling a little unsatisfying at times, The New York Five was still involving, moving and superbly-crafted. It might be almost by default that Wood and Kelly were able to produce one of the standout comics of the year – but they still managed to do so.