Top ten comic book runs (#10-#6)

[Doc Beechler]

10) Alpha Flight – John Byrne

During my golden years of reading comics, this was THE one. I had just missed the Claremont/Byrne years of Uncanny X-Men, but I made sure I got to the drug store every month to pick up the new issue of Alpha Flight. They were an unusual team, echoing the Defenders, in that they didn’t seem to like hanging out with each other…at all. But the Hudsons, James and Heather, were strong enough leaders to keep these disparate personalities working together to keep Canada safe month after month. And that ending to issue 12, where one of the team dies in action, will forever be burned into my brain. I loved this run of comics so much, I had a custom-made t-shirt, with just “Alpha Flight” printed on it in fuzzy, red letters…Holly later recreated the shirt and gave it to me this last Christmas. Gotta love that!

9) Y-The Last Man – Bryan K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and friends

The saga of Yorick, the last man on Earth after a plague that kills every animal with a Y chromosome hits, is at turns funny, horrifying, touching, and, ultimately, uplifting. It’s a work that makes you think about your own life priorities and how you view the world and its people. We are becoming more and more citizens of the planet and this may be the first great comic work about that change.

8) The Incredible Hulk – Peter David and friends

For many, writing a title like the Hulk seems like the most brain-dead deal in superhero comics…Banner gets angry, he turns into the Hulk, Hulk smashes, rinse, repeat. But when David took over, he saw a lot of possibilities in the groundwork laid by Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo, and others. What if the inner struggles of Bruce Banner were as exciting as the external smashing? They were exciting enough to bring about over a DECADE of stories. And David wasn’t even done when his last issue hit the stands. For as long as he went with the character, it shouldn’t have been great…but it was.

7) Starman – James Robinson, Tony Harris, and friends

As much as I loved Hulk, Sandman, Astro City, and few other select titles in the 90s, no book was better during that period than Starman. Robinson’s original character, Jack Knight, the son of the Starman from the golden age of comics, was the perfect mirror for the young male at the end of the 20th century. Kinda aimless, tired of hearing about WW II and Vietnam, having to be forced, sometimes, into maturity and taking responsibility for his life…a lot of us saw ourselves in Jack. And as he grew, we grew with him. Hopefully, we were all at the same level, feeling finally comfortable in our skins, as Jack was when the curtain fell.

6) Bone – Jeff Smith

What if Walt Kelly and Carl Barks had written the Lord of the Rings? It might have looked and read a lot like Bone. Jeff Smith, a cartoonist in Columbus, Ohio, decided to tell the type of story he wanted with the type of characters he had loved as a kid. He published it himself…kept all of the rights and control…and created a masterpiece read by millions of people.

[Michael Costello]

maybe huzzah?

[Michael Costello]

Huzzaz on Alpha Flight, I just bought my guardian lead figure this week