My Favorite Comic Book Runs
I saw a list of 'greatest' comic book runs, as voted by fans, and it made me consider my own choices. I went through my boxes and what-have-you and came up with a list, which conveniently comes out to 10 items, more or less. From roughly my favorite, down:
#1: Bone 1-50, by Jeff Smith. Just really good. The earliest issues are some of the funniest stuff I've read, but it doesn't suffer when it starts getting more serious later. The giant, fat trade paperback is money well spent!
#2: The Tick 1-12, by Ben Edlund. The Tick is just perfect. There's scarcely a single panel I would change in the whole thing, and it just kept getting better and better. The Tick #11 and #12 are some of the finest comics out there. The sad thing is Ben Edlund went Hollywood with the cartoon, then the tv show, then doing producer work for shows like Angel, and #12 ends on a dramatic cliffhanger with many unresolved plotlines, so The Tick is kind of a bittersweet addition to the list.
#3: Alan Davis on Captain Britain. This goes from his redesign in Marvel UK comics to Alan Davis's work in Excalibur. During these issues, Alan Davis's art was accompanied by many writers, including Alan Moore and Chris Claremont, but it was never better than when he wrote it himself. There is so much good stuff in there: Captain Britain's growth as a person, the Fury, Mad Jim Jaspers, Meggan, Captain UK, the Technet, the Crazy Gang, and some of the finest stories with Kitty, Nightcrawler, and Rachel Summers. Alan Davis really takes pride in his work and it shows. Not only does his long-term association with the Captain give the series great consistency and continuity, but Alan also was very careful to be respectful of the X-Men characters. My favorite story element he used was for a foe to be rendered harmless or even friendly by natural plot development, especially in a time when careless killing off of characters was the norm.
#4: Jim Lee on Spider-Man. This encompasses Amazing Fantasy #15, and most of the Amazing Spider-Man up through about the 120's. I got The Essential Spider-Man #1 many years back and was blown away by how good it was. It was everything that's good about superhero comics. If you ever want to understand why Spider-Man works, just read the old classic Stan Lee stories. I hear there are two collections of the newspaper strips by Stan and John Romita that are quite good too. Spider-Man hasn't been written as well since, though there have been noteably good runs, like Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo, and Tom DeFalco in the early to mid-80's.
#5: Alan Davis on ClanDestine. After he finished Excalibur, Alan Davis was told by his editor that he should create his own series. He created a series about a very long-lived family of superbeings, who mostly just want to remain anonymous. This is threatened by outside sources and the youngest generation wanting to be superheroes, and it kind of goes from there. Though it has been cut short on multiple occassions, the issues we got are very intriguing, and as I said above, Alan Davis takes pride in his work and is very respectful toward other people's characters, so guest characters are always in top form.
#6: Chris Claremont on X-Men. Well, this one had to be on here somewhere, right? Chris took other people's characters and slowly developed them and the franchise into the industry giant. His real love for the characters shines through, and it's hard to read them as written by anyone else. I'm including the mountains of mini-series, specials, and the Wolverine regular series, here. Half of my favorite characters are Chris's versions of X-Men: Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Magneto...
#7: Chris Claremont on New Mutants. This series was almost as good as X-Men overall, and frankly, it was hitting its peak when he left with issue #54, so I can only wonder what would have happened if he had stayed on. Sadly, like Excalibur and ClanDestine, the New Mutants kind of petered out and fell into obscurity without their creator to guide them. Popular characters like Warlock and Magik were killed off, while intriguing characters like Magma, Karma, and the Hellions kind of just faded away.
#8: Groo the Wanderer. Classic Mad Magazine comic artist Sergio Argones created a great here, with the incredibly dumb title character, which is sort of a Conan parody at his root, I think. With lots of mulch and cheese dip and frays and a dog that's smarter than he is, Groo somehow lasted over 100 issues without getting old. It would be wrong of me to not mention that Mark Evanier was the writer for every single issue, if I'm not mistaken.
#9: Jim Starlin on Thanos. Jim Starlin hijacked Iron Man #55 in order to use a bunch of characters he wanted to use, Thanos being the foremost of them, thinking he might not get another chance. Before long, he hijacked Captain Marvel to continue the stories of these characters, leading to cosmic tales, ultimately ending with Thanos's death. It wasn't long before he hijacked Warlock and brought Thanos back as a villain, once again leading to his death. A good decade later, he hijacked Silver Surfer to bring back guess who in his very first issue? This lead to the Infinity Gauntlet, which is probably the best-remembered of the Thanos stories. With Thanos appearing at the end of the Avengers movie, these old stories have become available in trade paperback, and I was able to read them. It's interesting to see how Jim Starlin kept topping himself. He wrote more after the Infinity Gauntlet -- including a Thanos mini-series and Marvel Universe: The End a decade ago -- but frankly, the followups to the Infinity Gauntlet were typical of the money grabs Marvel was producing at the time, and even though Jim Starlin wrote them and made them pretty convincing follow ups, the end of the Infinity Gauntlet #6 is a pretty good stopping place for Thanos's tale.
#10: The Maxx #1-20. When The Maxx was announced among Image's early lineup, I was not impressed. I really disliked Sam Kieth's art, and The Maxx just looked like one of many big, beefy guys with bad attitudes amongst Image's characters of the time. Then I watched the first episode of the cartoon and was completely blown away. The concepts really made me think, and the voice work was excellent. Bill Messner-Loebs' dialogue was excellent. (He wrote the first twenty issues of the comic.) The cartoon ends with #11 of the comic series, and the second season never arose, so that made me all the more interested in the comics. Extremely weird, quirky, dark, and funny: just what I was looking for in the mid-90's!
#11: Peter David on The Incredible Hulk. When the Hulk first appeared, he was grey and smart. They couldn't get a consistent color of grey with the cheap printing they were using, so after two issues he became green, and gradually he became the dumb Hulk we know best. (He also changed at night instead of when he was angry.) This was all forgotten as part of the growing pains of creating the character. Then in the 80's, the Hulk suddenly reverted to his old grey self. He was smarter, but weaker, much nastier, and changed at night. Peter David took over the writing duties on the book shortly thereafter, and it was very good. He initially battled the Leader, leading to his apparent death, which lead to him becoming the grey Hulk all the time and getting a job as a bouncer in Las Vegas. This lead to an entertaining parade of adversaries: Absorbing Man, Spider-Man, the Thing, Doctor Doom, Iron Man, Grey Gargoyle, Abomination, Mr. Hyde, Freedom Force, Super Skrull, Santa Claus... This in turn lead to the green Hulk starting to emerge, which in turn lead to Doc Samson combining the personalities into one super Hulk, with Bruce Banner's smarts and the green Hulk's strength and the grey Hulk's bad attitude and cunning. He joined a group of semi-immortals called The Pantheon, doing sort of global vigilantism with them for a while, ultimately ending with the Hulk finding out the Pantheon's leader wasn't such a nice guy, and the stress reverting him to an inversion of his current self: a version of Bruce Banner with the Hulk's mind. He is restored to the super Hulk and the Pantheon is mostly destroyed, with the Hulk wandering for a while after that. Frankly, it kind of loses direction after that and I stop at #426. I haven't been very patient with Peter David in recent years, given his tendency to write every team the same, and using every opportunity to put in lame puns, even if it completely kills the atmosphere of the story, but this was his best work, I feel. Art by Todd McFarlane (pre-Spider-Man), Jeff Purves, Dale Keowne, and Gary Frank doesn't hurt, either. It's quite a ride, though perhaps it took the Hulk away from being his recongizable self for too many years...
#1: Bone 1-50, by Jeff Smith. Just really good. The earliest issues are some of the funniest stuff I've read, but it doesn't suffer when it starts getting more serious later. The giant, fat trade paperback is money well spent!
#2: The Tick 1-12, by Ben Edlund. The Tick is just perfect. There's scarcely a single panel I would change in the whole thing, and it just kept getting better and better. The Tick #11 and #12 are some of the finest comics out there. The sad thing is Ben Edlund went Hollywood with the cartoon, then the tv show, then doing producer work for shows like Angel, and #12 ends on a dramatic cliffhanger with many unresolved plotlines, so The Tick is kind of a bittersweet addition to the list.
#3: Alan Davis on Captain Britain. This goes from his redesign in Marvel UK comics to Alan Davis's work in Excalibur. During these issues, Alan Davis's art was accompanied by many writers, including Alan Moore and Chris Claremont, but it was never better than when he wrote it himself. There is so much good stuff in there: Captain Britain's growth as a person, the Fury, Mad Jim Jaspers, Meggan, Captain UK, the Technet, the Crazy Gang, and some of the finest stories with Kitty, Nightcrawler, and Rachel Summers. Alan Davis really takes pride in his work and it shows. Not only does his long-term association with the Captain give the series great consistency and continuity, but Alan also was very careful to be respectful of the X-Men characters. My favorite story element he used was for a foe to be rendered harmless or even friendly by natural plot development, especially in a time when careless killing off of characters was the norm.
#4: Jim Lee on Spider-Man. This encompasses Amazing Fantasy #15, and most of the Amazing Spider-Man up through about the 120's. I got The Essential Spider-Man #1 many years back and was blown away by how good it was. It was everything that's good about superhero comics. If you ever want to understand why Spider-Man works, just read the old classic Stan Lee stories. I hear there are two collections of the newspaper strips by Stan and John Romita that are quite good too. Spider-Man hasn't been written as well since, though there have been noteably good runs, like Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo, and Tom DeFalco in the early to mid-80's.
#5: Alan Davis on ClanDestine. After he finished Excalibur, Alan Davis was told by his editor that he should create his own series. He created a series about a very long-lived family of superbeings, who mostly just want to remain anonymous. This is threatened by outside sources and the youngest generation wanting to be superheroes, and it kind of goes from there. Though it has been cut short on multiple occassions, the issues we got are very intriguing, and as I said above, Alan Davis takes pride in his work and is very respectful toward other people's characters, so guest characters are always in top form.
#6: Chris Claremont on X-Men. Well, this one had to be on here somewhere, right? Chris took other people's characters and slowly developed them and the franchise into the industry giant. His real love for the characters shines through, and it's hard to read them as written by anyone else. I'm including the mountains of mini-series, specials, and the Wolverine regular series, here. Half of my favorite characters are Chris's versions of X-Men: Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Magneto...
#7: Chris Claremont on New Mutants. This series was almost as good as X-Men overall, and frankly, it was hitting its peak when he left with issue #54, so I can only wonder what would have happened if he had stayed on. Sadly, like Excalibur and ClanDestine, the New Mutants kind of petered out and fell into obscurity without their creator to guide them. Popular characters like Warlock and Magik were killed off, while intriguing characters like Magma, Karma, and the Hellions kind of just faded away.
#8: Groo the Wanderer. Classic Mad Magazine comic artist Sergio Argones created a great here, with the incredibly dumb title character, which is sort of a Conan parody at his root, I think. With lots of mulch and cheese dip and frays and a dog that's smarter than he is, Groo somehow lasted over 100 issues without getting old. It would be wrong of me to not mention that Mark Evanier was the writer for every single issue, if I'm not mistaken.
#9: Jim Starlin on Thanos. Jim Starlin hijacked Iron Man #55 in order to use a bunch of characters he wanted to use, Thanos being the foremost of them, thinking he might not get another chance. Before long, he hijacked Captain Marvel to continue the stories of these characters, leading to cosmic tales, ultimately ending with Thanos's death. It wasn't long before he hijacked Warlock and brought Thanos back as a villain, once again leading to his death. A good decade later, he hijacked Silver Surfer to bring back guess who in his very first issue? This lead to the Infinity Gauntlet, which is probably the best-remembered of the Thanos stories. With Thanos appearing at the end of the Avengers movie, these old stories have become available in trade paperback, and I was able to read them. It's interesting to see how Jim Starlin kept topping himself. He wrote more after the Infinity Gauntlet -- including a Thanos mini-series and Marvel Universe: The End a decade ago -- but frankly, the followups to the Infinity Gauntlet were typical of the money grabs Marvel was producing at the time, and even though Jim Starlin wrote them and made them pretty convincing follow ups, the end of the Infinity Gauntlet #6 is a pretty good stopping place for Thanos's tale.
#10: The Maxx #1-20. When The Maxx was announced among Image's early lineup, I was not impressed. I really disliked Sam Kieth's art, and The Maxx just looked like one of many big, beefy guys with bad attitudes amongst Image's characters of the time. Then I watched the first episode of the cartoon and was completely blown away. The concepts really made me think, and the voice work was excellent. Bill Messner-Loebs' dialogue was excellent. (He wrote the first twenty issues of the comic.) The cartoon ends with #11 of the comic series, and the second season never arose, so that made me all the more interested in the comics. Extremely weird, quirky, dark, and funny: just what I was looking for in the mid-90's!
#11: Peter David on The Incredible Hulk. When the Hulk first appeared, he was grey and smart. They couldn't get a consistent color of grey with the cheap printing they were using, so after two issues he became green, and gradually he became the dumb Hulk we know best. (He also changed at night instead of when he was angry.) This was all forgotten as part of the growing pains of creating the character. Then in the 80's, the Hulk suddenly reverted to his old grey self. He was smarter, but weaker, much nastier, and changed at night. Peter David took over the writing duties on the book shortly thereafter, and it was very good. He initially battled the Leader, leading to his apparent death, which lead to him becoming the grey Hulk all the time and getting a job as a bouncer in Las Vegas. This lead to an entertaining parade of adversaries: Absorbing Man, Spider-Man, the Thing, Doctor Doom, Iron Man, Grey Gargoyle, Abomination, Mr. Hyde, Freedom Force, Super Skrull, Santa Claus... This in turn lead to the green Hulk starting to emerge, which in turn lead to Doc Samson combining the personalities into one super Hulk, with Bruce Banner's smarts and the green Hulk's strength and the grey Hulk's bad attitude and cunning. He joined a group of semi-immortals called The Pantheon, doing sort of global vigilantism with them for a while, ultimately ending with the Hulk finding out the Pantheon's leader wasn't such a nice guy, and the stress reverting him to an inversion of his current self: a version of Bruce Banner with the Hulk's mind. He is restored to the super Hulk and the Pantheon is mostly destroyed, with the Hulk wandering for a while after that. Frankly, it kind of loses direction after that and I stop at #426. I haven't been very patient with Peter David in recent years, given his tendency to write every team the same, and using every opportunity to put in lame puns, even if it completely kills the atmosphere of the story, but this was his best work, I feel. Art by Todd McFarlane (pre-Spider-Man), Jeff Purves, Dale Keowne, and Gary Frank doesn't hurt, either. It's quite a ride, though perhaps it took the Hulk away from being his recongizable self for too many years...