Top 10 Comics of the Decade

The focus here is on American mainstream comics. I have no apologies for that 🙂 These are in no order. They are, however, presented with plenty of love for a decade chock full of good comics.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Sleeper

Comprising Sleeper: Season One and Sleeper: Season Two, this series went way too far under the radar. It was clearly one of the best superhero efforts of the decade, although at the end of the day it was more cloak and dagger than capes and cowls. Thankfully both Phillips and Brubaker went on to become fancy, big-selling stars for Marvel after finishing up this classic. I just wish a few more people had been able to check out Sleeper when it was running. It was tough talking into a vacuum.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal

Criminal took the Noir aspects of Sleeper, jettisoned the superhero aspects and distilled a pure drauft of crime drama. I have an affinity for their source material and love these two guys as individual talents so I was basically made to love this book.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's We3

We3 was my favorite book of the decade. I distinctly remember finishing it and thinking "wow." Action packed, thoughtful but still very touching, We3 was a memorable series that punched well above its three issue miniseries weight.

Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim

The funnest comic of the decade. Comprising five books, with a sixth to follow:

1. Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
2. Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
3. Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
4. Scott Pilgrim, Vol 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
5. Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe

This series is funny, sweet and exciting. Moving seamlessly from relationship drama to band dynamics to video game style boss battles, Scott Pilgrim is an exuberant comic that mirrors the best of what I liked out of Hong Kong cinema. It throws everything it can at you and does so with remarkable skill. It all sticks 🙂

Soon to be a major motion picture. Read it now and you can say you knew it when.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's The Ultimates

Millar has to be on the short list for the writer of decade. He may not have hit the quality heights that other guys hit, but he was pretty damn good and for overall impact he was the king. A prime mover in the Marvel Universe in general and a go-to guy for the "big" projects, Millar stamped his name all over comics and comic sales this decade.

The Ultimates managed to combine all of those traits into one masterpiece. It was a controversial, big-selling event comic that just happened to be a cracking read. Hitch's detailed art changed expectations across the board. Be prepared for a lot of late comics as artists try to copy his detailed style.

One of my two favorite Marvel books of the decade.

Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man was the decades best long-running story. Told with remarkable clarity over such a long run, Y is a great example of the glory of the serial. Individual issues were structured well, often presenting their own cliffhangers, and the overall framework upon which the individual issues hung was even better. Every month you wanted to know both how Yorick would get out of his latest scrape and how the larger clues they were chasing fit into the overall picture.

It was great entertainment.

Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist

I don't read enough manga. I admit that. And when I do read it it's often older stuff. For example, other than this series, two of the great manga reads for me this decade were 13 volumes of Golgo 13 and the full 28 volume run of Lone Wolf and Cub.

Okay, enough apologizing about my reading habits 🙂 If I keep this up, I'll start weeping about how I don't have any proper bandes dessinees on this list…

It's time to praise Fullmetal Alchemist. I loved the anime. Loved. The. Anime. So I was pleased as punch to discover that I like the original manga even more. It shares the techno/mystical/militaristic feel and the great characters of the anime but presents them in greater depth and complexity. It's the same, just more of it. My only complaint with this series is that they're taking their sweet time in releasing them stateside. I devour them when a new volume comes out.

Gorgeous art, great story and as always the manga volumes present a great value.

Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev's Daredevil

You thought we were going to get out of this list without a Daredevil book? You thought wrong. In fact, I could have chosen two in light of Brubaker's excellent run. Still, for my money, this team is third only to Frank Miller/Klaus Janson and Miller/Mazzuchelli in the league tables for Daredevil runs. Which is saying plenty as those two runs are amongst my ten favorite comics of all time.

I'm not really sure who's more responsible in this team for my love of this run. The art is perfect for Daredevil. Perfect.

That said, Bendis has a great grasp of the characters and put Daredevil through such paces throughout his run it's hard to not give the nod to him as the prime mover of this duo. Outing his secret identity and examining the tumult that followed turned out to be a brilliant decision, but it relied on Bendis making a lot of right choices in terms of the story. Very well done.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All Star Superman

I don't even like Superman. This is literally the first Superman book I ever bought regularly and it ended up on this list. There's no Batman book to be found on this top ten and I read both Batman and Detective every month. How cool are Morrison and Quitely?

And that's really the point. All Star Superman was a cool book. It was like they sat down and made a comic with the explicit goal of making readers shake their heads in wonder every month. They made Superman, a character beaten down by years of pop culture baggage and thousands of imitators, and made him fun once again. Reading this you could almost imagine the wonder of being a kid in 1938 when Action #1 hit the stands.

Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary

The decade for the 10 for 10 series stretched from July of 1999 through July of 2009, so including Planetary takes a little bit of number fudging as it started a little earlier in 1999 and ended a little later in 2009.

I'm not going to let a little thing like that stop me.

If I were to recommend one book from this decade, it would be Planetary. Ellis and Cassaday, two of comics' most talented creators, riffed on everything from Godzilla to Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes for 27 glorious issues. For a pop culture omnivore like yours truly it was addictive. Which, of course, sucked since it took slightly more than a decade to tell two years worth of stories. Still, even with all the delays it was worth the wait. The overall story was phenomenal stuff and the filler, the space in between the big story bits, was probably even better. Ellis really gets his source material so watching him take on Hong Kong cinema or Nick Fury is an undeniable joy.

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So, there you have it. I'm going to follow up with a lit of honorable mentions at some point this week. I told you it was a great decade for comics, so I've got to share the love…