Completely Self-absorbed Top 100 Comic Runs You Need to Read

[Blue Cactus]

I was nine when the first Tim Burton Batman film was released and became a big fan. At that time there was a great monthly DC reprint comic which featured the ongoing Grant/Breyfogle stuff alongside selected other stories - some earlier ones, strange obscurities and some classics like Year One. As such I'm still very very fond of the Grant / Breyfogle run but haven't read any of it for well over twenty years. More recently I also enjoyed the Morrison stuff. DKR I first read in my mid teens and found it a bit of a slog, to be honest, thought I did enjoy it. Some of that was down to the very deliberate slow pacing and Millar's tired, lumbering tank of a Batman, which was a big contrast to Breyfogle's fluid, shadow-flitting detective.

[Colin YNWA]

As I've suggested both the Grant Breyfogle and the GMozz run's will be featuring on my list.

One aspect of the GMozz run I'm particularly fond of is the way it dealt with the circle of a heroes tales when they are a long ongoing continuity. I've always read the Ouroboros stuff as saying, well yes all this happened but find which bit of the circling story that works for you and thats all you need to worry about. Otherwise your in a self devouring cycle of trying to fit it all in your head. Love what you love and don't sweat the rest.

My takes are often wrong!

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I had those in the Eaglemoss run. They looked great and I enjoyed them enough, but they didn't stick in my keepers pile. Looking at that, it currently comprises (bar Year One/Killing Joke*+Man Who Laughs/DKR) Doom that Came to Gotham, Court of Owls/City of Owls, and three or four books all written by Paul Dini. I've no idea if this is Batman sacrilege, akin to being very excited about Sonny Steelgrave Dredd.

* Which I'm half keeping because of its importance in comics. I can't say I like it at all.

Half of my Morrison collection are the Eaglemoss volumes and half of it are the trade paperbacks, and yes, the differences in size does annoy me a lot when I look at them on my bookshelf! I'm keeping them for the time being but if I ever needed to raise some cash quickly I think they'd be among the first to go, I did really enjoy it but I can't ever imagine rereading them now.

There's a good few Bat titles I'd like to read but out of my current collection the only ones I'd definitely keep are The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns and Death In The Family, the latter's not a great read but it took place during my early teenage years and I still find myself amused that the fate of a character was decided by a telephone vote, and that it went in the direction that it did.

[IndigoPrime]

I think Death In The Family is in my to-read pile. I still have about 20 DC partworks from my big Batman box and also those cheapo Zavvi deals from years ago. Good enough to read, but it's surprising how few I care about keeping. (Mind you, that beats the Panini Marvels, all of which are heading elsewhere, bar perhaps MWOM if there's enough there I don't have in HC.)

[Le Fink]

Thanks for posting Colin! I read DKR in the collected format, not sure when - probably in my late teens, or very early 20s. It was my first graphic novel, away from the 2000AD Titan books. It was also my first DC and so Batman comic, and first experience of Frank Miller. I was absolutely blown away by it - I loved it. The little vox-pops panels were novel to me, and the take on various characters being interviewed in them amusingly snarky.

I found the stories really gripping and wasn't bothered by the politics. The art was sometimes a bit loose but all held together well enough, with several really great splashes. Yindel I thought was a good foil, good to see Batman having to battle the cops. Kelley/Robin a good addition, add child endangerment to the list indeed. I thought the take on Superman as a government stooge was inventive, and the Supes v Batman battle well done. The treatment for Harvey was great, the mutant leader suitably grotesque, Joker was ghastly, the final confrontation with Joker in the tunnel, surrounded by cops, all is lost - just really exciting stuff, well told. Bats generally gets through by the skin of his teeth - he's older, and vulnerable. He's rescued by his ward a couple of times.

Now, I haven't read it for over a decade, maybe two, so I need to give it another go. But for now I only have fond memories for it!

I've not read much Bats in general, so I'd be interested in people's choice picks. I am currently working my way through the Grant Morrison omnibuses. I found the first one a drag, I hope things improve. The art is flashy but often I can't make out what's meant to be going on. There is a lot of jumping around and then exposition to cover the jumps. I'm finding it a bit dull to be honest.

[Le Fink]

Oh yes I've got and read the Killing Joke. Art aside, I didn't particularly like it. Not one I'll be reading again soon.

[Funt Solo]

There is another magic in Dredd, which I don't see in Batman or the Marvel stuff I'm slowly ploughing through: it's not a revolving door. There are few recurring villains. You don't every few issues see Villain 7 from a selection of 20 wheeled out, or yet another scrap between superheroes. So even given the hand-wave getting older thing (which seems slightly absurd given that Dredd started having doubts in, what the 300s or 400s and actually quit in the 600s), I think Dredd holds up as an ongoing well compared to many other strips.

Dredd does a good job of keeping the threats fresh, yes. The ones that do get wheeled back around stand out, because of it. I rather liked Owen Krysler becoming The Mutant. On the one hand, resurrecting Mean Angel was a bit convenient (author's regret, there), but he really was too great a character to have killed off. It was good that he had a missing arm, and then they did eventually age him out.

I didn't like last year's The Hagger They Fall exactly because it suggests that all these interstellar villains have a long-term boner for Dredd - who's just some cop they met once. Like, "the thing from the pit" - a monster from a Texas City theme park, gives a shit that Dredd broke its arm decades ago? Mind you, I've not enjoyed the entire Red Queen arc because it relied too heavily on a recurring Orlok, and now it's knotting itself into Maitland continuity. Humbug!

I should stop ranting, now. Pretty sure I'm inventing a splinter-thread.

Carry on!

[Colin YNWA]

From one extreme to another today. From the super popular dark and gritty world of The Batman, which has drawn so much good chat, and now, well its Time for Something Completely Different that I don't think a lot of folks will have read, but more of us certainly should.



Number 107 - Squid Bits

Keywords: Funny, All Ages, Hilarious, LOL. Amusing

Creators:
Writer - Jess Bradley
Art - Jess Bradley
Colours - Jess Bradley

Publisher: The Phoenix Comic (I think)

No. issues: I've no idea to be honest - it's appeared in maybe 400 pages across the issues of The Phoenix

Date of Publication: 2014 to date

Last read: Still reading it.

Sometimes you love something just because it's funny. That's the case with


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley

I'm not sure there's much to say about this and I did consider just posting a load of images of the hilarious gags that appear in this brilliant series and that will say just about everything you need to know about this one. There are a few bits I want to say though.

Firstly this just about qualifies. That's on the basis that I've chosen to exclude single panel gag or editorial cartoons and Squid Bits contains a lot of those. It also has however a number of short sequential gags so it counts. Squid Bits is a series of one or two page jokes collections that appears pretty damned regularly in The Phoenix - The Weekly Story Comic by Jess Bradley. I have to be honest I'm not sure where ownership lies and whether Jess Bradley retains ownership or the comic does? Either way it must be a pretty healthy relationship as it has appeared most weeks for almost 10 years now. Initially as two pages a week. These days normally one.

Best way to give folks a clear understanding of Squid Bits is to just post a couple and so...


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley

That's it really. That's all you need to know. If you found those as funny as I do then you know why it's on the list. If you don't, then aside from having a cold dead heart, we also know this isn't the series for you!

There are a number of recurring characters and ideas, Red Panda - Nature's Jerk, Art Shark, Horoscopes, Business Dog, Oh Banana, the 'doodles' on the page commenting - Jess Bradley has surely read some Jamie Hewlett - and so many more. But let's be clear they don't grow or develop. There's no insights or character driven stories that give self perspective. No, they just make you laugh.

A LOT.


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley

And you know what. That's enough in this case.

I do wonder if this is proxy for a host of Phoenix strips that I adore and this just happens to be my favourite of those. Doug Slugman P.I., The Lovely Pirates, Doggo are all just fantastic gag strips from The Phoenix and its very possible any of them could have had this slot, but one of them definitely needed to and Squid Bits has long been my favourite of these, so it gets the space. I think there might be a few entries like that. An entry deserving of the space in and of itself but also a standard bearer for other strips almost as good.

Tell you what since we're here I'll tell you why this makes the list as one of MY favourite comics. When I got the kids a subscription to The Phoenix we used to lie on the living room floor and read it together. I remember reading Squid Bits and thinking - gosh are the kids going to get this, is this a little too surreal for them. Of course they adored it. They got as much from its nonsense brilliance as I did, more possibly.

The Girl child was the first to move on from those shared readings. Now even the Boy Child reads the comic first and then passes it onto me. BUT we still discuss how good Squid Bits is over the tea sometimes and pick out particular favourites.

Then I'll ask the Boy Child to draw a birthday card or what not and while he'll not copy anything from the strip the surreal leftfield humour will shine through in what he produces. The glorious, carefree, magical comedy of these pieces has set a seed in his brain. I'm very happy to say I don't think that will ever quite ever leave him.

That's why Squid Bits is on this list, and damn it should be higher.


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley

So that's it. A really short one this time. Please don't read that as a lack of passion for this comic series. Far from it, it's just that it's that good as it's simply that funny. Jess Bradley's art is superb, fresh and clean and carries the humour so well. She is a relentless joke engine crafting brilliant laugh after brilliant laugh week in week out with a seemingly endless source of good ideas, that is quite remarkable.

In this case though the work really does speak for itself!


Copyright - The Phoenix or Jess Bradley

Where to find it

Well most weeks in The Phoenix Weekly Story Comic. It does take the odd break but this is there most of the time.

It's not been collected on its own yet but you will get samples in The Phoenix Colossal Comics Collection. I think Volume 2 has most, one doesn't have much alas.

You can pick up back issues of the Phoenix really cheaply and easily in the aftermarket. Really worth it for Squid Bits and so much more!

I'm not aware that these are available digitally unfortunately.

Learn more

No Obligatory Wikipedia page for this one.

And frankly not very much else as well. Jess Bradley has a website and does Instagram if you do.

What is all this?

Conscious that this is becoming a long thread and if you're wondering what the heck you've just read and can't be arsed (quite sensibly) to search back to find out I'll link to my opening posts that try to explain all this.

What this all came from

And of course a nerd won't do a list like this without setting 'Rules' / guidelines

Some thoughts on what will not be on the list.

[Barrington Boots]

Squid Bits RULES. My brother often sends me this from his kids copy of the Phoenix. Delighted and surprised to find it on this list.

His children love this and this kind of humour. Without wanting to do another '40 something bloke says how Regened should be', I always see this kind of stuff go over so well with children and I thought a page of little weird jokes like this would have been worth a punt.

Great choice Colin!

[Colin YNWA]

Squid Bits RULES. My brother often sends me this from his kids copy of the Phoenix. Delighted and surprised to find it on this list.

His children love this and this kind of humour. Without wanting to do another '40 something bloke says how Regened should be', I always see this kind of stuff go over so well with children and I thought a page of little weird jokes like this would have been worth a punt.

Great choice Colin!

Cool Beans. I genuninely love this strip - another great example of real all ages. Funny, is funny regardless.

I also like the fact that I feel to it so naturally when doing my list. For all my pontificatin' and wordifyin' on other posts sometimes things are just great for the simplest of reasons and this is a case in point.

[IndigoPrime]

I'm pretty sure during the Jess Bradley draw-a-long, they said a Squid Bits collection of some kind was coming out this year. As for The Phoenix in general, it has a lot going for it. I'm slightly miffed the publisher didn't redo all of Bunny vs Monkey in the HC editions, because I would have bought them all and put them up with my Peanuts collections.

[Hawkmumbler]

"You have 20 seconds to comply!" Is absolutely squeezed in for the parents sneaking a read of their kids Phoenix.

These are all so sweet!

[Colin YNWA]

I'm pretty sure during the Jess Bradley draw-a-long, they said a Squid Bits collection of some kind was coming out this year. 

Oh that us good news. The boy child is going to a Jess Bradley masterclass later this month so hopefully something will be said then.

[Colin YNWA]

Number 106 - Bad Company

Keywords: War, Battle, Peter Milligan, Identity, 2000ad, formative

Creators:
Writer - Peter Milligan
Art - Brett Ewins, Jim McCarthy, Rufus Dayglo
Colours - It's all in lovely Black and White - well except when its not and then I think its by Brett Ewins and or Jim McCarthy.

Publisher: Rebellion

No. issues: Not sure by a very rough estimate about 24ish US comics would cover this
Date of Publication: 1986 - 2018

Last read: 2022

The observant amongst you will note I include Rufus Dayglo in the art bit. Yes I'm going to do it, I'm going to stand up for not only Kano, but the later stories as well. I felt I should warn you of that from the off as later


Copyright - Rebellion

can get a pretty hard time and I personally think it stands up really well, one exception aside which we'll get to.... Or just try to avoid talking about too much.

Being the second 2000ad entry on the list, a recap of what this one is about seems redundant, but who knows who's reading these (I wish!) So let's get some basics in. Bad Company started life as a Dredd World story written for the abandoned first go at a Judge Dredd comic by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Carlos Ezquerra. When the comic didn't launch the strip wasn't abandoned but handed over to Pete Milligan and co. They really stripped it right back and the final product became an examination of the horrors of war more explicitly, pulling in the idea of Wagner's Darkie's Mob in Battle.

The first story follows Danny Franks and a troop of raw recruits fighting a war against vicious aliens, the none too subtly named Krool on the planet Ararat. His unit is overrun and seems doomed, only to be saved by Bad Company and their leader Kano. Bad Company is a unit of renegade misfits, fighting a guerilla war against the Krool. The survivors of Danny's unit are allowed to join Bad Company but need to quickly adapt to their ways and prove their worth or they struggle to survive. Most are killed as we witness Danny and the few of his fellow recruits who survive become hardened and brutalised by what they have to do to survive. On the surface a pretty well rehearsed war is hell type tale. Under that surface it deals with that must Milligan of themes identity and the dehumanising impacts of extreme circumstances.


Copyright - Rebellion

The tale of Danny, Kano and Bad Company continues through six more stories, shattered through 2000ad's history, all of which take a different war story trope. Book II follows Book I pretty closely  and involves the assembly of a commando group created to launch a desperate mission into the very heart of the Krool world - literally as it happens. This story shares themes with the first, but also touches on spiritualism and philosophies. It also raises the fascinating (very spoilery - skip to the end of the paragraph if you plan to read this story) question of why Danny Franks is chosen to become the new Krool Heart, the centre of the hivemind that drives the Krool. My answer is it exposes the fact that since Danny is our POV character, and represents the everyman and the way war impacts on them, that any of us are capable of becoming the very thing we fight against, but later stories add fresh light on that which I will return to.

We then had to wait 5 years for the third, which focuses on Kano and indeed is simply called 'Kano' as he tries to come to terms with the end of his war and to settle down into civilian life. I'm going to come back to Kano later. The fourth, appeared 9 years after 'Kano'... well it's there and as it's a relatively short note in the series I'm largely going to skip over it.

There was a further 13 years between Bad Company '2002' and its return in 'First Casualties' and 'Terrorists' which followed shortly after. These two stories came out after the sad passing of Brett Ewins and saw Rufus Dayglo take over on art. They deal with the veteran soldiers, many of whom had died in the first story, long after the war had ended, being sidelined. They fight the powers that be in a world that doesn't need them anymore, to expose the truth behind the Ararat War.

It's clear Peter Milligan has never quite been done with Bad Company. Whenever he gets snaffled up by the American comics market as they recognise what an exceptional writer he is, something seems to draw him back to Bad Company. I think it's because by its very nature it's a really good vehicle for carrying a story about war and as alas war never leaves us as time goes on Peter Milligan gets more stories that he wishes to reflect on war in and so he returns to his classic. It's this flexible, robust nature that in part informs why I like almost all of Bad Company (let's skip 2002 shall we) so much, when many fans will look at Books I and II as the real quality and see later books as best ignored.


Copyright - Rebellion

I'd like to unpick that a bit here as it's important as to why this story places on the list, as a whole, remember I'm trying to judge things in their entirety (however I define that entirety admittedly)  and I think all of Bad Company (yeah yeah 2002) is really good.  First Casualties and Terrorists, the most recent stories upset many fans as they overturned much of what we 'saw' in the first two, fan favourite books of the series. They certainly don't fit in with the established continuity. Characters like Thrax and Mad Tommy, seen killed in previous stories, return with no reference or explanation. Indeed Kano spends large parts of these stories with half his head blown away - a clear reference to the reveal at the end of the first story.

Now at first glance none of this makes any sense. Yet the reason behind it all is very front and central to the whole piece. It's in the title 'First Casualties', as the saying goes the first casualty of war is truth. The theme that runs through these two stories. Due to that through the whole of Bad Company, regardless of whether we've seen them die, exposes the truth behind the war with the Krool, and who the real 'bad guys' are. That single idea means you can play with this story, and indeed previous stories as you see fit. You can find your truth in the stories that work for you. You can see the latter books as not the truth, the victims of war and out of continuity works of fictional reportage. After all, Kano runs through most of them with half a head. Or you can view these stories as largely true, and the earlier ones the work of Boys Own fiction. This doesn't take those truly excellent stories away from us, even if they are stories and not 'what happened' we still have them, we can still love them and be enthralled by them.

The themes and ideas of these latter stories can, if you choose, change meaning in the first stories in other ways. For example I make a reading that casts fresh light on the end of Book II when Danny is chosen to become the Krool Heart. Given the revelations of Terrorists it's entirely possible that the Krool selected a human host to broker peace. Or similarly if the Krool Heart is a driver for war then the fact that it 'becomes' human says much about the origin of the war. These new stories cast new possibilities onto the old ones. They enhance them rather than detract from them. As well as being great stories in their own right.


Copyright - Rebellion

Similarly Kano isn't universally well received, but I really like it. I really like it. For me it's on a par with the first two. It's certainly not as bombastic, there's a different pace, but then it's telling a different type of War story . This is The Deer Hunter to Book 1's Apocalypse Now. On a planet where people literally can't escape their past, for an hour everyday time runs backwards, Kano is trying to live a civilian life. As might be expected this does not go well. 

The story is quite clearly dealing with post traumatic stress but really takes the ideas we've seen in many stories across different media, that of veterans not being able to live a normal life, to 2000ad extremes. The mental anguish that Kano faces means that even aided by a planet, a good planet, that 'gives you what you need.' he is unable to sustain a family. When his new life starts to unpeel, the planet gives him Thrax, arguably the worst of Bad Company. You can't keep the now twice resurrected Thrax down! It's powerful stuff, different in pacing, but not tone to the two original stories. Adding to the idea that Bad Company isn't really about Kano and co, rather a vehicle to examine any aspect of war and that the characters need to be malleable to support this. Requiring the reader to be likewise flexible.

For me all the stories (2002 aside) really, really work well and build from each other and each subsequent tale add something to what's gone before.


Copyright - Rebellion

The art across the series is interesting. Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy make an incredible pairing in the first two books. It's both so easy on the eye and so comfortable to read, yet effortlessly conveys the hyper-realised horrors of war the story demands. It looks both solid and grounded when it needs to, yet psychedelic (which is impressive in black and white!) and trippy at others. The imaginative character and creature design is quite brilliant and even the most surreal of events seem plausible. It's an astonishing piece of work.

Kano moves to colour and while it adopts the more stylised approach to Ewins art of much of the 90s work, it's no less effective. The use of colour is particularly effective. A phrase I've used before when discussing the colour work on Six Gun Gorilla applies just as well here. It's sickly and uncomfortable, yet in a way that while jarring actually enhances the storytelling and reading experience. Its palette isn't like anything I've really seen before or since.

The work by Rufus Dayglo in the latter two stories returns to black and white which is a shame for two reasons. Firstly I think Dayglo's art work is much better when coloured, his colour work really pops. For me this would have also enhanced the differences between these stories and the first. Flagging my reading (which of course may not be the intended reading!) that the original are a black and white telling of a tale, the later one's a more 'complete' truth, all be it if Dayglo had provided his colours, one with eye popping hyper-reality built in. Anyway it's not so I shouldn't have got distracted there! It's in black and white and is entirely effective, if not on a par with the astonishing work of the first books.

One of the key strengths of Bad Company, certainly the earliest is they provide arguably the best early example of 2000ad growing up and shifting its focus to an older teen audience. Halo Jones clearly does this, but is such an outlier in the comic, in character and themes. Bad Company does a very smart thing, it tells a story that is so 2000ad in tone and presentation, an all action war story, but layers things under its surface, and indeed in moments in the art, to subvert that 'traditional' all action idea into something with much deeper meaning. It's fair to say that many 2000ad stories were doing this, Wagner and Grant's Dredd had been for years, but Bad Company feels like the first story specifically designed to do this.

I was 14 when it started, had been back onboard with the Prog for a year or so and suddenly this story appeared that took all those strips I'd loved in comics as a kid and turned them into a pop art explosion of things I knew I wasn't quite getting, right in front of me. It gave me a story I recognised from my previous formative reading, one I could lap up on a visceral level, but one that I knew was doing more. That I didn't quite get to what that 'more' was didn't matter to me. It sparked something. This thing needed re-reading, this thing made me try to understand and think about what meaning was there. I talked about it to my brother and the few friends still reading comics in a way that was different.

Where Halo Jones (I'd only read Book 3 at this point) left me a little agog and intimidated by what it was doing with my comic. Bad Company invited me in, soothed by nerves by being so brutally familiar, but challenged me to be a better (comic) reader as well.

That the series went on to stretch and tell other stories, to be a robust vehicle for the examination of war as time has gone on, has only served to make it go up even further in my estimations.


Copyright - Rebellion

Where to find it

To my surprise this isn't as available as I thought it would be. Everything has been released but some seem out of print and going for silly money in certain areas of the aftermarket.

You can pick up the Progs these stories appeared in pretty easily I'd imagine. For the issue number there's a couple of links below that will sort you out.

You can get the digital collections from Rebellion easily enough. The Complete Bad Company is available for a lovely tenner and collects all the stories before First Casulties.


Learn more

As I've said before, for all things 2000ad our own Funt Solo's 2000ad in Stages is a must see source...

As is is your first go to port of call.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Company_(comics)]Obligatory Wikipedia page

Beyond that though I'm a little surprised to discover there's not a great deal more out there. Maybe I missed things but I thought they'd be plenty of critical evaluation of this well regarded series?

What is all this?

Conscious that this is becoming a long thread and if you're wondering what the heck you've just read and can't be arsed (quite sensibly) to search back to find out I'll link to my opening posts that try to explain all this.

What this all came from

And of course a nerd won't do a list like this without setting 'Rules' / guidelines

Some thoughts on what will not be on the list.

[broodblik]

The first two books of Bad Company was awesome but as time progressed the follow-ups quality deteriorated with each new book. The last Bad Company Terrorists was maybe a bridge too far and the series should have already been at the sunset and not waiting to ride towards it.