Lower Decks

I’ve been a part of the Lower Decks community since the beginning (and the original Section 31 in its final years), which constitutes the new millennium (I don’t know if people have properly exploited the word games they can be playing with that), but one of the things I’ve rarely done here is my love of comics. I’ve been a fan of superheroes for longer than I’ve actually read comics, which probably explains my rather ordinary predilection. I got to read some of my first comics right before they decided to kill off Superman in 1992, meaning my fine old tradition is a golden age of a different vintage. The 1990s were a kind of boom period for comics, when DC was busy having a personal Crisis for every major character, Marvel modernizing across the board, and Image redefining what it meant to be neither DC nor Marvel. By the crash that ended the decade, the century, and yes, a millennium, everyone got to scramble and find out how they would survive a not so Secret problem. Were comics doomed?

I didn’t get to find out, initially. I shipped off to college around that time and quit reading. When 9/11 happened, the companies put out tribute books, but aside from a few coincidences, nothing seemed to reflect the real world anymore, and this time it was a problem. Audiences were starting to embrace superheroes in film, but readers were still bleeding away in the books. Slowly, the modern era began, with a little help from creators who’d made their name the previous decade, but a fresh crop emerging to build a new foundation. I was watching this progress at first, until I had the opportunity to start reading again. In many ways, the list I eventually cobbled together, my favorite comics, reflects this process, from the turns the industry took to how I was able to experience them. You’ll find just about every critical darling absent, your Watchmen, your Dark Knights. Missing are books without superheroes, for the most part. I still haven’t read Maus. If you look real close, you’ll find one book that never had “DC” printed on its cover. If what I read defines me, I find nothing to be embarrassed about.

These are the best experiences I’ve had, the best stories, the best characters, the best creators.

1. 52 (written by Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid; sketched by Keith Giffen; art by various) Put simply, this was a culmination. Published in the aftermath of Geoff Johns’ Infinite Crisis, a sequel to the seminal Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985, 52 was the first long-term weekly series, a project meant to last a full year. The plot was simple enough: without Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, a world of heroes must continue on. If it ever got complicated, it was from following the distinct selection of minor heroes as they advanced week to week, from a desperate Booster Gold to a power-mad Black Adam, who each alone ran a gamut of heroism and villainy, culminating in explosive final acts that would alter their futures forever. Written from a deeply human perspective, the series defied every expectation, from what constituted grand-scale storytelling to which characters could be expected to carry compelling plots, art that served purpose as much itself, and covers from J.G. Jones that provided a new iconic image every week, let alone every month, rather than relying on some variation of same-old. So revolutionary the eventual trade collections included commentary for every issue, 52’s place in comics history is only beginning.

2. Kingdom Come (written by Mark Waid; art by Alex Ross) It’s no new trick to envision a future where the next generation hasn’t fulfilled our expectations, creating a much-feared apocalypse, but for such a future to exist where Superman abandoned his assumed never-ending quest, it becomes less about form and more about narrative, a gripping epic where the government plots to nuke the problem out of existence and only an unlikely convergence of events can prevent disaster. Whatever happened to Billy Batson, the erstwhile Captain Marvel, or Batman and Wonder Woman, whose ties to Superman proved more fruitful than they once seemed? One by one, the old guard returns, while the new rallies around Magog, the hero who proved the Man of Steel irrelevant, all of them ignorant of the panic they’ve created around them. A study of superheroes in the real world that treats them as necessary, if only they’ll realize it themselves.

3. Bone (written and illustrated by Jeff Smith; published by Cartoon Books) Rarely will this partisan cross the aisle, but I had a helping hand early on from an enthusiast of a friend, who kept trying to get me to read it, and I stuck with it for a while, but didn’t come back until a decade later and several printings of the One Volume Edition of the collected issues. I’m glad I finally did. A modern fantasy, where heroes are of the unlikely sort and heroines are reluctant to embrace their destinies, but all can be depended on when the need is most, Bone features a trio of cartoon cousins thrust into an adventure far bigger than them, stumbling into a simple family of country folk who turn out to be more than they seem, to eventually rescue an entire valley and lost civilization. Currently being rediscovered through a series of color installments, you can enjoy it either way.

4. The Flash: The Return of Barry Allen (written by Mark Waid; art by Greg LaRocque) The first story arc on the list, this one’s legendary in some circles for solidifying Waid’s run with the character Wally West, the third Flash. Barry Allen was the second, who famously sacrificed himself during Crisis on Infinite Earths. A decade had passed between these two stories, during which fans had typically convinced themselves that Barry’s return would be a good thing. Waid opted to argue that Wally was worth keeping around by teasing just such an encounter between former mentor and pupil in a story that first demonstrated his immense understanding of the tapestry he had inherited, taking a minor hero and transforming his book into one of the most buzzed-about titles released each month.

5. Superman: Reign of the Supermen (written by Roger Stern, Louise Simonson, Dan Jurgens, and Karl Kesel; art by Jackson Guice, Jon Bogdanove, Jurgens, and Tom Grummett) More than the preceding Doomsday and World Without a Superman arcs, this exemplified the work of the Superman team, who together put out Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman, and Superman: The Man of Steel out each month, coherently coordinating one of the most famous fictional characters in the world and preparing readers for a decade that would sustain, through only a handful of creator shifts (the addition of Stuart Immonen being the most important), the same level of quality that would eventually result in 52. In the wake of Superman’s death, the only natural (and eventually fulfilled) expectation from readers was that he would return, but to get there, four replacements were posited: an emotionally detached figure, a cyborg, a man in a steel suit, and Superboy. In the initial issues, the creative teams handled their respective versions exclusively, until the climax saw arcs merge and the conclusion everyone knew would happen (hint: none of them was actually Superman). It’s like a master class of superheroes and their realities being taken seriously, in exactly the kind of the story you would least expect to handle it.

6. Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight (written by Ron Marz; art by Darryl Banks) Spun out from the page of the above story, Hal Jordan loses it after Coast City is destroyed and he tears a path of vengeance that destroys the Green Lantern Corps. The shortest story on the list, in many ways the last issue of the arc is the only significant one, as Hal confronts his greatest foe, Sinestro, whom the Guardians of the Universe have transformed into their last line of defense on the Green Lantern home world of Oa, his final chance to reconsider. He doesn’t. It doesn’t matter that Geoff Johns would later basically rewrite history. The impact remains. Green Lantern was easily my favorite comic at the time, and the issues that followed, where a new hope in the form of Kyle Rayner emerges, remain for me unparalleled in the shaping of a superhero. Hal’s story continues further along this list.

7. Seven Soldiers of Victory (written by Grant Morrison; art by various) In many ways more ambitious than 52, a project he would later collaborate on, Morrison’s reinterpretation of the team book consisted of two book-end issues and seven four-issue mini-series that would unite completely disparate superheroes, the only one of any profile being the backward-spell-talking Zatanna (his version of Mister Miracle wasn’t the one made famous by Jack Kirby). Each series took a cue from its hero and featured unique narratives, none of which even now can find a parallel in projects either DC or Marvel are currently publishing (though at times it seems as if they competing to do just that). Morrison is the rogue of the mainstream, and this was his chance to push heroes as far as they could go without breaking the fourth wall (as he’d famously done with Animal Man).

8. Batman: A Death in the Family (written by Jim Starlin; art by Jim Aparo) Arguably still the most famous series arc from a Batman comic, the death in question is Jason Todd’s, the second Robin. It’s okay to admit you’re a little confused. Did you know the original, Dick Grayson, is now Nightwing, who’s had his own series for more than a decade? The third, Tim Drake, made his debut not longer after this arc, and has been going strong ever since. But Jason’s fate was decided by a poll. If he’d won, he might have lived, but fans demanded something else. It might have read like a gimmick, but instead became the stuff of comics lore: the Joker, Batman’s most hated foe, thrashed Jason with a carjack, and then simply blew him up.

9. Final Night (written by Karl Kesel; art by Stuart Immonen) Event comics have been a necessary element of the industry for thirty years, and can sometimes feel a little, well, perfunctory, merely yet another clash between one big group of villains and one big group of heroes. This one was different. There was one villain, who snuffed out the sun, and the heroes grouped together only to try and return a sense of hope to a doomed world. In the midst of it, Superman and Lex Luthor made a deal to help mankind together, and Hal Jordan, fresh from the brink of villainy, sacrificed himself to save the day. During a time when it was common for DC to have some of their hottest creators plot these annual events, it turned to Kesel and Immonen, a pair from the Superman team, to demonstrate how simple it could be to create great drama, even in superhero comics.

10. Zero Hour (written and illustrated by Dan Jurgens) A Superman team all by himself (famously killing off the Man of Steel a few years earlier), Jurgens engineered a Crisis in Time around Hal Jordan’s insane quest to redeem a disordered universe, one of three Crises DC undertook to reorder its own. Sweeping changes may have resulted from it, but the events within the book itself were monumental as well, from the disbanding of the original Justice Society of America to Green Arrow’s heart-rending decision to take it upon himself to end his friend Hal’s rampage in an image that’s still iconic for me.

Of course, as an ongoing comics fan, this list doesn’t cover everything. I’ve got two others still that work on that, not even to mention that I’m still reading. At the end of the year I’ve got an awards column for that. You can expect comics to be a recurring feature.