Here are a Few of Our Favorite Things

As we finish off the year, our focus shifts to those annual lists that some folks do back at Thanksgiving, completely forgetting there's a whole month left in the year to panic read all those great books you didn't get around to yet or excellent December releases.

But time waits for no person, even if they didn't get to Rat Queens or that last DeForge book, so it's time to reveal our lists. This year, as of this writing, James has two lists to share across the last few days of 2014, which cover some of his favorite books and, in a rather innovative move that I might steal adapt for my own use next year, his favorite individual issues that held up on their own.

Meanwhile, I've restructured things a bit, so that I am now breaking things down by the topic within the comic instead of how it was made. I should be doing 3 total lists: Superheroes and their Amazing Friends (which returns slightly modified), Speculative Stories (the old Horror list, merged with Science Fiction and Fantasy) and Best of the Rest (which will cover everything else). Once upon a time, it might have made more sense to keep segregating mini-comics from webcomics or single issue material from graphic novels, but in this era of trade-waiting, anthologies that have a binding but share more in common with stapled minis, and the fact that webcomics often jump to print, I decided to revamp things. It's still all a blatant excuse not to cut down to 10 or 25 comics or decide if REDACTED is something I like a bit better than REDACTED by putting them on separate lists.

We'll also happily link you to Rob Kirby and Whit Taylor's lists, which they did elsewhere, as well as Guy Thomas'.

We hope you had a great 2014, and look forward to 2015 and all the great comics it will bring! There will be changes afoot for Panel Patter in the coming months, as we work to expand our coverage and become a destination for your indie (and under the radar) comics news and reviews!