The Greatest (or at least, My Favorite) Comics of the Decade: Part 1-the complete works

[thehefner]

ANNIHILATION

While the horrendous CIVIL WAR crossover raged across Earth, infesting nearly every major Marvel title for almost a year, Marvel had a far superior crossover quietly unfolding in the background, a grand space opera of asskicking cosmic proportions featuring characters one would hardly consider A-list. Silver Surfer's a biggie, sure, but Ronan the Accuser? Super-Skrull? Frickin' NOVA?! I mean, I'm a DC boy. I love Marvel, but I don't know much about any of these characters, nor did I really care. Notice the past tense. Unless I'm forgetting something, this might well be the single best Marvel event of the decade (which isn't saying much, considering the Bendis/Millar-filled competition).



THE ALCOHOLIC

The first graphic novel by Jonathan Ames (novelist and creator of HBO's series BORED TO DEATH, which I need to watch), drawn by the great Dean Haspiel is kinda like a drunken, neurotic version of BLANKETS. Ames performs storytelling at the Moth in NYC (a minor goal of mine), and those abilities absolutely shine through the writing itself, as if this comic is being performed as you read it. Why this hasn't shown up on any other "best of" lists, I just don't know.



ALL-STAR SUPERMAN

Grant Morrison work can be incredibly frustrating, particularly his run on BATMAN,* but ALL STAR SUPERMAN truly is one of the greatest Superman (and superhero) stories of all time. If I count encompass this series' greatness in two pages, it'd be these. As Mark Waid observed, this series--and those pages--beautifully illustrate the enduring power of Superman. "Gods achieve their power by encouraging us to believe in them," he wrote. "Superman achieves his power by believing in us."



ASTERIOS POLYP

David Mazzucchelli--one of my all-time favorite artists--has totally stepped up his game and delivered the greatest comic I've read all year. He's apparently spent more time teaching the art of comics rather than making his own, and that professor's mentality shines through his magnificent tragicomedy of a down-and-out architecture professor whose life has fallen apart. I am a total sucker for comics that really play with what sequential art--and only sequential art--can do as a medium in ways film and prose cannot. If I may wax pretentious, I see ASTERIOS POLYP as a celebration of the art form itself. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, but regardless, this one might be going on my all-time favorites list (like, top twenty).



BATMAN ADVENTURES

The best BATMAN comics of the decade. Seriously. You wouldn't think to look at it, but this short-lived series of 18 issues carried an understanding of the rich world of Gotham City with far more wit, depth, compassion, and insight than all of Grant Morrison's grand, sweeping ideas. All of the DCAU animated-style BATMAN comics were excellent, but the fourth and final series found the perfect synthesis of B:TAS style and regular DC continuity. Sadly, it was canceled to make way for comics based on THE BATMAN, but not before its final issue delivered the most poignant, powerful take on Joe Chill to date.



CATWOMAN

Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke teamed up to revitalize Catwoman from the lamentable "bad girl" state of disrepair she'd fallen into over the 90's. No longer a spandex clad pair of tits with a bitchy attitude, Selina finally assumed her rightful spot as one of DC's most compelling, complex characters, complete with a sexily practical new costume and great supporting cast (including Sam Bradley, an obscure Golden Age P.I. revised to look like Robert Mitchum, always a plus). Eventually, Cooke left, to be replaced by the magnificent art of Cameron Stewart and Javier Pulido, who carried it through four volumes of excellence that read almost more like an indie comic with crime than a DC tights title. And then DC decided it needed to be a T&A book again for some idiotic reason, hired Paul Gulacy as the new artist, and it all pretty much went to shit. But still, those first four volumes are must-owns.

Special mention should go to Cooke's own stand-alone prequel of sorts, SELINA'S BIG SCORE, a classic heist story in the style of Richard Stark's PARKER series.



Henchgirl considers it to be the greatest Catwoman story of all time, and I'm hard-pressed to find any fault there. She was appalled to discover that most comic fans have never even heard of this, opting instead for such unmitigated shit as CATWOMAN: WHEN IN ROME. It's a crime worse than anything Selina herself has ever done.



CRÉCY

Warren Ellis is one of the most overrated-yet-still-excellent writers out there, purely because he milks the cult of personality thing among his devoted fans who hail him as on par with Alan Moore. He's an amazing writer when he really gives a shit, but too often he pounds out a lot of for-hire work that's usually solid but pretty soulless for the most part. That said, CRÉCY is fucking awesome: a nasty little history lesson about the "Death of Chivalry" in British warfare, told in the caustic flair of a modern-day pub raconteur. If more of Ellis' stuff were like this, even I would be calling him "Internet Jesus" right alongside his fans.



GREEN ARROW: THE ARCHER'S QUEST

I actually have a bit of history with this story, which I'll go into in its own post someday (which I started writing in September. Of 2008.). So I may not be entirely objective when I declare this to be, quite possibly, the definitive GREEN ARROW story. I know people in my fandom have a lot of opinions about Brad Meltzer's later work, but I never hear anybody mention THE ARCHER'S QUEST, which plays to all of Meltzer's strengths of character, dialogue, and relationships.

It's a quiet, introspective story, virtually free from superheroic action (save for a random-yet-awesome Ollie vs. Solomon Grundy battle). Rather, it's a wonderful character study of the recently-resurrected Oliver Queen, taking care of loose threads left behind after his death. There's a moment near the very end that may well rank as the purest essence of the man who is, quite possibly, the most complex DC superhero.



DOCTOR THIRTEEN: ARCHITECTURE AND MORTALITY

This was DC's NEXTWAVE, a hilarious non-stop parade of crack and awesomeness. But more importantly, it's one of the most subversive things DC ever published. So subversive, in fact, that they didn't even realize what it was about until halfway through the run. Underneath the randomness, Mel-Brooks-style wordplay, and hilarious one-liners, DOCTOR THIRTEEN is not just a love letter to even the most obscure and seemingly-stupid characters of comicdom, but also a bold and sharp "fuck you" at a callous comic industry in the wake of INFINITE CRISIS, which slaughtered several dozen such characters in the name of lazy, cheap shock value. Some of the specifics are a little dated now, and some of the targets were not entirely deserving of blame, but DOCTOR THIRTEEN remains one of my fondest feel-good comics ever.



LEX LUTHOR: MAN OF STEEL



LOKI

I'm including these two together because, as two mini-series taking the villain's POV, they both explore similarities beyond merely sharing the same first letter. Lex and Loki both have compelling reasons for loathing their respective enemies, they both see themselves as the heroes of their own story, both struggle to rise above the position they find themselves in, but their arrogance and ego prove to always be their undoing. In the end, seem to go back to status quo: Lex retains every ounce of his power, while Loki has lost it all once again. But this time, you sense that both characters gain a tragic, all-too-small understanding of just why it is that they can never truly be the hero.



NEW FRONTIER

Darwyn Cooke is one of the true masters of comics, and NEW FRONTIER, his love-letter to the Silver Age of DC Comics, shall deservedly remain an iconic superhero classic for generations to come. THIS is the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie that Warner Bros should be making, or at least paying close attention to it as the basis.

And since we're in total Cooke overload between this, CATWOMAN, and SELINA'S BIG SCORE, I'll just throw this bonus in here for shits and giggles:



The first of four planned adaptations of the classic hard-boiled thief, THE HUNTER oozes retro cool and timeless badassery. After being depicted in film by the likes of Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK and Mel Gibson in PAYBACK, Parker is finally does justice under Cooke's pen, and I cannot wait to see the next volume.



PYONGYANG

Y'know what, I'm just gonna copy-paste the AV Club's astute summation: Joe Sacco pioneered comics-as-journalism with books like PALESTINE and SAFE AREA GORAZDE. Quebec’s Guy Delisle carried on the tradition in the ’00s with SHENZEN and PYONGYANG, the latter of which chronicles the time he spent working for a low-budget animation studio in North Korea. It’s simultaneously funny, chilling, and enlightening, providing a rare, detailed look at life behind the last Iron Curtain and its forbidding capital: the closest thing to a real dystopia anyone could hope to find on Earth.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I'll add that Guy's true strength is in how he manages to keep a light, witty tone in parts that could easily have been taken over by the eerie, chilling sights and events he witnessed. A powerful, compelling depiction of a nightmare world many of us barely understand, much less can imagine actually existing outside of a novel.



PUNISHER (MAX)

Garth Ennis has a propensity to lose himself in obnoxious dirty humor and his own obsessive distaste for religion and superheroes. The Punisher is one of the most stupid, boring, two-dimensional characters in all of comicdom. When Ennis started writing THE PUNISHER under the PG-13 style Marvel Knights imprint, the results were about what you'd expect: somewhat amusing, mostly juvenile, and mostly forgettable.

And then the title rebooted over at Marvel's MAX imprint, the mature reader line. The result was a harrowing 60-issue epic that read like a Cormac McCarthy comic series. Ever read/seen NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN or THE ROAD? Like that, but against the backdrop of New York City. PUNISHER may well be Ennis' masterpiece, a chilling tragedy about a man who's utterly dead inside yet still haunted by the ghosts of everything he's lost, including his own soul.



SLEEPER

While the AV Club rightly praises Brubaker and Phillips' wonderful CRIMINAL, the masterwork of their partnership is still SLEEPER. The story of a superpowered government agent who goes undercover in a criminal syndicate run by supervillains, SLEEPER is packed with wonderfully evil characters, plenty of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, healthy doses of meta black humor (whenever the villains are bored, they like to swap origin stories), and twists and turns upon twists and turns. Completely told over just a couple of volumes, SLEEPER is one of those rare, near-perfect comic runs.



SOLO

Not all of Mark Chiarello's ideas took off as well as NEW FRONTIER, and more's the pity for everyone. SOLO was a brilliant series that put the spotlight on a single artist and essentially gave them free reign to create... well, pretty much anything they wanted. As a result, we got to see visionary artists talents like Tim Sale, Richard Corben, Sergio Aragones, Darwyn Cooke, and more just letting loose to the limits of their abilities.

Each issue was thrilling, or at the very least fascinating. Unfortunately, it never found a consistent audience, and SOLO was canceled even though artists like Jill Thompson and George Pratt had reportedly already done their entire issues, which have yet to see the light of day. I long to see those issues, as well as the rest of SOLO, properly collected for future generations. At the very least, they should give us Cooke's whole issue! That one was a particular highlight.



SUPERMAN: SECRET IDENTITY

One of the best Superman comics of all time, and it doesn't even have Superman in it. I'm starting to pass out from exhaustion as I write this, so I hope you'll forgive me for copy-pasting the Booklist blurb off Amazon.com:

Superman's origins have been imagined and reimagined over the years. Here is a new take on the character's roots. Busiek and Immonen start with mild-mannered teen Clark Kent, who, after years of being kidded about his name, suddenly discovers that he has powers like those of his fictional namesake. He feels obligated to use his capabilities for good but realizes that, to live a normal life, he has to operate in secret, performing his superfeats covertly. His precautions prove insufficiently protective, however, and government agents investigating the existence of a real-life superhero have ominous plans for him. Busiek here uses the same trick--setting characters with fantastic powers in a "real-life" world closely resembling that of readers--that has made his Astro City a critical favorite, and Immonen greatly aids him with quietly powerful, realistic artwork. Superman has remained popular for nearly 70 years because of the appeal of having powers "far beyond those of mortal men." Busiek gives us a glimpse of what actually possessing them would probably entail, taking a cue from the contemporary superheroic slogan, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Ditto. *collapses*

In Part Two: the best stories still in progress, the best compilations of older material, and even a couple honorable mentions!

*A month ago, I wrote most of an epic rant about Grant Morrison's BATMAN, but I keep putting off posting it because, well, what's the point? It's not like I'm going to change any opinions.