Culture

From The Sandman to Astonishing X-Men - the 10 greatest superhero comic stories ever told

In celebration of a misspent youth, Patrick Freyne runs through his favourite superhero comics

Justice League International: snarky, self-aware, mind-blowing

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Patrick Freyne
Thu Oct 23 2014 - 22:11

Justice League International
In 1987 Keith Giffen and JM DeMatteis restocked DC's old hero club, The Justice League, with b-list heroes such as Blue Beetle, Mr Miracle and Guy Gardner, and told snarky, self-aware stories that foreshadowed the work of Joss Whedon and blew my teenage mind.

Zenith
British comics didn't really do superheroes, but in 1987 Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, with help from Brendan McCarthy, produced Zenith for long-running sci-fi anthology, 2000AD. Zenith, the Earth's only superhuman, prefers pop stardom to heroics, but he discovers he may not be alone, with dark, deconstructive results.

Watchmen
What made Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen revolutionary wasn't the sex or the violence or the cynicism. It was the complexity, wit and postmodern approach of the storytelling. Of course, a new generation of comic creators thought it was all to do with sociopaths and ultraviolence.

Batman: Year One
Actually Frank Miller's revisionist romp The Dark Knight Returns is largely about sociopaths and ultraviolence, but its non-canonical, dystopian take on the latter days of Batman is still thrilling. His more subdued, noir origin story Batman Year One is even better. It's illustrated by David Mazzucchelli who also created the award-winning 2009 graphic novel, Asterios Polyp.

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Marshal Law
Do you hate superheroes? So do 2000AD founding fathers Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill. In the 1980s, the pair created Marshal Law, a disturbed sadomasochist with barbed wire wrapped around his arms, who hunts down and violently kills rogue superheroes, usually thinly veiled parodies of DC and Marvel stalwarts.

The Sandman
When Neil Gaiman was commissioned by DC to retool defunct superhero the Sandman, Gaiman re-imagined him as the God-like Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, and wrote epic, mythologically rich tales of fantasy and horror. Okay. This is a cheat. Sandman isn't really a superhero comic, but it is based on one.

Astonishing X-Men
Before he made The Avengers, but after he wrote Buffy, Joss Whedon collaborated with John Cassaday on a heartfelt and respectful run of X-Men comics. My favourite X-Man is blue and furry Beast, by the way, and Whedon's Beast wears a dickey-bow.

Top Ten
Another Alan Moore comic, this one built on the rather bonkers notion of a city filled with familiarly costumed crime-fighters and dastardly supervillains and the police force needed to police it. Beautifully drawn by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, it's like a sci-fi Hill Street Blues and it's just as moody, sweet and funny.

Hawkeye
In 2012 Matt Fraction and David Aja took an endearingly powerless, injury-prone superhero with a bow and arrow ("a stick and string from the Paleolithic era") and built a hugely inventive, stylistically groundbreaking comic around him.

All Star Superman
Scottish duo Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's take on Superman. They banish cynicism and embrace the hopeful, awe-inspiring, magical side of this Kryptonian immigrant. You read it wishing Superman really existed and that he could give you a hug.