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: 4 STARS*****

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(7) 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: 4 STARS****

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(8) MARK MILLAR –

THE MAGIC ORDER (Image 2019-2023)

“We live in a world where we’ve never seen a monster, and The Magic Order is the reason we sleep safely in our beds.”

The Apocalypse according to Mark.

Mark Millar, that is.

Of course, that epithet of the Apocalypse according to Mark applies much more to his American Jesus – indeed literally but it is intriguing how often Millar gets apocalyptic in his comics, literally or figuratively.

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 I’ve been a fan of Mark Millar even since his surreal and characteristically irreverent fantasy comic Canon Fodder in 2000 AD, one that was again apocalyptic in a literal sense and one of the few fantasy works to combine both subgenres. Well, apart from the original Book of Apocalypse.

The Magic Order isn’t apocalyptic in the literal sense but is in the figurative sense of its stakes. The titular order secretly safeguards the world from supernatural and magical threats – such as guarding a magic tome containing the dark spells of Old Atlantis so powerful that it is “”said to cause two world wars and can slay a deity”.

“Magic meets the mob in THE MAGIC ORDER, as five families of magicians-sworn to protect our world for generations-must battle an enemy who’s picking them off one by one. By day, they live among us as our neighbors, friends, and co-workers, but by night, they are the sorcerers, magicians, and wizards that protect us from the forces of darkness…unless the darkness gets them first.”

The first volume featured the American Magic Order while the second and third volumes move to the Magic Order in Europe and Asia.

By the way, Millar returned to posthumous fantasy in his 2017 Reborn comic.

But in a sense this entry bookmarks a place in my top ten I tend to reserve for Millar with one series or another, although The Magic Order does indeed rank as my favorite Millar title at this time. The point is that he consistently writes his own independent creator-owned comics under his unified label Millarworld, usually for Image or Icon – such that I could compile my Top 10 Mark Millar 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. Sadly, The Magic Order is still in production as I understand it.

He also has a very personable profile on X or Twitter.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(9) CHARLES SOULE & SCOTT SYNDER –

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (Image 2019 – PRESENT)

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early…what the hell is that?!

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: 4 STARS****

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(10) KIERON GILLEN –

THE POWER FANTASY (Image 2024)

“Superpowered.” You have certain preconceptions. They’re incorrect. Here, that word has a specific technical definition. Namely, “any individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of the USA.”

Okay – I’ll admit that this entry is aspirational, in turn reflecting that it is my usual wildcard tenth place entry for the best of the present or previous year.

And by aspirational, I mean it is this year’s comic that I want to read but haven’t read yet.

In fairness to myself, the first issue was only just released in August 2024 – with issues to follow each month after that. So it will be some time before the first collected edition comes out – generally it take six issues or so before they are released together in a collected edition.

Also in fairness to myself, I have enjoyed previous series written by Kieran Gillon for Image Comics, so have high expectations for this one.

“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 first was The Wicked + The Divine from 2014 to 2019, a series I previously ranked in my top ten and still one of the best from Gillen or Image Comics. It featured 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 something like that because the rules are not entirely clear and keep changing.

The second was Die from 2018 to 2021, a series I would previously have ranked as my wildcard tenth place entry in my top ten. It featured “a pitch-black fantasy where a group of forty-something adults have to deal with the returning unearthly horror they barely survived as teenage role-players” – a concept the writer pitched as “Goth Jumanji” but was more using Dungeons and Dragons as an intriguing exploration of fantasy as a genre.

That extends to the character classes of the game in the story as an intriguing exploration of character classes in Dungeons and Dragons – Dictator (like a bard with mind control mojo), Neo (a cyberpunk mage powered by fairy gold), Godbinder (like a cleric cutting deals with gods), Grief Knight (paladin literally powered by emotion), and Fool (combination of rogue and bard powered by luck). Indeed, the classes and game mechanics were so intriguing that Gillen spun off an actual role-playing game for them.

“There are six such people on Earth. The planet’s survival relies on them never coming into conflict.

Come dance to the ticking of the doomsday clock…”

So I’m looking forward to the collected edition of Power Fantasy…although I also want to read We Called Them Giants released in collected edition in October 2024 – which also qualifies it for my wildcard tenth place entry.

RATING: 4 STARS**** (based on my ratings for his previous series)

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The famous and iconic cover of Superman’s very first appearance in Action Comics

COMICS: TOP 10

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.