Best Indie Comics of 2014

While everyone is doing his Best Of 2013, I'll try to be original setting up a list of next year's most awaited comics. Obviously this is only a part of the new publications we're waiting for, since the indie scene is so lively and spontaneous that it's difficult to get big news. However, I hope you'll find some of these titles in 2014 lists. The comics are listed in random order.

1) Mould Map 3. It had to be the gem of late 2013 but for a slight typographic delay it'll be the anthology inaugurating 2014. As you can see from the opening picture, the printing is currently underway and will end on the 8th of January. So in some days we'll see this 224-pages book published by Landfill Editions and funded through Kickstarter, with comics by Sammy Harkham, Jonny Negron, Lala Albert, CF, Sam Alden and many others.

2) Megahex. Simon Hanselmann added himself as one of Mould Map contributors to support the Kickstarter campaign. In June Fantagraphics will publish his Megahex, the definitive collection (for now) of Megg, Mogg & Owl stories, in a handsome hardcover of more than 200 pages. For further details, you can read my Life Zone review.

3) Frontier. I'll talk briefly about Youth in Decline news here, since I'll dedicate as soon as possible a post to their series Frontier, which guests from time to time a different artist or cartoonist (Uno Moralez and Hellen Jo this year). For 2014 you can already subscribe to four new books: the artists involved will be Sascha Hommer, Ping Zhu, Sam Alden and Emily Carroll.

4) It Never Happened Again. After some online comics and self productions, Sam Alden, winner of last Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent, will debut for Uncivilized Books. The book, scheduled for spring, will include Hawaii 1997 and a new unpublished story. This will probably be a crucial year for Alden, since he'll publish also a collection of his online comic Haunter for Study Group, The Alpine Biologist for Floating World and Wicked Chicken Queen for Retrofit.

5) Ritual #3. I was very impressed by Malachi Ward's two issues of Ritual, so I'm waiting for the new one with curiosity. The third chapter is the flagship of Revival House Press schedule for 2014, where we'll find also other interesting projects, as Labyrinthectomy/Luncheonette by Chris Cilla.

6) š!. The Latvian anthology is an high-quality brand at the moment and I'm sure we'll find some of the best short stories of next year in the four books expected for 2014, beginning with #16 (Villages, March) e #17 (Sweet Romance, June). You can expect also 8 mini kuš!. I already talked about š! here.

7) Ant Colony & A Body Beneath. After the excellent Very Casual, Michael De Forge will come back with two new books. The first is the collection of the strip Ant Colony, already seen at Comic Arts Brooklyn, in bookstores in January for Drawn & Quarterly. The second will be released in May for another Canadian publisher, Koyama Press, and will collect the issues from 2 to 5 of the series Lose (this is my review of the latest issue). Koyama will publish also two other interesting books by Canadian authors, Safari Honeymoon by Jesse Jacobs and Distance Mover by Patrick Kyle.

8) Everywhere Antennas. This is another Canadian comic, still published by Drawn & Quarterly. After the beautiful Journal, originally in French and out this year in English, Julie Delporte comes back with Everywhere Antennas (you can find a preview here), a narrative work realized with the style of the previous book.

9) Sacred Prism. Every two months in Philadelphia Ian Harker prints a 16 pages comic-book by a different author. If the line-up of 2014 will be at the same level of what we've seen so far (Box Brown, Maré Odomo, Lala Albert, Benjamin Marra, Michael Olivo e Thomas Toye), I think Sacred Prism will reserve us big surprises. At the moment we only know there'll be follow-ups by Maré Odomo and Benjamin Marra.

10) Reprints and new editions. In 2014 Belgian talent Brecht Vandenbroucke will arrive in the American market with his White Cube (Drawn & Quarterly, here a preview). We hope the same for Italian Manuele Fior with his 5000 Kilometers Per Second (Fantagraphics), even if the book, originally scheduled this year, has been postponed, probably after the departure of Kim Thompson, who was curating the translation. Fantagraphics will also publish in August The Complete Eightball, the definitive collection of Daniel Clowes' series in an elegant slipcase containing two hardcover books, for a total of 454 pages and a price of 94.99 dollars.