It’s the last Alternate Cover of 2008, and having spent the best part of a year writing a comics opinion blog/column, I’ve decided to go back and revisit my published work for a brief reminder of the issues that made me most angry this year.

In April, I took a look at low-quality licensed comics and tried to decide why I found them largely disappointing. Nothing has changed on that front, but there’s a better reason to look back at this one - the column was picked up by a fair few sites, giving me my first taste of notoriety and, more importantly, serving as a reminder that my articles were actually being read by people. I still stand by everything I said, and my only regret is that I didn’t cover more ground with the topic, even if it did lead to Bryan Lynch, writer of the Angel comic (which I still begrudgingly buy every month in the vain hope I’ll start to like it) having a completely justified pop back at me.

In May, I went into rant-mode again, addressing the topic of screenwriters in comics. Since I wrote that column, the end of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man series is now months overdue, and Lindelof’s final issues of Wolverine Vs Hulk have been solicited for early next year - almost three years after they were first available for order. More intriguingly, however, Kevin Smith returned to write a Batman series which, two issues in, has drummed up surprisingly little fanfare even as Grant Morrison’s Batman series tops the charts. Is it that Smith’s star's begun to wane, or is the industry realising that screenwriter-driven projects aren’t all they’re cracked up to be? At least Doctor Who-turned-Captain Britain writer Paul Cornell has kept alive the hope that some screenwriters are actually interested in writing comics for the love of it, with fantastic (and punctual!) results.

In November, I joined the chorus of people who, in the midst of an emerging global recession, realised that comics are getting too expensive. Thankfully, not every series is going that way. The first issue of Gillen and McKelvie’s series, Phonogram: The Singles Club, hit shelves in December, and delivered (in full-colour) a 16-page main feature, TWO backup strips and several pages of text-based backmatter, all for the low, low price of $3.50. Without a doubt, the best value comic on the market, and an excellent story to boot. The eventual trade will collect only the main feature, and in giving readers a reason to seek out the individual issues, Gillen and McKelvie have provided the absolute template for what an issue of a comic should look like in the modern market. Let’s hope their ethos catches on.

At the start of December, my ire was directed squarely at you! The comics reader! As I took to task fans who misunderstood the events of Batman: RIP. It sounds incredibly pompous and arrogant, but to this day, I cannot respect the opinion of anyone who thinks Grant Morrison is a bad writer (though it should be noted that this is not the same as disliking his work). His work may not always be successful, but it’s usually ambitious and almost always sublime in its technicalities. Did Batman: RIP work perfectly? No - but nor was it the hack job some readers claim. Morrison’s writing is intricate, intelligent and brilliantly distilled. If you don’t like it, fair enough – but that’s no fault of his.

And with that, we come to the end of the final column of 2008. Alternate Cover will, of course, be back next week, or next year, whichever comes sooner.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

30 December 2008