Comic Booked presents our nominees and winner for Best Limited Series or One Shot for our best of 2011 awards.
As 2011 comes to a close, it’s safe to say that it has been a banner year for the comics industry and fans alike. Here at Comic Booked, we have always taken our comics pretty seriously, and after a stellar year of new material, we are pleased to present you with our awards for Best of 2011! For this year’s awards we asked each of our team members for their input and nominations to see who they thought were the best of the best in the comic book industry over the past year! After a few weeks of careful thought, consideration and deliberation, we’ve selected these titles as our choices for the best that 2011 had to offer!
While most comic book fans love their regular ongoing series, many also look forward to all of the limited series or one shots that feature our favorite characters in short or isolated stories outside of the main series. Others look forward to the limited run series featuring all new characters they can get to know! Each year, readers are treated to a whole plethora of great limited series and one shots, some of which end up being the best reading of the entire year! We’re here to honor those titles now with our award for Best Limited Series or One Shot of 2011! Without further delay, here are the nominees for Best Limited Series or One Shot!
- Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth. I can honestly say, I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my entire life while reading a comic book. The Axe Cop online comic series has always been great fun, but having it in print form like this from Dark Horse was just a real treat. If you’ve yet to read it, I’d recommend you get to your local shop to pick up all three issues or the trade equivalent as soon as possible. – Jordamus Prime
- Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love. Easily one of the best stories told this year being set both in the past and present and showing that even the best spy/assassin has people even she worries about. – Skott of Fables
- Orchid. A promising 12 issue limited from Rage against the Machine‘s Tom Morello had awesome written all over it! Set in a post apocalyptic totalitarian society with crazy mutated animals, this book is on a level I wouldn’t expect from many publishers.- Rob The Wrecker
- Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been churning out Criminal for five years now, and while I’ve always had a soft spot for their brutal noir tales, this year’s Criminal: The Last of the Innocent blew me away. A brilliantly bleak, true ‘you can’t go home again’ tale, it’s one that was more likely than any other Criminal storyline to resonate with the reader on a personal level, and coupled with a plethora of spot-the-reference nods to other comic books, the most engaging work from the pair to date.- Colin Bell
- Arkham City. Whatever your feelings on the game, I believe everyone is in agreement that the comic freaking rocked, and the art is amazing. – Nicole Sixx
- Flashpoint! It set the stage for the most successful reboot I have ever seen. – Jason Padua
- Deadlands one-shots. OK, I admit, I’m a bit biased because I’m familiar with the Deadlands tabletop RPG, but they were still fun stories. The best of these four one-shots set in an alternate old west was easily the one written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray of Jonah Hex fame. – Robert LeMoyne
- Batman Knight of Vengeance – The best of the Flashpoint minis. In an alternate world, it’s young Bruce Wayne who was gunned downed that night in Crime Alley, and his father, Thomas Wayne, who takes up the cape and cowl, with a slightly different mission. And of course where there is a Batman – there is a Joker. Who this Joker is will blow you away.- The Exile
- Pigs. Nate Cosby and Ben McCool managed to create an intriguing story of a cell of Cuban spies come to life in America. The artistic style is extremely well done, as if movie storyboards were placed sequentially. The dialogue is quick and witty, some of the best that I’ve read in a long time. The characters feel real as opposed to characters. – Michael Wirth
- One of the real shocks of the editorial lay-offs from Marvel was the loss of Jody LeHeup, who shepherded the excellent Strange Tales II to publication. This series featured the work of web-comics creators, (and indies) like Kate Beaton (Hark a Vagrant) and Nicholas Gurewitch (Perry Bible Fellowship) offering their takes on classic Marvel characters. Hilarious stuff, showing the wealth of comic talent that is not to be found on the shelves. -Emmet O’Cuana
Winner, Comic Booked’s Best Limited Series or One Shot of 2011-
Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth
Congratulations to Axe Cop: bad Guy Earth’s creative team of brother Malachi and Ethan Nicolle, as well as Dark Horse comics for being Comic Booked’s Best Limited Series or One Shot of 2011! A special congratulations also goes out to all of the other nominees for being some of the best titles available this year!
