The World's Greatest Comics

A million and one candle lights

This week, I Will Never Log Off will hit slightly different. In a normal world, you'd see me delivering yet another multi paragraph comment on why Columbo is the hero we both need and deserve. And don't get me wrong, that one is being loaded up right now, like a cruise ship bartender lining up flammable shots. But while February is still young, I thought I'd send you a list I've been working on.

Instead of reviewing books or movies, I'd like to talk to you about a noble art form, which also happens to be cheap and overlooked. It is a largely neglected field, a still-underrated creative forum for thousands of the world’s most creative people. And it is all of these things, despite the fact that we live in a time where Hollywood is wildly addicted to them. I'm talking about the comic book.

This is my ranking of the greatest comics ever published.

Before moving an inch forward, let's not kid ourselves.

The entire of business of sorting and ranking art is flawed, compromised, and generally sus from the word go.

It is compromised by the compiler, who is biased; it is limited by cultural limits (despite my attempt to be as universal as possible). It is bounded by the author's own notions of what rocks and what is tragically basic. It is compromised by taste (most of my reading was in superhero comics) and by time (note how many of these are written in my lifespan). It is curbed by the biases of the comics industry, which was and is a sexist enterprise that discourages the publication of female-created work. There are hundreds of thousands of comics I have never read, some of which are surely better than what I've listed here. There are comics lost to time and collective memory.

And doubtless, there is a catalog of unconscious biases I'm not privy to--a list of preconceived notions as long as your arm and day are long. But still. It's my list. "A man goes to the movies," Roger Ebert wrote, "The critic must admit that he is this man." He meant that every honest dealer in critical opinion must admit that there is a subjective, non-scientific observer attached to every critic. People like what they like, even when they're observing professionally, and it behooves the critic to admit that.

Every dictionary is a joke. An attempt to capture a moving thing that can never be nailed down. And every ranking list is the same. A proposition which will inevitably be proven false.

The works below are my best guess about what is worth your time--and also what was, frankly, worth the time of the makers. They are not ranked in descending order. I do not believe that "Persepolis" is necessarily better than Hickman's "Fantastic Four." Mostly, the list was written in the order that these occurred to me, or that I picked while reading other lists as reminders. Nevertheless, the fact that some occurred earlier than others is probably telling.

If there's interest, I might go through the entire list, review-by-review. We'll see. Perhaps a series will be called for. And no surprise. This is a world of novels, comics and prestige TV, and thus I've always been of the opinion that the best work is--well--sequential.

The List:

1. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

2. From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

3. The Invisibles, Grant Morrison and Various

4. V For Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd

5. Swamp Thing, Alan Moore and Various

6. All Star Superman, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

7. Sandman, Neil Gaiman and Various

8. Preacher, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

9. Transmetropolitan, Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

10. Blankets, Craig Thompson

11. Batman, Grant Morrison and Various

12. Walt & Skeezix/Gasoline Alley, Frank King

13. Krazy Kat, George Herriman

14. Pogo, Walt Kelly

15. Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson

16. Little Nemo (and other strips), Windsor McCay

17. Peanuts, Charles Schulz

18. Maus, Art Spiegelman

19. Duck Comics, Carl Barks

20. Zap Comix stories, R. Crumb

21. Love and Rockets, the Hernandez brothers

22. The Spirit, Will Eisner

23. Prince Valiant, Hal Foster

24. Terry & The Pirates, Milton Caniff

25. Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

26. Plastic Man, Jack Cole

27. Captain Marvel, CC Beck

28. Miracleman, Alan Moore and Various

29. Spider-Man, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee

30. Hark a Vagrant, Kate Beaton

31. Bone, Jeff Smith

32. Perry Bible Fellowship, Nicholas Gurewitch

33. Master Race, Bernie Krigstein (& Al Feldstein)

34. Collected Works, Junji Ito

35. Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo

36. Planetary, Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

37. Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

38. Hate, Peter Bagge

39. Sin City, Frank Miller

40. Tintin Comics, Herge

41. Lone Wolf and Cub, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

42. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

43. Here, Richard McGuire

44. Nancy, Ernie Bushmiller

45. Achewood, Chris Onstad

46. Homestuck, Andrew Hussie

47. Fourth World Comics, Jack Kirby

48. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller

49. One Piece, Eiichiro Oda

50. Evening Standard cartoons, David Low

51. X-Men, Chris Claremont and John Byrne

52. Berserk, Kentaro Miura

53. Hellboy, Mike Mignola

54. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Hirohiko Araki

55. American Splendor, Harvey Pekar

56. God's Man, Lynd Ward

57. EC Comics Weird Science & Weird Fantasy Comics, Various writers and artists

58. The Far Side, Gary Larson

59. Daredevil, Frank Miller run

60. Mort Weisinger's Superman comics, Various writers and artists

61. Starman, James Robinson and Various

62. Dredd Stories, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

63. Hawkeye, Matt Fraction and Jeff Lemire

64. American Flagg!, Howard Chaykin

65. Batman: Year One, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

66. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Alan Moore and Curt Swan

67. Vagabond, Takehiko Inoue

68. EC Horror Comics, Various writers and artists

69. Promethea, Alan Moore, J. H. Williams III, and Mick Gray

70. Death Note, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

71. Impulse, Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos

72. Hulk, Peter David run

73. New X-Men, Grant Morrison

74. Fables, Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham

75. A Small Killing, Alan Moore and Oscar Zárate

76. His and Her Circumstances, Masami Tsuda

77. Kingdom Come, Mark Waid and Alex Ross

78. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

79. Milk & Cheese, Evan Dorkin

80. Corto Maltese comics, Hugo Pratt

81. Dick Tracy, Chester Gould

82. The Mighty Thor, Walt Simonson run

83. 2000 AD Stories, Alan Moore and Various

84. Deadpool, Joe Kelly and Various

85. DC: The New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke

86. Hunter x Hunter, Yoshihiro Togashi

87. Fantastic Four, Jonathan Hickman and Various

88. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Jim Steranko

89. Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

90. Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O'Malley

91. The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

92. Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama

93. New Yorker cartoons, Charles Addams

94. Hard Boiled, Frank Miller and Geof Darrow

95. 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa

96. MAD, Harvey Kurtzman

97. Li'l Abner, Al Capp

98. Washington Post cartoons, Herblock

99. Contract with God, Will Eisner

100. The Airtight Garage, Moebius