CBG's BEST 100 SERIAL COMICS

[Gothos]

OK, a while back on the Classics forum someone (Red Oak Kid? Kid something?) did an elimination game by listing 25 best comics (including comic strips) and then asking posters to vote titles in or out as they pleased. As I recall, for one of his listings to get voted off, it had to get five negative votes, just as anything that got substituted had to get five positive votes.

In addition, posters had to give a brief but cogent explanation of their votes.

I thought it would be interesting to do a similar project, albeit focusing on 100works originally published in the English language, but only works that were in a serial mode. Call me crazy but I wasn't enamored of the years-ago TCJ list in which positions could be held as easily by a single story as by a huge run of stories (all the Golden Age Captain Marvels).

So, first, if you wanna vote something in, it has to be a serial. It also has to be a comic book, not a comic strip, as I'd like to see what CBG readers come up with when confined to the comic book medium.

In the next posting I'll post my own list of best 100 c-b serials. Serials as I define them can be short and closed (the Gerard Jones MARTIAN MANHUNTER series, which is only four issues) or they can last fifteen years, as with the Batman Golden Age period of stories.

One stipulation: any time I have a "block" of titles that I consider to be interrelated, like the Weisinger era of "Superman Family" books, I'd prefer not to break them up. I don't mind if five posters want to vote the super-family titles off the list, but I'd prefer not to do it to put just one of the titles, say JIMMY OLSEN, on the list in its place. We'll see how it goes.

[Gothos]

THE 100 BEST COMICS: STREAMING VISIONS

By Gene Phillips

Here, sans any explanatory preamble, is my list for the best comic book serials of the 20th and 21st centuries so far. Justifications, aesthetic statements and suchlike will appear separately, except to note that everything is arranged alphabetically because I don’t believe in assigning aesthetic works numbered places. I’ve included rough dates to denote the periods in which these visions were “streaming forth.” Whenever I denote a serial comic as concluding by a specific date, it will mean either that there were no more (as with Golden Age Batman, which ends with the Golden Age) or because I’m only concerned with that period (as with the ELFQUEST series that spanned from the 1970s through the 1980s), and am discounting continuations in other decades. A question mark at the period’s end indicates that it seems to me feasible that the serial might continue into other decades and still be of significant quality.

ADAM STRANGE (1960s-- Fox/Infantino)

AMERICAN FLAGG (1980s--Chaykin)

ANIMAL-MAN (1990s--Morrison/Truog)

ATOMIC KNIGHTS (1960s--Broome/Anderson)

BADGER (1980s-1990s--Baron et al)

BATMAN (1940s-1950s--Golden Age)

BATMAN (early 1970s-- O’Neil/Adams/Novick et al)

BATMAN (late 1970s--Englehart/Rogers)

BERLIN CITY OF STONES (2000s--Lutes)

BLACK PANTHER (1970s--McGregor et al)

BLACKHAWK (1940s-1950s--Eisner/Crandall et al)

BLUE BEETLE (1960s-- Ditko)

BLUE MONDAY (2000s-?--Clugston-Majors)

BONE (1990s-2000s-- J. Smith)

BOOKS OF MAGIC (1990s—Gaiman/Vess et al)

BOYS RANCH (1950s-- Simon & Kirby)

CAGES (1990s-- McKean)

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1940s-- Simon & Kirby)

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1970s-- Englehart/Buscema et al)

CAPTAIN MARVEL (1940s-1950s-- Golden Age)

CAPTAIN MARVEL (1970s-- Starlin)

CEREBUS (1970s-2000s-- Sim)

CONAN (1970s-- Thomas/B. Smith et al)

DAREDEVIL (1970s-1980s-- Miller et al)

DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (1980s-- Miller et al)

DEFENDERS (1970s-- Gerber/ S. Buscema)

DEN (1970s-1980s-- Corben)

DONALD DUCK “family” (1950s-1970s-- Barks).

DOOM PATROL (1960s-- Drake/Premiani)

DOOM PATROL (1980s-1990s-- Morrison/Quitely)

DR. STRANGE (1960s-- Lee/Ditko)

EC “NEW TREND” CRIME & SUSPENSE (1950s)

EC “NEW TREND” HORROR (1950s)

EC “NEW TREND” SCIENCE FICTION (1950s)

EC “NEW TREND” WAR & HISTORICAL (1950s)

ELFQUEST (1970s-1980s-- Pini)

EVIL EYE (1990s-- Sala)

FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS (1960s-?-- Shelton et al)

FANTASTIC FOUR (1960s-- Lee/Kirby)

FLAMING CARROT (1980s-2000s-- Burden)

FLASH (1960s-- Broome/Infantino)

FLEX MENTALLO (1990s-- Morrison/Quitely)

FOURTH WORLD (1970s-- Kirby)

FROM HELL (1990s-- A. Moore/Campbell)

GREEN LANTERN (1950s-1960s-- Broome/Kane)

GREEN LANTERN (late 1960s-- O’Neil/Adams)

GROO THE WANDERER (1980s-?—Aragones/Evanier)

HELLBLAZER (1980s-?-- Ennis et al)

HOWARD THE DUCK (1970s-- Gerber/Colan et al)

INVISIBLES (1990s-- Morrison et al)

JOHNNY DYNAMITE (1950s-- Masuli)

JOURNEY (1980s-- Loebs)

JUDGE DREDD (1970s—1990s-- Grant/Bolland et al)

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA (1960s-- Fox/Sekowsky)

KILLRAVEN (1970s-- Conway/McGregor/Russell et al)

LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (1990s-?--A. Moore/O’Neill)

LITTLE LULU (1950s-1960s-- Stanley)

LOCAS (1980s-?-- J. Hernandez)

MAD (1950s-- Kurtzman et al)

MAGE (1980s-?-- Wagner)

MAN-THING (1970s-- Gerber/Ploog et al)

MARSHAL LAW (1980s-1990s-- O’Neill)

MARTIAN MANHUNTER (1990s-- Jones/Barretto)

MARVELS (1990s-- Busiek/Ross)

MASTER OF KUNG FU (1970s-1980s-- Moench/Gulacy et al)

MAUS (1980s-- Spiegelman)

MISTER MONSTER (1980s-2000s--Gilbert)

NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD (1960s-- Lee/Kirby/Steranko)

PALOMAR (1980s-?-- G. Hernandez)

PLASTIC MAN (1940s-1950s--Cole et al)

PROMETHEA (1990s-2000s--A. Moore/Williams)

QUESTION (1960s-- Ditko)

SANDMAN (1990s-- Gaiman et al)

SERGEANT ROCK (1950s-1970s-- Kanigher/Kubert)

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN (1970s-- Ditko et al)

SILENT INVASION (1980s—Cherkas et al)

SIN CITY (1990s-- Miller)

SPECTRE (1990s-- Ostrander/Mandrake et al)

SPIDER-MAN (1960s-- Lee/Ditko/Romita)

SPIRIT (1940s-1950s-- Eisner et al)

STARMAN (1990s-- Robinson et al)

STRANGERS IN PARADISE (1990s-2000s--T. Moore)

SUGAR AND SPIKE (1950s-1970s-- Mayer)

SUPERMAN (1940s-- Siegel/Schuster)

SUPERMAN “family” (1950s-1960s--Siegel/Binder/Swan et al)

SWAMP THING (1980s--A. Moore/Bissette/Veitch et al)

TARZAN (1960s-- Manning)

THOR (1960s-- Lee/Kirby)

TOMB OF DRACULA (1970s-- Wolfman/Colan)

TRASHMAN (1970s--Spain)

WARLOCK (1970s--Starlin)

WATCHMEN (1980s-- A. Moore/Gibbons)

WIZARD KING (1970s--Wood)

WONDER WOMAN (1940s-- Marston/Peter)

XENOZOIC TALES (1980s-1990s-- Schulz)

X-MEN (1970s-1980s-- Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne)

YOUNG ROMANCE (1940s-1950s-- Simon & Kirby)

YUMMY FUR (1980s—Brown)

ZORRO (1960s-- Toth