Revisiting the Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List

Everyone remembers the Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List, right? It combined 145 different "best comics of the year" lists, written by reviewers and critics across the internet, into a single list of the top comic books of the year. I've been wanting to reveal more about the data that I collected, so let's return to the Meta-List one more time.

Previously, I assigned points to each book based on the rankings that each individual "best of" list gave to the book.  Thus, a book that was listed as the third best book by one reviewer would get more points than a book listed as the fourth best book by that reviewer.  After adding up all of the points for each book from each individual list, I compiled them into the Meta-List.

Below, I've now listed the number of times each book showed up on one of the 145 individual lists.  I've kept the books in the same order that they were in after applying the weighting methodology, so that you can see how the methodology affected the rankings.  For example, Ken Dahl's Monsters appeared on 19 lists, while Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's Detective Comics appeared on 24 lists, but Monsters was ranked ahead of Detective Comics because it was ranked in higher positions on the lists that it did appear, and thus received more points.

Note that I only looked at the 100 comics that had already made it onto the meta-list, so if comic #101 actually appeared on more individual lists than comic #100, comic #101 still wouldn't show up here.

Hopefully people will find this interesting, if only because: (1) it reaffirms that Asterios Polyp utterly dominated the year; and (2) it reveals that if a book appears on only a couple of individual lists, but those lists are short and rank the book in their number 1 slots, the book has a shot at making the meta-list.

Here is the list:

Rank	Title	Lists
1	Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli	65
2	Parker: The Hunter, by Darwyn Cooke	32
3	Pluto, by Naoki Urasawa	27
4	George Sprott: 1894-1975, by Seth	24
5	Monsters, by Ken Dahl	19
6	Detective Comics, by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III	24
7	A Drifting Life, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi	24
8	The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by Robert Crumb	17
9	Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, by Bryan Lee O'Malley	21
10	Stitches, by David Small	19
11	Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera	16
12	The Photographer, by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefevre	15
13	Batman and Robin, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely	20
14	You'll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man, by Carol Tyler	15
15	Chew, by John Layman and Rob Guillory	16
16	A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, by Josh Neufeld	11
17	Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days, by Al Columbia	10
18	The Mourning Star vol. 2, by Kazmir Strzepek	7
19	Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco	11
20	Johnny Hiro, by Fred Chao	8
21	20th Century Boys, by Naoki Urasawa	10
22	Tales Designed to Thrizzle, by Michael Kupperman	10
23	Driven by Lemons, by Joshua Cotter	10
24	The Complete Jack Survives, by Jerry Moriarty	7
25	3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, by Matt Kindt	8
26	Masterpiece Comics, by R. Sikoryak	9
27	Far Arden, by Kevin Cannon	7
28	Wednesday Comics, by various	14
29	I Kill Giants, by Joe Kelly and J.M. Ken Niimura	8
30	All Star Superman vol. 2, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely	6
31	The Muppet Show, by Roger Langridge	11
32	The Squirrel Machine, by Hans Rickheit	7
33	Incredible Hercules, by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and others	11
34	Daredevil, by various	7
35	Prison Pit, by Johnny Ryan	7
36	The Complete Essex County, by Jeff Lemire	8
37	Cecil and Jordan in New York: Stories, by Gabrielle Bell	6
38	King City, by Brandon Graham	6
39	The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross	10
40	The Act-I-Vate Primer, by various	6
41	Ex Machina, by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris	6
42	Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papdatos, and Annie Di Donna	7
43	Little Nothings vol. 2, by Lewis Trondheim	6
44	The Umbrella Academy vol. 2: Dallas, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba	8
45	The Unknown Soldier, by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli	6
46	Beasts of Burden, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson	8
47	The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim	4
48	Ochre Ellipse #3, by Jonas Madden-Connor	3
49	B.P.R.D., by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Fabio Moon, and Gabriel Ba	8
50	League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 1910, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill	7
51	Ganges #3, by Kevin Huizenga	9
52	Incognito, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips	7
53	Phonogram: The Singles Club, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie	8
54	Blackest Night, by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis	5
55	Gogo Monster, by Taiyo Matsumoto	6
56	Northlanders, by Brian Wood and Leandro Fernandez	3
57	Oishinbo, by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki	5
58	Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, by Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart	7
59	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young	7
60	Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips	7
61	Luba, by Gilbert Hernandez	4
62	Jonah Hex, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and others	6
63	Mouse Guard: Winter 1152, by David Peterson	4
64	Invincible Iron Man, by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca	9
65	Planetary #27, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday	4
66	Grandville, by Bryan Talbot	7
67	The Color of Earth/Water/Heaven, by Dong Hwa Kim	6
68	Amazing Spider-Man, by various	7
69	Green Lantern, by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke	5
70	Irredeemable, by Mark Waid and Peter Krause	5
71	Captain Britain and MI-13, by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk	6
72	Ball Peen Hammer, by Adam Rapp and George O'Connor	3
72	Bodyworld, by Dash Shaw	2
74	The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, by various	3
75	I Want You, by Lisa Hanawalt	4
76	Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me, by Peter Bagge	4
77	The Winter Men, by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon	5
78	Sugarcube, by Sam Gaskin	2
79	Just So You Know #1, by Joey Sayers	3
80	The Bun Field, by Amanda Vahamaki	2
81	Thor, by J. Michael Straczynski and various	3
82	Locas II: Maggie, Hopey, & Ray, by Jaime Hernandez	4
83	Low Moon, by Jason	4
84	Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming	2
85	Agents of Atlas, by Jeff Parker and others	5
86	Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire	4
87	Another Glorious Day at the Nothing Factory, by Eroyn Franklin	3
88	Adventures in Cartooning, by James Sturm, Alexis Frederick-Frost, and Andrew Arnold	2
89	Funny Misshapen Body, by Jeffrey Brown	4
90	The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard	5
91	Kramers Ergot #7, by various	2
92	Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, by Justin Green	2
93	Final Crisis, by Grant Morrison, J.G. Jones, and Doug Mahnke	5
94	The Natural World, by Damien Jay	3
95	Popeye vol. 4: Plunder Island, by E.C. Segar	3
96	The John Stanley Library: Melvin the Monster, by John Stanley	4
97	Nine Ways to Disappear, by Lilli Carre	4
98	Like a Dog, by Zak Sally	3
99	Sandman: The Dream Hunters, by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell	3
100	Young Liars, by David Lapham	4