The famously iconic cover of Superman’s very first appearance in Action Comics
Exactly what it says on the tin – my Top 10 Comics, including webcomics (as three of my top ten entries, indeed three of the top five).
You don’t need me to explain what comics are, but I might need to explain some things.
First, comics are my guilty reading pleasure I have retained from childhood, much like animation in TV or film. And much like animation, whatever the comic, I’ll usually enjoy checking it or its characters out.
Second, perhaps surprisingly after the first, I don’t read that many comics, let alone actively follow them. For most comics, I don’t go beyond checking them or their characters out in brief overview or review to reading them in depth. Usually, my interest is satisfied by the idea of a comic – or ideas in a comic – rather than the comic itself.
In particular, I don’t follow or read any comics from the ruling duopoly of DC and Marvel, with the exception of the former’s, ah, former label of Vertigo, although I have an enduring interest in and familiarity with many of their characters – but more in their film or television adaptations (or in their art and cosplay) than their original comics.
Anyway, these are my Top 10 Comics.
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(10) CHARLES SOULE & SCOTT SYNDER –
UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (Image 2019 – PRESENT)
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early…what the hell is that?!
Okay – this is a bit of a cheat as my wildcard tenth place entry, as I typically reserve it for best of the present or previous year but it’s still ongoing so….look, I make my own rules and break them anyway, okay?
Undiscovered Country starts from what might seem to be a familiar premise but one that becomes increasingly audacious…and beautifully weird. The titular Undiscovered Country is the United States or or what has become of it after it literally walled itself off from the rest of the world for thirty years (the Sealing) – land of the free and home of the brave become literal land of the lost. And by walling, I mean not just the massive physical walls but the ‘Air Wall’ of experimental force shield technology. Of course, there’s more than a few echoes of contemporary political events – and even more so in 2020 for the premise of its plot, a global pandemic that requires a team seeking a cure to breach its borders and venture into this strange and deadly ‘undiscovered’ country.
And that’s where things go “from prescient to Beyond Thunderdome: giant land sharks, tribal lunacy, jingoistic madmen galore…Forget the Land of the Free. This was Mad Max by way of the bastard son of Roald Dahl and Hunter S. Thompson. If they let the baby smoke crack a lot”. And then there’s the fact – evidenced by those mutated land sharks and jingoistic madmen – that as an effect of that force shield, much more time has seemingly passed in the lost United States than should actually be possible…
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
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Cover art for The Wicked + The Divine issue 17 (December 2015)
(9) KIERON GILLEN –
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE (Image 2014 – 2019)
“You are of the Pantheon. You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant. Within two years, you will be dead.”
The Wicked + The Divine features the Pantheon, a shifting rotation of gods in the Recurrence – when twelve gods (and goddesses) return (or incarnate) as young people for a bright, shining two years before burning out, as they have every ninety years for millennia. Except, you know, God, because that would just be boring. We’re talking beautiful, sexy, pop-star pagan gods and goddesses here, although they change with each Recurrence – or not, since some gods or goddesses seem to recur more than others. Or something like that because the rules are not entirely clear and keep changing.
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
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(8) NICK SPENCER –
MORNING GLORIES (Image Comics 2010 – ?!)
“What did you see when your eyes were opened?”
Well, for one thing, I saw Morning Glories, an ongoing series from Image Comics that had me enraptured from the first issue I read. In the tagline of its writer Nick Spencer, it’s Runaways meets Lost (without the ending of the latter, or indeed any ending at present).
In my eyes, it’s as if the Illuminati had a high school – or perhaps more aptly, since it is referenced by name, as if Grant Morrison’s Invisibles had a high school. Or if Night Vale WAS a high school, given that it has one. Indeed, Nick Spencer shows a positively Morrisonesque flair for twists and turns of storyline, at times even coming close to Morrison’s unrivalled hand at those fabulous comics one-liners or that juxtaposition of word and image.
The Morning Glories (or just Glories) is the nickname for the protagonist group of six new students, selected for the prestigious Morning Glory Academy – selected, that is, for a very particular and peculiar set of selection criteria. Which may or may not explain that they all seem to manifest mysterious abilities or future selves, and that they all seem to have dark or strange pasts (including – perhaps – the occasional homicide).
It doesn’t explain why the location of the school is kept mysterious by drugging each new student before arrival – or why their parents don’t even seem to remember their very existence when they call them from the school (with one notable exception, which necessitates the most unfortunate consequences). It certainly doesn’t explain the “mysterious and shadowy purpose of this dizzying boarding school of horrors”, which remains mysterious and shadowy except only that it seems to be the tip of a global conspiracy – or conspiracies.
Not to mention the other paranormal phenomena or time travel within and without its walls. (In one of my favorite Morrisonesque one-liners from the series, a student enquires as to the trippy design of a time machine – “Who built it?” “You did” is the reply).
Nor does it explain the sadistic faculty staff, led by the unseen headmaster behind the scenes – who don’t hesitate to resort to progressive mind control techniques, extreme physical discipline and the occasional sacrifice.
After all, it’s “for a better future” and we all have to make sacrifices. Literally.
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
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2000 AD cover of Canon Fodder
(7) MARK MILLAR –
CANON FODDER (2000 AD 1993)
“Let us prey!”
The Apocalypse according to Mark.
Mark Millar, that is.
It is intriguing how often Millar gets apocalyptic in his comics, literally or figuratively – and how often Millar gets apocalyptic in the literal sense of the Book of Apocalypse.
I have two favorite particular subgenres of fantasy. The first and narrowest is what might be termed apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fantasy, particularly if based on the actual Book of Apocalypse. The second is posthumous fantasy – not in the sense of being published posthumously but set posthumously or fantasy set in the afterlife.
And I’ve been a fan of Mark Millar ever since his surreal and characteristically irreverent fantasy comic Canon Fodder in 2000 AD, one that was apocalyptic in a literal sense and one of the few fantasy works to combine both subgenres. Well, apart from the original Book of Apocalypse.
It’s the first comic written by him that I read and remains my favorite, albeit one that Millar himself may not remember so fondly as 2000 AD featured a sequel written by another writer and there was a dispute about ownership of the character for further development of the series. Even so, I still like the sequel – not equal to the first written by Millar but the substitute writer did a decent job.
But in a sense this entry bookmarks a place in my top ten for Millar, as I could readily compile my Top 10 Mark Millar Comics, with one Millar series after another. He has consistently written his own independent creator-owned comics under his unified label Millarworld, notably for Image Comics. It helps that his comics have a healthy rate of adaptation to film or television. The former include titles such as Kickass and Kingsman. The latter is particularly so after his Millarworld label was purchased by Netflix to adapt his comics for television, with my favorite so far as the animated adaptation of Supercrooks.
Anyway, my featured quote is the catchphrase of the titular Canon Fodder, presumably an alias, gun-toting cleric and last surviving member of the Priest Patrol, a bizarre four-man team conflation between the Church and the police. Now that’s religion! The other three members were Deacon Blue, Father O’Blivion and Cardinal Syn.
The dead are resurrected to join the living in an apparently overcrowded post-Judgement Day (and partly post-apocalyptic) Earth but one in which God has conspicuously failed to return. That sets the plot in motion – as Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty kill themselves in a suicide pact to seek vengeance against God in Heaven, while Watson engages Fodder and a Hannibal Lecter-like Mycroft Holmes to stop them. But there are much bigger things afoot in heaven and earth…
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
One of my favorite scenes from this or any other comic. Also captures how I often feel at work – or in life
(6) GRANT MORRISON –
ZENITH (2000 AD 1987-1992)
“I ravaged…I destroyed this world. Three billion people dead. Boo hoo. Made a desert of the world. Thank you. Silence then. At last. And ssssolitude. Then the lloigor came. They offered me a place in their ranks. A test of faith was required. Rrrrrr. So I tore, that is to say, I rrrripped ripped out my own eyes. My own eyes. And for the first time, I saw. Thank you. Now. Do you really believe I will let you stop me?”
Best villainous monologue ever.
Opinion is mixed about Morrison. In the words of TV Tropes, some people love him, while others “believe he’s just some wacky guy…whose constant forays into This is Your Premise on Drugs ends up dominating his books”. Although come on, be honest – even the latter sounds more awesome than many other things you read. Granted, Morrison can be self-indulgent and wildly esoteric, but then what else would you expect from a practicing chaos magician? (Seriously). What he never fails to be, even when his stories don’t quite work – or work all too well as sheer mind screws – is interesting and intriguing.
Like the other writers of the British invasion of American comics, Morrison won his reputation revamping comics characters (starting with DC Comics’ obscure Animal Man for its Vertigo imprint), but perhaps distinguished himself even more so than the other writers – to the point he has been styled as the ‘revamp guy’ and to the point he can make any comics character AWESOME.
However, my favorite Morrison work remains his first substantial work for 2000 AD, which brought him to the attention of DC Comics and other American publishers – Zenith. Perhaps that’s because of the perfect combination of his writing with the art of Steve Yeowell – or perhaps because his more flamboyant and mind screwy elements remain subdued in its elegant story and classic deconstruction of superheroes.
The starting premise of Zenith is similar to that of Captain America – the Second World War and a serum that creates superhuman powers. Unfortunately, it’s the Nazis that have the serum to create their Nazi superman, Masterman. Even worse, the Nazis obtained the serum from the lloigor, who are nothing other than the extradimensional beings of the Cthulhu Mythos, down to their very names – although Morrison adapted Yog Soggoth to Iok Sotot and made him even more terrifying. The serum is simply their means to create superhuman bodies capable of being occupied by the lloigor as they come into this world. True to their Lovecraftian roots, the lloigor are beings beyond time and space, beings of infinite power and infinite cruelty – well, either that or the most dangerous lava lamp in history…?
Fortunately, German defectors help the British to replicate the serum for the British superhero, Maximan. That’s effectively where the comic starts – and it illustrates Morrison’s ability to juxtapose words and visual images perfectly, as well as to cut from one scene to another. The opening scene is in the style of a kitsch British wartime newsreel, proudly displaying the feats of Maximan defeating German forces and declaring “it could all be over by Christmas”.
Cut to Berlin, 21 December 1944 – the Nazi Masterman stands gloating over the broken and fallen Maximan. “Does it hurt? I hope so. Even if I let you live, you’ll never use your legs again, you know that?” All Maximan can do in reply is murmur his hopeless prayer – Psalm 23 – and Masterman gloats further. “Save your breath. No one is listening. There’s no one up there”
Except…there is, although not quite in the sense that either of them had in mind, as we cut to an American plane, about to drop “the big one” – the atomic bomb – except in this history on Berlin. And we cut back to Masterman and Maximan as they are enveloped in light.
The story continues with a new generation of British superheroes created by the serum – but which have apparently lost their powers, been killed or disappeared, except for Zenith, a second generation superhero born of two superhuman parents, both killed by the American ‘Shadowmen’ agents. However, the Cult of the Black Sun – the secret society behind the Nazis – have other plans for Zenith, as they revive the Masterman twin for a new and more powerful lloigor. From this relatively straightforward contest, the story becomes increasingly complex and dark – more superhumans are introduced due to secret illegal testing of the serum and still more to a cosmic battle across parallel worlds as the lloigor seek the ‘alignment’ that will deliver the multiverse to them, concluding with the truly apocalyptic climax as the lloigor are finally unveiled for what they truly were, are and will be.
It would be amiss of me to conclude without reference to my favorite characteristic of Morrison – his ability to write perfect comic one-liners and dialogue. An example is when the organization secretly testing superhumans sent a killer robot after Zenith – Zenith destroys it, but not before it sends its footage back to the organization. One of them muses about Zenith – “He has his mother’s eyes”. The other replies “Really? I thought we had his mother’s eyes”. And indeed they do – the actual eyes in a jar behind them in their laboratory.
And we’ve all mocked villain monologues – but Morrison shows how it is done, to chilling effect (with verbal tics of insanity).
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover of Empowered volume 1 by creator – artist and writer – Adam Warren
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(5) ADAM WARREN –
EMPOWERED (Dark Horse 2007 – present)
“A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn’t)”
The titular heroine and her series, originated from commissioned ‘bondage’ sketches of a comics superheroine ‘damsel-in-distress’, which then became the basis for the episodic shorts for the commencement of the series, illustrated in Warren’s characteristic ‘manga’ influenced style. The series started (and still continues to some extent) as a playful deconstruction of superhero comics tropes, particularly those involving female superheroes, along with (in the words of TV Tropes) “healthy doses of bondage, fanservice and comedy”.
Indeed, it’s a fantasy kitchen sink of comics tropes and more – alien doomsday technology, clans of ninjas in New Jersey, grandiloquent interdimensional hell-beings (trapped in coffee table ornaments), deals with the devil, psi powers, undead superheroes (or the ‘superdead’) and catgirls (nyaan!)
Empowered herself is a “plucky D-list superheroine”, who is precariously dependent and constantly betrayed by the fragile, fickle source of her superpowers – her skin-tight ‘hypermembrane’ suit. As a consequence, Empowered spends most of her time with her suit in tatters or various states of undress, bound and gagged by supervillains or even common criminals, a joke to her superhero peers and supervillains alike (albeit something of status symbol as arm candy to the latter).
As the series has progressed however, it has developed deeper, darker and longer story arcs – and Empowered has emerged as an increasingly formidable superheroine, relying on her wits and strength of character to overcome the flaws of her suit. On the other hand, her superhero colleagues or ‘Capes’ have become increasingly darker – beware the Superman! Remember San Antonio!
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
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Halfling ranger Belkar Bitterleaf in perhaps his most iconic scene (and one of my favorite scenes) from episode 439 Seeing Orange
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(4) RICH BURLEW –
ORDER OF THE STICK (WEBCOMIC 2003 – present)
“Roy Greenhilt: The rogue is ambitious and greedy, the ranger is a complete psychopath, the wizard is trigger-happy and never stops talking, and the bard is as dumb as a box of moldy carrots!
Durkon Thundershield: As I recall, ye called me “surly and unpleasant” shortly after ye met me. […] Maybe all these folks need is a good strong leader like ye ta whip ’em inta shape.”
And that pretty much sums up The Order of the Stick webcomic and the titular protagonist adventuring group.
A stick figure fantasy webcomic – although ‘stick figure’ belies the versatility of the art style, particularly in later comics – primarily based on Dungeons and Dragons, specifically the so-called 3.5 edition of the game (which has moved on to other editions since). Its origin as a gag-a-day strip, parodying the idiosyncrasies of the game and its rules in a classic dungeon crawl, belied its depth as it has evolved into a sweeping fantasy epic, retaining its humor but with cosmic stakes as well as plot twists and turns that make The Lord of the Rings look like, well, The Hobbit. Speaking of hobbits, or more precisely the game’s namesake halflings, much of the comic’s humor originates in its halfling character, who is indeed a chaotic stab-happy psychopath.
Beyond its humor and epic fantasy, it extends well beyond a parody of Dungeons and Dragons to deconstructing the fantasy genre itself and its narrative tropes. The characters, not unlike actual players in Dungeons and Dragons, are well aware that they are characters in a fantasy game universe, but also in a webcomic, and are extremely genre savvy to show for it – not just about the D&D rules and gameplay mechanics by which their world operates, but general storytelling tropes as well.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP-TIER)
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(3) TOM PARKINSON-MORGAN –
KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS (webcomic / Image 2013 – present)
“The king of creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the third conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast – and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of heaven will quake with his coming. And his name – his name will be – Kill Six Billion Demons.”
Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan (or Orbital Dropkick as he presently styles himself on social media) is a ‘New Weird’ fantasy webcomic, “stuffed with sumptuous insanity”. Or as I prefer to call it – psychedelic cosmic fantasy. Funnily enough, I see parallels between it and Garth Nix’s The Keys to the Kingdom, although it is a lot more, well, psychedelic and cosmic than the latter’s young adult fantasy.
God is dead and so are the gods, leaving only war in heaven as the most powerful beings vie to inherit the multiverse, although for now there is an uneasy truce between the seven beings – the Seven – that have emerged victorious to rule it between them in Throne, the heart of the multiverse. But before them was the legendary Conquering King, first to rule over Throne, but who abandoned it and disappeared with the Key of Kings, which holds the power to overthrow the Seven and conquer the multiverse itself. Which he returns from death itself (no big consequence to such beings) to give to Allison Ruth, a simple barrista from Earth, who finds herself plucked to the very heart of multiverse as its new champion and with a quest evoked by her new name – Kill Six Billion Demons.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(2) TRUDY COOPER & DOUG BAYNE –
OGLAF (Webcomic 2008 – present)
A weekly webcomic every Sunday by Australian creators.
A fantasy comic and comic fantasy – the latter in that it deconstructs, parodies or subverts virtually every fantasy trope, many drawn from the creators’ obvious familiarity with Dungeons and Dragons. In the words of Comics Alliance – “Oglaf is a sex comedy webcomic set in a world created by shoving every existing fantasy world into a blender and setting it on puree. There’s no overall plot, but many recurring characters and storylines, all in service to some of the funniest smut on the web”.
Yes – it is funny. And yes – oh my goddess – it is smutty. As per its origin in its opening disclaimer – “This comic started as an attempt to make p0rnography. It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately”. Definitely not-safe-for-work (NSFW). Indeed, it’s an exceptional Oglaf that isn’t smutty. Of course, a large part of the smut is also part of the comic fantasy, playing with those fantasy tropes or the sexuality, repressed or otherwise beneath their surface. So yes – it’s mostly a fantasy sex comedy, well – ah – serviced by Cooper’s art. One should note that it is extremely diverse in its sexuality and indeed its multi-racial or polysexual characters – strikingly so for fantasy, which despite its premise is all too often traditional in its mores.
It’s mostly an episodic gag a week, although there are recurring characters. There also are (or at least were) occasional longer story arcs involving them. Ironically, the title character, although technically recurring (in a couple or so episodes), is essentially a gag character for the title – a shepherd boy with a very unusual (and NSFW) magical talent which somehow annoints him as the chosen one (although not chosen for much beyond the title). The closest thing the comic had to a protagonist was Ivan, a literal sorcerer’s apprentice (of sorts) to the sadistic Mistress. Other recurring characters occasionally rise to the fore as semi-protagonists – kinky female vampire Navaan, humorless female mercenary Greir and my favorite, Kronar, an obvious parody of Conan from a tribe of male barbarians so manly they don’t contaminate themselves with women and show each other their honor (and yes – that is a euphemism).
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT MISTRESS TIER)
(1) JUDGE DREDD (2000 AD 1977 – present)
“I am the Law!”
You knew this was coming – I’ve said it before so I’ll just say it again!
My first and true love in comics is not one of the ruling duopoly of comics, DC and Marvel Comics, nor strictly speaking a superhero comic (although its main character is arguably as much of a ‘superhero’ as Batman), nor even an American comic (although it is set there, albeit drastically transformed in the twenty-second century).
It is Judge Dredd, the most iconic character from the British weekly SF anthology comic, 2000 AD, ongoing since it was launched in 1977 – although ironically for 2000 AD’s longest-running and flagship character from its second issue, as the opening Dredd story was not ready for the first issue. Time has passed in the Dredd strip essentially the same as in real time ever since, so a year passes in the comic for each year in real life (except of course 122 years later) – the first Dredd story in 1977 was set in 2099 and the present stories in 2024 are set in 2146 (an interesting feature as distinct from many American comic franchises).
Unfortunately, American audiences remain somewhat unfamiliar with (or unresponsive to) Judge Dredd, despite his American setting (albeit futuristic) and despite that he is effectively a quintessential American hero in the same vein as Batman – relying on superior discipline, training, experience, equipment and resources, except as a governmental lawman rather than a vigilante billionaire. They even both effectively remain masked in their public identities, as Dredd never removes his helmet. This is despite his iconic status, particularly in Britain, and despite American audiences being familiar with many of the alumni of 2000 AD, as virtually every British writer (and artist) of note working in American comics started there (and indeed often in the Judge Dredd storyline itself) – Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar and so on.
Even more unfortunately, the most substantial introduction of American audiences to Judge Dredd was the 1995 film, although fortunately that particular horror is fading with time. This Hollywood travesty was particularly inexcusable, because the essence of Judge Dredd is ultimately very simple – Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian (and post-apocalyptic) SF satire. How hard is that, Hollywood?! On second thoughts, this simple formula is probably too much for Hollywood to handle – when they couldn’t even have Dredd keep his helmet on throughout the film.
The 2012 film was much more effective in capturing the elements of the original comic (not least in keeping Dredd’s helmet on throughout the film), but not as effective in capturing an audience. In its own way, this is as unfortunate as the first film, particularly at a time when comic book movies are in such vogue (and dystopian or post-apocalyptic movies have always been popular) – because if ever a comic deserved its own cinematic or screen adaptation, it’s Dredd, especially when you consider the dreck (or drokk – Judge Dredd slang in-joke alert) that does get adaptations. Perhaps a television adaptation would have been better, as it suits the more episodic nature as well as longer arcs of the storyline.
And then there’s my ongoing Mega-City Law features here devoted to Judge Dredd, including my ten reasons why Judge Dredd is the galaxy’s greatest comic – and why it deserves its own cinematic or screen universe:
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)
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