Anthology frames the artistic side of American comics

By any measure, comics have come a long way since their socalled “golden age” in the first half of the 20th century, when superheroes and massive sales propelled them into the national consciousness.

These days, comics can be pretty much anything: online panels, “serious” graphic novels, crass marketing tie-ins and, yes, good old issues ofWonderWoman and Spider-Man tucked into metal racks at bookstores.

But as Bill Kartalopoulos writes, “more often than not, am- bitious, artistic comics have been amarginal endeavor.” That’swhy he edits theHoughton Mifflin Harcourt series “The Best American Comics,” which goes to exhaustive lengths to serve up a slice of the “ambitious, artistic” stuffwhile leaving the betterknown superhero fare behind.

That’s not to say everything in the series’ latest anthology is difficult orweighty. Some arewhimsical or flat-out surreal. Others, like R. Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb’s “High Road to the Schmuck Seat,” are intentionally gross and funny. All are impeccably and lovingly presented.

The handsome, hardcover “The Best American Comics 2014,” guest-edited by ScottMcCloud, is a gorgeous book that does right by its subject matter. Reproduction is key here: Heavy-stock pages support fullcolor, two-sided printing that prevents bleed-through.

At the same time, pages are not as heavy or glossy as, say, a magazine cover, which would potentially make this 375-page tome thicker than a dictionary. (If you think the “feel” of a book doesn’t matter, compare a few of your own hard- and soft-covers at home and get back to me).

Comics’ innate freedom to tackle subjects from any angle— realistic, impressionistic— is central to what makes them so thrilling. Sexuality, profanity, horror and fantasy seem instantly at home here, but so do historical civil-rights tales and memoir-ish remembrances of parents and children lost.

Tom Hart’s black-and-white “RL,” excerpted briefly, recounts the loss of his 2-year-old daughter Rosalie by building a hill of fragile, elegantly drawn memories around it. It’s a bleak and devastating work that shows comics’ ability to convey emotion as effectively as any short fiction or literature.

On the other end of the spectrum, Brandon Graham’s sharp, bright “MultipleWarheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1” is a whacked-out journey through a vaguely familiar sci-fi world, where language helps sell the absurd jokes as much as the hyper-detailed visuals.

Better-known names (in the comics world, at least) include the perpetually lauded Chris Ware, ’70s trailblazer Robert Crumb and pulpy, cartoon-ish storyteller Jaime Hernandez, whose “Crime Raiders” hums with a snappy and inherently cinematic tone.

Each selection is situated within a theme— Raising Readers, Family Tree, Strange Adventures — and the subject matter swerves from mature to all-ages, often in the same section. Uniting them all areMcCloud’s written introductions, which read a bit insider ish but always convey his deep love of the form.

As McCloud points out, comics are intimate. The best artists make that work in their favor, whether they’re telling ponderous, autobiographical stories or presenting avant-garde ideas splashed with wild colors and crazily overlapping lines. Through it all, the hand-crafted nature of each translates the artist’s personality to the page.

With its smart format and context, “The Best American Comics 2014” not only manages to unite clashing styles under one roof, it also makes an intimidatingly vast world of gorgeous, often challenging art accessible to a general audience.