My Top 5 Comicbook Storylines of 2009

Where to begin…where to begin.

While this year ( for me any­way ) was not a great year for comic book story lines, there were a few that I con­sid­ered to be just excel­lent, and I’m not sur­prised that most of my picks were not of the ” Super Hero ” genre…except for two..

So lets dive into my Top 5 Comic Book Story lines of 2009

#5-Daredevil-Return of the King

Wil­son Fisk makes his return to the top of the under­world lad­der ( at least in NY! ) as he makes a deal with the ” Devil ” so to speak. This was a four or Five part series, and it was the first time in many years that I have picked up a Dare­devil comic due to a sto­ry­line run­ning through here. I got to see a myr­iad of DD vil­lains, such as the Owl, and Lady Bulls­eye. This story led into a new arc and Matt Murdock/Daredevil now is the leader of the ” Hand “, and this sto­ry­line will take all of us down a darker path…

#4-Madame Xanadu

Okay, this was one of those ” I’d rather read this than another silly Super­hero yarn ’ and I have been fol­low­ing this comic since it’s debut..and I have not been dis­ap­pointed, as the sto­ry­line always seems to show us a bit of the his­tory of Nimue going all the way back to the days of Arthur and Mer­lin, and right now the story revolves around Nimue’s sister…Morgana…and I think things will be heat­ing up here in the com­ing months.

#3-Detective Comics fea­tur­ing Batwoman

Well, for me this was a no brainier as far as what I look for in a comic…great story and great art­work that just seems ( in this case ) to accen­tu­ate the sto­ry­line fur­ther. Kate Kane, for­mer mil­i­tary oper­a­tive, who( along with her army dad ) has taken up the man­tle of the Bat, in her own way..and I approve! This comic has great pac­ing, excel­lent story pan­els that just fill up the [pages and help make the story flow, and to be hon­est for me some­times there just does not seem to be enough pages to sat­isfy my crav­ing for this par­tic­u­lar Bat, along with her being gay, which makes things even more inter­est­ing at times, but I think the Ques­tion backup sto­ry­line can just take a powder.Kudos to Rucker and Williams III for all that they do for this title!

Okay kids…now it starts to get a lit­tle tougher as we come down to the final two and I’ve got sev­eral comics in front of me that deserve to be here…but I can only go with two…

#2-Thor

Okay, the first thing you notice here as a true believer is the fact that there is no ” Mighty ” before the sin­gle word Thor…and I found this to be a bit dis­re­spect­ful to the char­ac­ter itself, but I can attest to the fact that Mar­vel has made up for this in spades…Thor is brought back from Limbo, brings back Asgard…and to Earth, and to all of the places he could have brought it back to, he brings it to Oklahoma…yes kids, right over the skies of Oklahoma!

then he brings back asgar­dians, whose souls had been trapped inside the fates of mor­tals, includ­ing the Lady Sif, who almost bought the farm due to Thor’s evil half brother…did I say brother? Well, in this incar­na­tion Loki, the prince of mis­chief is now a.…princess!

Talk about twists of fate…and that was just the begin­ning, as we’ve seen the Asgar­dians live in Latve­ria for a brief time, and face the evil of Doom ( of course along with Loki ) and now, the Dark reign Avengers have attacked Asgard, asset a slight manip­u­la­tion on the part of Loki and some whis­pers in the ears of one Nor­man Osbourn has led to Osbourn hav­ing his Avengers do their worst…but not with­out a cer­tain Red, White & Blue for­mer Avenger has taken note of the­ses events with a bit inter­est and a look that does not bode well for those attack­ing the God of Thunder.

and drum roll please…okay that enough!

#1 Locke & Key Crown of Shadows

All right, first off you have to give kudos to IDW Pub­lish­ing, as they seem to have become the bad boy pub­lisher of comics with this title, and Ghost busters,Angel, The Ghoul ( more on this title later kid­dies! ) and maybe just one title you might find familiar…30 Days of night…you might have caught the movie..?

Any­way, as long as we’re giv­ing out kudos, lets give a few to the team behind this series, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, who have been on board since the begin­ning with Wel­come To Love­craft, and Head Games, after­ward which has brought us to the next chap­ter. And what have we seen so far…a l;ess than dead and cor­po­real Sam Lesser ( you might remem­ber Sam, as the socio­pathic maniac that killed Tyler, Kin­sey, and Bode father, which caused the fam­ily to escape to Love­craft, but Sam Lesser had fol­lowed them there…and Sam was now in their home…albeit in a spirit form so to speak and is hell bent on leav­ing .…and in the process caus­ing as much havoc for the Locke clan as possible…

I do have some hon­or­able mentions..

DC Comics Black­est Night has just been a great read thus far and it was the other choice for #1 this year

Mar­vel Comics The Return of Cap­tain Amer­ica has also been a decent read, and along with the reg­u­lar Cap title with Bucky Barnes as the new Cap, well I could not have asked for more

And my biggest disappointment…

Marvel’s  Hulk titles…all of them!

Hulk, Incred­i­ble Hulk,Skaar, Son of Hulk…seriously…who CARES!

I got sick of the Red Hulk non­sense around the ninth or tenth issue and just had to beg off of it all together!

Well that’s  all she wrote for this list and I’d be inter­ested in what you think of my list or if you hap­pen to have your own list that you’d like to share here…come on…let us all know okay!

Lew