Man-Sized

Top Ten Volumes 1 and 2: written by Alan Moore; illustrated by Zander Cannon and Gene Ha (2000-2002): If you've always wanted to see a drunken, Godzilla-like giant talking radioactive lizard wearing a 'No Fat Chicks' t-shirt, then this is the comic book for you. Moore's jolly yet serious mashing up of the superhero-group and police-procedural sub-genres (think of it as Hill Street Blues meets the Super Friends) is a great book, jammed with satirical material that doesn't detract from the drama of its various storylines.

After World War Two, the vast majority of America's super-beings, super-scientists, super-villains, and supernatural beings were forcibly relocated to the city of Neopolis because normal people didn't like having them around. Also robots and talking animals and super-pilots and a variety of other homages to pretty much every comic-book and comic-strip character ever. And they needed police. And then Earth made contact with a vast confederation of alternate Earths of which it was designated Earth-10. And so the tenth precinct of Neopolis was born: Top Ten.

While mysterious, super-strong, and mostly invulnerable (and initially very grumpy) Jeff Smax and his new partner and new officer Toybox are the focus of this "first season" of Top Ten, we also meet a rich assortment of cops, villains, and others. Moore does a nice job of hiding the "real" major case of the year until late in the game.

The weirdness of Neopolis, with everything from Bugtown to a robot ghetto (robots get discriminated against...a lot), is an endless source of stories. There's a bar where the gods of every major religion get drunk. There are weird new drugs and vices unknown to our world and diseases that only affect people with superpowers. There's Sergeant Kemlo, a dog with a penchant for tropical-themed shirts, operating in a human-shaped cybernetic exoskeleton; and Girl One, a nudist android; and Synesthesia, whose powers are pretty much right there in her name; and King Peacock, the Satanist magician. And others.

Jeff Smax will gradually learn to trust his new partner -- he's still getting over the death of his old one, and he has people issues anyway. Toybox will find out that the hero named The Rumour actually exists. And they'll all find out why Jeff's warning in a dream to "Beware Caesar" is true.

Cannon and Ha's art is terrific, jam-packed without seeming crowded, and with pleasing, and occasionally pleasingly intricate, costumes on everybody (Girl One and King Peacock must especially have been a pain to draw). And of course there's Gograh, that giant drunk lizard, and his trouble-causing, man-sized son Ernesto Gograh. Just don't let a giant drunken lizard with radioactive breath barf on you. Highly recommended.

Four!

America's Best Comics, written by Alan Moore, Peter Hogan, Steve Moore and Rick Veitch; illustrated by Art Adams, Sergio Aragones, Jim Baikie, Kyle Baker, Hilary Barta, J. Scott Campbell, Zander Cannon, John Cassaday, Claudio Castellini, Frank Cho, Dame Darcy, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Melinda Gebbie, Michael Golden, Adam Hughes, Phil Noto, Kevin Nowlan, Kevin O'Neill, Jason Trent Pearson, Humberto Ramos, Alex Ross, Eric Shanower, Rick Veitch, Al Gordon, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story and John Totleben (2001-2003; collected 2004): This collection is essentially a portmanteau of stuff that doesn't fit into any of the other collections of Alan Moore's America's Best Comics universe, anchored by a lengthy dimension-hopping adventure of Tom Strong's daughter Tesla. The shorter stories are all pretty solid; of greatest interest, probably, is the bizarre but appropriate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen board game. Sketches and early design work fill out the volume. It's all good, mostly clean fun. Recommended.




The Helmet of Fate, written by Steve Gerber, Steve Niles, Gail Simone, Tad Williams and Bill Willingham; illustrated by Scott Hampton, Shawn McManus, Duncan Rouleau, Peter Snejberg, Phil Winslade and others (2007): One of those odd non-miniseries miniseries that DC occasionally plays around with -- as originally published, this was five one-shots with different writer/artist teams, and really worked best as an adjunct to the Day of Vengeance miniseries and the subsequent ongoing supernatural team series Shadowpact.

Having been pummelled by the Spectre in a suicidal (and successful) gambit to get that loony, near-omnipotent supernatural avenger back under control, longtime DC mystical hero Doctor Fate has been reduced to its essence -- a magical helmet without a human partner/host -- and flung into space by Captain Marvel to let fate find it a new, um, Fate. It meets up with a handful of DC's supernatural heroes, some of them newly rebooted 'legacy' heroes (Ibis the Invincible and Sargon the Sorcerer), some of them just new (Black Alice), some their old loveable selves (Detective Chimp and angel-on-assignment Zauriel).

And that's about it. The helmet and the heroes have an adventure; the helmet moves on. Nothing is really resolved, as Steve Gerber's subsequent Fate stories in the Countdown to Mystery miniseries would reveal who the new Doctor Fate would be. Still, the writing and art are for the most part top-notch; it's a shame that none of these spun off into at least a miniseries (so far as I know). Recommended.

Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walt Simonson Volume 2, written by Walt Simonson and Danny Fingeroth; illustrated by Walt Simonson and Rex Valve (1990-91; collected 2008): Marvel pushes the acceptable lower page limits of comic-book collections here with a volume that collects just five of writer/artist Walt Simonson's early 1990's run on the Fantastic Four. And one of those is a fill-in issue that basically reiterates the point of an earlier John Byrne FF, complete with a reference to that earlier, better story.

We do, however, get the FF's loopy adventures in an alternate reality in which Stalin is still running the Soviet Union in 1990 (shades of Command and Conquer!). Simonson does shine here doing the fast-paced science-fantasy stuff that's been his strongest suit as a writer/artist ever since he did Thor in the mid-1980's. The reconstituted FF takes a bit of getting used to (at this point in their history, Ben Grimm isn't the Thing, but his girlfriend Ms. Marvel is the (a) Thing. But she's not the original Ms. Marvel. And female Things look pretty much identical to male Things, though she wears a top for modesty's sake so we don't really know how anatomically correct she is). Short but fun. Recommended.

Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walt Simonson Volume 3, written by Walt Simonson; illustrated by Walt Simonson, Art Adams and others (1991; collected 2009): Walt Simonson's FF run continues, or possibly ends...Marvel really isn't big on supplying context in its reprint volumes. Marvel's first family of superheroing battles Doctor Doom and a time-controlling adjustment bureau angered by the FF's meddling in history.

Cosmic shenanigans proliferate, Reed Richards shows once again why he's the most dangerous member of the Fantastic Four, and Ben Grimm goes through yet more mutations and permutations of his rocky, orange self. Hopefully there's a timeline out there somewhere in which Simonson wrote and drew a Superman comic for several years -- the combination of lightheartedness and the cosmic is pretty refreshing, much like a Junior Mint. Recommended.