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

[BadlyDrawnKano]

...And I've very conflicting feelings about Black Hammer, though partially that's because I loved how it began, but then it ended in a manner I didn't gel with, except that wasn't the ending, and what I've read of it since then has left me unsure of the direction it's going in. I've yet to finish it currently, and I don't even know if the most recent ending is the final ending, and given that I'm not sure I've the inclination to find out...

Oh man I have mixed feeling about Black Hammer - The End. I'd pretty much loved all of Black Hammer to that point, the odd exception aside and think I've got pretty much it all. Then 'The End' kinda read like the very thing it was paying tribute to as an inspiration. Just a great big event comic tyoe feel. Now that doesn't feel like it should have been a bad thing, but it strangely was on first reading.

Black Hammer has its place on my countdown and that set now BUT I had such mixed feeling about the end I've got that final (I believe) series out to re-read before I write it up as it may well change my entry (if not postion) as it might become about how sticking the landing can be so important!

We'll see I have a suspision I'll enjoy it more on re-read so I'm trying to reserve judgement!

Ah, that's disappointing to hear, and I think I'll probably relegate this to picking up the trades in charity shops or cheap ebay sales, at least for the time being as my comics backlog is so huge in general.

I was ten or eleven years old when I first stumbled across Warrior and V For Vendetta, every year my parents insisted on going to the same holiday camp in Hayling Island and it was a pretty dull place, but the camp shop did used to have a pretty great selection of comics that weren't stocked by my local newsagents. It's where I first discovered DC and Marvel along with less mainstream comics like Warrior, and I have to confess that the majority of the issue I bought there went right over my head, and some of it I found quite disturbing, but I do remember V For Vendetta having a huge effect on me. I'd dabbled with dystopian futures in the past (eg I watched and liked Blake's 7!) but this was something very different, and it came at just the right time as I was beginning to learn that maybe the UK wasn't the always wonderful place my parents painted it as.

It wasn't until the DC reprints that I read the rest of the series, but it's been a firm favourite ever since, and I'd say it's in my Moore Top 3. And I'd echo your comments about the lack of a black and white release, I did own a complete set of Warrior about ten years ago and it was a real delight to read all of the stories in that format, but alas a period out of work led me to selling them.

[13school]

Arh yeah good point I wonder if its just not available in black white form to reproduce from with the quality to justify it.

I'm slightly baffled by this... the colour was added after the linework was completed as a separate process. I would have thought scans/films of the original B&W must exist.

It's even more surprising considering DC has published B&W versions of Watchmen and (IIRC) The Killing Joke, plus The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and a number of their more recent big stories. But I think the art for those editions maybe have originally been prepared by a French publisher, and perhaps they weren't interested in V for Vendetta

[Marbles]

We need a V For Vendetta artists edition really. (Also for Watchman & Alan Davis Captain Britain)

[Colin YNWA]

Completely self-absorbed update

So the re-read of Power Pack has started - I covered the comics in Entry 87 and man its fun already. I'd forgotten how much the first story in issues 1-4 reads like an 80s kids/teen movies like ET, The Expolorers or even The Goonies. Its paced and plotted in such a similar way. With events leading our characters deeper and deeper into adventure and discovery as the story progresses. Yet the relationships between the young leads really being the driver and the events used to explore those relationships and their relationship to the danager and excitment they are thrown into with any of the presumption or fixed world view of the adults.

I do get the sense these first four issues were written as a self-contained 4 issue mini (4 issues being very much the vogue at the time). I've no idea if that was the case, but it defo reads like it. That adds to the sense this is a movie plot presented so brillantly in comic form! I get why they made an apparently terrible film way back when!

Seriously if folks like ET we should be handing them these comics!

On another note I've also delved further in Kyle Baker's works following conversation here and found a couple of really cheap bundles of his work so I've picked up:

I die at midnight
Alice through the looking glass
You are here
King David

as well as nicer editions (the originals I believe) of both Why I hate Saturn and The Cowboy Wally Show. I'm unlikely to get these read before this countdown ends (such is the monstrousity of my too read spreadsheet and I can't keep giving things bumps up that list!) but man oh man they all look incredible.

[JohnW]

If King David disappoints then I'll run away and never speak to you again.

[Colin YNWA]

If King David disappoints then I'll run away and never speak to you again.

Ha! All I can say at this point is it looks amazing.

[Colin YNWA]

Part 1 - Not on the List Alan Moore's Swamp Thing



Not on the list - Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

Look I promise you these 'Not on the list' entries aren't just going to become apologise for which Alan Moore comics don't make my list, but he's so significant that it sometimes feels necessary! Anyway this time I'm going to quickly discuss why


Copyright - DC Comics

isn't on the list. This one crops up here, but it could just as easily have appeared after my entry for Madman and this is as much about how I reflect on this run in relation to how I've read it as much as how I compare it to Moore's other work.

Let's get some basics out the way before getting any further into that. As most of you likely know Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing started in 1984 and became in many ways the figurehead of the British Invasion of mainstream US comics (though artists Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland got there first). Swamp Thing was an established DC character having been created in 1971 by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. It dabbled on the edges of the DC Universe, more linked to its horror titles, than DC's superhero ones. A short lived first series was followed up, off the back of a Wes Craven low budget movie, in 1982 with a second ongoing which didn't really do much. Until issue 21 - Moore having used his first issue 20 to tie up the existing plot threads. In the now famous issue 21 'Anatomy Lesson' Moore redeveloped the character's origin using the pieces that had been there before but in new, creative ways to redefine Swampy's story. He then built on this over a run lasting almost 4 years and 40 issues that for many refined not just the character but what could be done with a mainstream US comic series.

I have read this entire run, but only once from beginning to end in chronological order of publication. And even that was from a number of different sources and formats. This was also after reading pretty much all of it in bits and bats across the years and I do mean many years. I had a load of the 'Moore issues' back in the day when I was first collecting, but not all. Then when I got back into comics I picked up a number of issues, different ones as I sold the one's I'd previously owned. I then get a hardcover of the start of the run and some issues of Essential Vertigo issues - a black and white reprinting of the run (grrrh why do so many comics get this but not V for Vendetta!).

While gathering all this my reading list was nothing like as long as it is now so the run was first read in these bits and pieces, not as a cohesive whole. I did finally do a re-read from beginning to end maybe 15 years ago. I do wonder though if my initial fractured reading over the many years has impacted how I reflected on it. First impressions last and all that.

See on that re-read I found it slightly meandering. Moore is doing a LOT over the course of the run. From its beginning when it felt more firmly rooted in DC superhero stories, albeit using the characters in incredibly interesting ways, offering new reflections on these characters. He then seemed to try to focus (even) more on the horror and magical aspects creating a corner of DCs universe that is still well used today. Swamp Thing was becoming a key character of the wider world he was based in so even at the end of this time of Moore trying to create a space to tell different stories he was drawn back into DC proper. The Universe reshaping Crisis on Infinite Earths jumps into the key American Gothic storyline. So Moore takes drastic action, as I see it, and decides to have one last hooray with Batman before spinning Swamp Thing off into space to liberate him from as many confines as possible. To be fair this is likely not true as even when the disembodied Swampy is travelling the cosmos he encounters numerous characters from DC's cosmic corners. It's just the issues post 54 feel like Moore really spreading his wings, even further than he had already, and pushing the boundaries of what he could achieve in a 'regular' DC comic beyond even what he had already.

[Colin YNWA]

Part 2 - Not on the List Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing is a really creative piece of work. It reads to me as a writer learning more and more of his craft and experimenting with what he can achieve and learning that frankly that's an incredible amount. Across the 42 (I think it is) issues he seems to be growing and stretching in different ways. And it's that which means much as I enjoy these comics I don't place them on my list. There's not the same sense of focused aim in this run, it flits across different ideas and themes, different ways of approaching how to use the character to tell different stories.

Now fair to say this should be a strength after all there will be numerous series, runs and stories where I enjoy this happening on this list and I do here, just not as much as with others. Its restlessness when combined with the fractured way I have come to these tales means they've never quite coalesced into a whole for me. They've never quite felt like a single story, even one using multiple storytelling ideas in the way I think I most enjoy.

I'm really conscious I'm likely being unfair here. I long intended to get the comics in a single format, maybe 'just' digitally and give it another go to see how well it hangs together. I've just never gotten around to it - see previous posts on there just being too many damned good comics out there. And these have never quite held that place in my heart to make me do that... yet. I do wonder when I do whether I will engage with these more and more positively.

After all I love superhero comics and these are good superhero comics... or are they. These almost self consciously push against being superhero comics, or at least traditional ones. Swamp Thing is born of horror comics. Yet Alan Moore and some brilliant artists he works with, seems enamoured with playing in the superhero universe he has his hands in and loved so much growing up. In doing that I think we get to why I've not rushed to that re-read. Just as we witness a writer experimenting with his craft and never quite being settled into a single story. Moore never seems to quite settle what he wants this to be in terms of genre. Again genre bending  and mixing can be a really good thing. In this run however it feels more restless and unsettled. As if his desire to play with the superhero toys he has available to him stops him fully committing to what this might otherwise have been if he'd committed fully to this being a horror, supernatural comic and in some ways it falls between the two stalls.

I think it's this that means I've not rushed back to these. I've never quite settled with what this is. In part due to the way I've been introduced to these tales, in part by what I see Moore doing, or not doing. These are really good comics and I will get back to them. They're just not Moore's best for me.

We'll get to those as the list goes on.

[Barrington Boots]

Interesting read this. Swamp Thing is something I've often thought about checking out. I've only ever read a single issue - a girl gave it to me as a gift and given I'm not hugely into superhero stuff I didn't want to taint it by reading around it and finding I didn't care for the series, if that makes sense - I rather like it in isolation.

As ever Colin you've got a very thoughtful take - I don't always comment on these posts but I always read and enjoy them.

[broodblik]

A read a Swamp Thing comics when it came out but it was nothing that sticked for me. Again this might be a case of my younger days certain things I just did not find appealing enough. Not sure if I want to add another item to my ever-growing backlog jam.

[AlexF]

I've been VERY slowly collecting and reading teh trade collections of this run. As in, I read the first collection maybe 20 years ago, liked it quite a bit, but have so far only read the 2nd volume about 10 years ago and have the 3rd sitting unread for 5. So clearly I do not love it unreservedly! Funnily enough, I found a collection of the original Wein/Wrightson Swamp Thing and read that far more quickly. It's not in the same league of sophistication but I do love the art and I perhaps because they're less literary the stories are just an easier read. Moore makes you put the work in...

That said, I can also imagine that sinply reading any one single issue in isolation, per B.Boots' experience, is going to be nicely rewarding. Maybe that's the trick - just read one comics from this run and have done with it! Wonder if that's true of Watchmen as well.

[Le Fink]

I came to Moore's Swamp Thing very late, maybe 10-15 years ago, via this collection (on the left):



And later on, picked up the collected early comics that went up to the start of the Moore series, shown on the right.

So I read the Moore series more or less continuously, with minimal breaks between the books. I'd say the first four books are well worth a look, although it did tale off a bit for me after the climax of the American Gothic arc. I wasn't that taken by the later sci-fi pivot and move to outer space. In general though I thought it was a really good read and would certainly include it in my list of top comics.

The early comics I read just to see what happened before Moore took the reins. They are rather dated and I found them a bit of a slog to get through. Not essential but nice to get the background.

It is a bit meandering- nothing like as self contained as say V for Vendetta- but that's Ok as there is so much to see. He does cover a lot of ground.

[broodblik]

The weirdest thing for me is that is still find Alan Moore's prog work superior than his American work. His Future Shocks were some of the best (if not the best) short stories ever published. Dr & Quinch still put a smile to my mouth when I revisited it. Halo Jones I still rate as his best work ever. So British Moore beats American Moore everyday of the week.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I read Swamp Thing for the first time a couple of years ago and it's something I admire rather than love. There's some fascinating ideas and some of the issues are incredibly gripping, but it often felt like it was message heavy and quite humourless, bar the one issue which is deliberately comedic. I'm probably being a bit harsh as there were issues that I thought were superb, but I rarely found myself caring for the characters that much, at least not in the way I normally do with Moore's work.

[Jim_Campbell]

I rarely found myself caring for the characters that much, at least not in the way I normally do with Moore's work.

Now, that's strange, because one of things I like most about Moore's run on ST is his obvious affection for the supporting cast, with several issues where the Big Guy barely even has a walk-on part and a couple of issues before the 'Lost in Space' arc kicks off where he's completely absent and Abby and Chester carry the book.