Top 10 by Alan Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read this YEARS ago when I was getting all up into Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics line, but I wanted to read it again. I remember liking it a lot, and I wonder how the ABC stuff would hold up. Because, honestly, Tom Strong was one of my favorite comics ever, and I want to re-read it, but I’m nervous it’s not as good as I remember, and when I read it I might hate it.
So, Top 10.
Really good.
There were three things I really liked about this.
One, it’s a police procedural comic book where everyone’s a superhero, but it’s not like they’re preventing the end of the world or it’s all building to one huge event. It really feels like a slice of life.
Two, it’s very creative. The situations often happen before the main characters arrive, so what we see is more often putting something together as opposed to a fistfight. I don’t think that’s easy to pull off, and I also appreciated that the book was so interesting situationally that you didn’t miss the action when it wasn’t present.
Three, this is a great example of a book that has likable characters who don’t always act in a likable way. Some of them are shown as being mostly good people, but racist against robots, for example. The sort of big hero cop is also kind of an asshole. I think these are character types that are often missing from modern, more mainstream comics. Not anti-heroes, just people who maybe feel like…well, real people. VERY imperfect people, and very real.
Anyway, if this is on your reading list, I’d say bump it up to the upper region of your to-read, perhaps above 90% of what’s on there.
Feels like I missed an opportunity there in that last line. Some easier way to have said that…oh well.