My Top 5 Most Important Comics

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This post is part of the ” Top 5 Group Writ­ing Project ” at Dar­ren Rowse’s Problog­ger Blog Site

Hi every­body. I’m sure that every­one out there has a favorite list of comics they enjoy read­ing, but I won­der what you feel are the most impor­tant comics or graphic series that you read that made a dif­fer­ence in the medium?

I’m sure that there are lots of series and spe­cial sin­gle issues that will come to mind, but do you think that you can name just 5?

Here’s my five most impor­tant comics…

1) The Dark Knight Returns –by Frank Miller

Dur­ing the early 80’s I just stopped read­ing comics. I started to get bored with read­ing the same series of comics, with alot of the comics being pub­lished, seem­ing to have lit­tle or no continuity.

Then some­time in Jan­u­ary of 1986, I strolled into a local comic shop, and I hap­pened to some fan­boys talk­ing about a new series from a writer I had never heard of named Frank Miller. I asked what the series was going to be about…they told me it was about Bat­man. At that moment, I wasn’t overly excited. It was a month later when I had heard about the release of this book. I decided to take a drive out of town to a store about a half hour away…I thought that at least the ride would make up for the dis­ap­point­ment of another so-so comic.

I walked into this comic shop and asked if they had the comic in ques­tion, and what the deal was about it, that was gen­er­at­ing so much inter­est? The per­son handed me my first ” Pres­tige For­mat ” comic. It was noth­ing like I had ever seen, and this was most def­i­nitely a dif­fer­ent Bat­man. An older, Darker Batman.

This would be where the term the ” Dark Knight ” would come from.

The story and the art were much more gritty, much darker in tone.

This would be the comic that would bring me back to read­ing comics.

This comic and this writer/artist would also change the way comics were going to be viewed forever.

2) The Death of Super­man –by Jur­gens, Stern, Simon­son, Ord­way, and Kesel.

Here was a defin­ing moment in comics, not just for myself but for any­one who ever picked up a comic. This was a story that wound up get­ting cov­er­age on tele­vi­sion and in the news­pa­pers and in some mag­a­zines also.

The story revolved around a seem­ingly mind­less crea­ture to be named ” Dooms­day ” who destroyed any­thing and every­thing that was unlucky enough to cross his path. The lesser heroes of the DC uni­verse were unable to stop the crea­ture. It would become Superman’s fate to have to fight this mon­ster as he headed toward Metropolis.

This was a fight that would be tele­cast on tele­vi­sion ( in the comics of course ) and th fate of Metrop­o­lis and the very world rested on the shoul­ders of one alien, one ded­i­cated hero, who would sac­ri­fice all to save the peo­ple clos­est to him and to save his adopted world from a rag­ing mon­ster. This was his finest and great­est moment, a hero’s moment in time. A moment indeli­bly etched in the tomes of comic history.

3) Civil War-A Mar­vel Comics Event-by Miller, McNiven, Vines, and Holloway.

I had done a post about this series titled Comics..raising our social con­science? and I believe that that post speaks for itself.

Civil War was a series that dealt with the ques­tion of Super­heroes hav­ing to answer to the gov­ern­ment by being required to reg­is­ter with the gov­ern­ment under the ” Super­hero Reg­is­tra­tion Act ” which was a bill that came into being after a tragic mis­cal­cu­la­tion by a team of young, inex­pe­ri­enced and unsu­per­vised heroes that caused the death of more than 60 peo­ple. This bill splits the Mar­vel Uni­verse down the mid­dle with heroes who are for the bill and the heroes who are against it. And this is where the real story arises with Tony Stark, The Invin­ci­ble Iron­man lead­ing the side that is for the bill, and Steve Rogers, the leg­endary Cap­tain Amer­ica who heads up the resis­tance who are against the bill.

4) Bat­man– The Killing Joke– by Moore and Boland

A one shot pres­tige for­mat book orig­i­nally printed in 1988, this book was a tour de force that illus­trated sev­eral sides of the rela­tion­ship between the Joker and his sworn enemy, the BATMAN. This book dealt not just the retelling of the ori­gin of the Joker thru his psy­chotic mem­ory, but also on the ques­tion of how much one can be pushed beyond the limit before one breaks down and for lack of a bet­ter term, Just Goes Bonkers, from the pressure.

A ques­tion that is answered thru the tor­ment of one James Gor­don, Police Com­mis­sioner of Gotham City, and friend to the Bat­man. This book also has one of the most shock­ing moments in DC Comics his­tory involv­ing the Commissioner’s daugh­ter Bar­bara Gordon.

My last pick is in my opin­ion a sleeper pick…

5) Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, ” The Gun­slinger Born “- by David, Furth, and Lee

Based upon the char­ac­ter ” Roland ” intro­duced to mil­lions of Kings read­ers in the ” Dark Tower ” series of books, this series by Mar­vel Comics and writer Robin Furth, the author of King’s ” A Dark Tower Con­cor­dance ” along with famed writer Peter David and moody art by artist Jae Lee, this series of seven comics, deals with Rolands ori­gins, and is a hot com­mod­ity in comic shops every­where right now.

This is the first time ( at least to my knowl­edge ) that one of King’s works of fic­tion has been adapted to the comics medium.

From what I under­stand at this time, this is the first in what will be five story arcs based on King’s Dark Tower series of books. While not a super­hero comic, I find that this is an impor­tant work, that will reach a whole new audi­ence of read­ers of King’s nov­els and will appeal to read­ers who might be some­what dis­il­lu­sioned with the whole super­hero genre of comics being offered today.

Well that’s my list of the Top 5 Most Impor­tant Comics, and while this is by no means all the comics I have read that I feel have made an impact on my and other’s read­ing of the genre, these are cer­tainly some of the best of yes­ter­day and today.