PW's The Year in Graphic Novels

The Dec. 6 edition of Publishers Weekly will feature the magazine's annual The Year in Books. But thanks to Calvin Reid, you can see the staff's choices for the best graphic novels of 2004 right here, right now (to quote Fatboy Slim ... or Jesus Jones):

The year in Graphic Novels:

Bookstore sales of graphic novels grow unabated with manga leading every category in sales. Manga houses Tokyopop and Viz released a record number of titles, while DC Comics and Marvel add manga to their lists. Traditional publishers (Scholastic, Holt and Penguin) launched comics imprints. And once again comics -- Charles Schulz's Peanuts collections and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers -- made the PW bestseller list.

The Year in Books: Graphic Novels

The Complete Bone by Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books)
A 1300 page single-volume edition of this delightful fantasy adventure about a group of cartoon cousins lost in a fairytale valley.

Locas by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)
Masterful stories about the lovers Maggie, girl mechanic, and Hopey, punkchick troublemaker, in the midst of the 1980s Southern California Chicano-youth and punk rock scene.

Age of Bronze: Sacrifice by Eric Shanower (Image)
Shanowers's masterpiece about the Trojan War continues with Helen's arrival in Troy and Kassandra's prediction of impending death and doom.

In The Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon)
The story of his family's 9/11 ordeal, outrage over the march to war and the history of the American newspaper comic strip.

Tokyo Tribes by Santa Inoue (Tokyopop)
Two former high school buddies, now in rival gangs, are at the center of a brutal murder in this hip-hop-influenced manga about Japanese gangbangers.

Hikaru No Go by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata (Viz)
The ancient Japanese game of Go comes vividly to life after sixth grader Hikaru Shindo accidently awakens the elegant ghost of a beautiful, 12th century Go-master.

The Filth by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston (DC/Vertigo)
A psychedelic science fiction adventure that pits humanity's need to dream against a backdrop of communist monkey assassins, giant city-states and perverted supermen.

Clyde Fans, Vol. 1 by Seth (Drawn & Quarterly)
A dying fan business in a small town in Canada is the setting as two very different brothers play out lives of quiet desperation.