My 13 Favorite Things of 2009 (Part 13 of 17)

Abhay Khosla’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula: This one is kind of a cheat, because I generally don’t include web-comics in these lists, but this was just so damn funny that it broke free the bonds of categorization. This was probably the funniest piece of pop culture I consumed all year, and that includes watching some fun movies like Zombieland and The Hangover, catching up on HBO’s Entourage, keeping up once again with Attack of the Show! on G4TV, and even reading Khosla’s other writings, which always make me laugh out loud unexpectedly with their completely different approach, creative wit, and inherent intellect. He tends to polarize his reading audience. He eschews the rules, ignoring the typical approach. His observations tend to tie seemingly unrelated storytelling genres and common tropes together, put them in a blender, and irreverently spit them out from a hybrid combination of the best underground stand-up comedians you’ve never seen and the comic book insider with encyclopedic knowledge of the most obscure and awkwardly funny conventions that will sell the send-up. If that doesn’t make any sense, it’s because Khosla’s writing isn’t just on another level, it’s from an entirely different dimension, and I don’t possess the critical vocabulary necessary to explain it, much less deconstruct its origins or articulate why it’s so successful in execution. It’s vaguely familiar, yet like nothing you’ve ever seen. Oh, and you’ll laugh. Did I mention that?