It's the end of the old year, the season when reviewers look back and pick out the 'best' of 2005, and two comic book properties, Black Hole (Pantheon) by Charles Burns and Ex Machina (Wildstorm/DC) by Brian K. Vaughn, actually made Entertainment Weekly's 'Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year List.'  The fact that these two comic-based properties shared the ninth position on the Fiction List is a solid measure of how far comics and graphic novels have come in terms of critical estimation.

A movie based on a graphic novel, David Cronenberg's adaptation of John Wagner's A History of Violence, actually topped EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum's list of 2005's best films, and it certainly is courageous to pick such a subtle, ostensibly typical 'thriller' like A History of Violence as the best film of the year rather than to choose one of those flashier, more self-important films that will dominate other critics' lists and no doubt the Oscars.

List making can be pernicious, but it nice to see superbly-made works such as A History of Violence and the television series Veronica Mars (rated #6 by EW's Gillian Flynn) that often fly under the critics' (and the mass audience's) radar get the recognition they deserve, and it is especially heartening to see comic book titles included in the 'Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year.'