May I ask, in your opinion, what is the "best" CG book?
It depends on what you define as CG.
Right off the bat, the Shi return of the warrior books are better than Cyberfrog.
But all these books are ridiculous to some extent on price point when CG began. Even if you have a hidden gem, remember these books are often padded so your overpaying and forced to take on allot of unwanted (to be unkind junk). The original Graveyard shift by Jon Malin? It's the size of two comics for 25 dollars (12$ a comic basically) at its core. Some of them will try to 'pad' the book with basically unknown artists/fan pages/or otherwise unrelated material. Same with the first Jawbreakers. 48 pages of the actual book with a bunch of padding.
To give you a current day counter example? Matt Wagner (Grendel) is teaming up with CG adjacent? Kelley Jones on a Dracula Book with 112 pages (94! of them story/art) in a hardcover for 45 dollars. That's more than double the length of GS etc, in a HC comic (you can get it digitally for 10 bucks).
So yeah, there are better CG books. I'd point to Tucci or someone else over EVS.
I’ve never understood the “Eric July’s book are mid” criticism.
What don't you understand? The writing is subpar, the art isn't ready for the price tag? Is it just you aren't a comics reader and don't know these things? If so plenty of people have written/spoken at length explaining why his work is middling, being generous, and subpar.
The vast majority of comics are mid in history the history of the medium.
That's...very broad and ill phrased? What does most comics mean? Are we talking every comics strip in human history?
I'm talking about comics. In the modern era beginning in 1981ish to present day. And no, most comics during that time period are not 'mid' in the sense of lacking some basic competency in draftsmanship.
In the current climate a bog standard hero’s journey with a generic villain may as well be high art.
No. Only if your point of comparison is literally Kate Leth and Matthew Rosenberg. Black rap dude is not worth mentioning except his e-nemies are people farmers don't like. It's a really bad habit to overpraise or defend people.
Not everything can be The Darl Knight Returns or Watchmen
Dark Knight? and no. But if you read comics on a monthly basis you'd know that we got great comics in those days every month sometimes 9 to 10 comics a week of similar quality.
and Comicsgste clearly hasn’t produced anything approaching that level either.
Okay....now I'm curious. Have you read a fair number of CG books and are we talking about comparative quality (ie art/writing) or price per value?
Because fuck no. Even if I don't like him, I acknowledge EVS artwork is better than ISOM 1. Is it so much better it took him half a decade to draw? No.