Best of 2011 by Josh Bayer

The books and albums in the top position would be Fred Blassie's 2004 biography favorite album would be Thalia Zedeck's 2008 album Liars and Prayers. I don't feel like this is totally a failure on my part to be current. It takes time to properly embrace immensely great stuff sometimes.

The absolute best thing that happened this year was discovering a new level of inclusion in the alt-comics community. So many people I respect were bending over backward to open up their hands in friendship and equality towards me. Raymond Pettibon, Brian Ralph, James Kochalka, these people are high up in the stratosphere and they were all supporting me in ways that I never would have imagined when I was hanging around parking lots in Columbus Ohio drinking Slurpees, listening to Hard Volume on a walkman, watching everyone I wanted to be friends with cross the street to get away from me.

13.Thalia Zedeck's Liars and Prayers
How did it take me 4 years to understand how great this record is?

12. Getting hired at Brooklyn's Third Ward.
I cry whenever I get a new job. I'm the luckiest person on Earth to do this for a living.

11. To Be The Man-Ric Flair

10. Listen Up you Pencil Necked Geeks-Fred Blassie

9. Steven Bissette's Teen Angels and New Mutants

8. Grant Morrison's Supergods

7. The Weird World Of Blowfly, the Movie
My (late) friend Jeremy used to put songs from"Blowfly's Zodiac" on mix tapes for me. I thought they sucked but Blowfly's longevity has worked its charm on me. As Blowfly has gotten older his voice sounds like John Brannon's, both an indestructible object and an irresistible force. When someone does art that is so fucked, for a few minutes, it absorbs all of your attention, and maybe some of your disgust and anger and you can almost forget how fucked and disgusting the world is outside.

6. OFF! First Four Ep's

5. Seeing Joan Jett and The Black Hearts for Free in Coney Island.
This was rad as all-get-out, one of the 15 best rock shows I've ever seen. I have listened to Joan Jett over and over and over. Sad that I'll never get to see her do some of my personal favorite songs (will she ever do racks from Pure and Simple?), but still, I could not have been happier with this show. She put a lot of passion into some of her more obscure songs, and delivered all the hits that you know she's way tired of playing with a respectable professionalism. Nothing will ever stop her.

4. Seeing Black Rainbow and The Home wreckers at ABCnORIO with Joaquin. and seeing X at Irving Plaza with Gabrielle Shelton. My two oldest friends on earth.


3. Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

2. Being invited to be a part of Box Brown's Retrofit Comics imprint.

1. Suspect Device the Comic
This year I discovered that If I ask fifty or sixty artists, all of whom I have intense admiration for, to contribute new comics for no money, almost all of them will do it, and that most of them thank me for the opportunity. Its really really insane.