How does a beautifully produced (with gold ink!) hardcover with giant pages full of jaw-dropping artistry by one of the premier names in the field get labeled "worst" comix of the year? By being completely unreadable. Vastly over-conceptualized, "Jimbo in Purgatory" ostensibly retells the story of Dante's "Purgatory," with one page per canto, but set in an "infotainment testing center" with pop culture avatars taking the place of the original characters. According to the introduction, all the dialogue "demonstrates a knowledge of the [canto] and an ability to quote other works [e.g. Milton, Chaucer, the Beatles, et al.] alluding to the theme of that location in the poem and in addition, to designate, by that utterance, the story of Boccaccio's Decameron —" etc. etc. Maybe it does all that, but it's so impossibly dense I doubt anyone with less than a Ph.D. in classical literature will be able to parse it. No fun.
Come fly with us, and Leo, through the best (and worst) of 2004. Tops in the cinema this year include Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Elsewhere, Deadwood was good TV, and a Strange tale fascinated readers.