1.) Love and Rockets.
2.) The Swamp Thing (Alan Moore run).
3.) The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman).
4.) The Flash (William Messner-Loebs run).
5.) Real Stuff (by Dennis P. Eichhorn).

Limiting our votes to just 10 was incredibly hard. L & R didn't make my list and I feel terrible about that. In fact, I just took the top 10 runs I could instantly associate with being favorites and wrote them down in a kind of stream of consciousness style. If I had examined it further, I think L & R would definitely have made this list.

Hey Brian, why not splinter this list and make sequels to help branch this out a little bit ? I appreciate all the work you do with this blog, as we all do I'm sure, and it's highly entertaining, but drilling down further with some follow up lists is the next logical step and would give some of us more room to further clarify our feelings and help to alleviate some guilt, at least on my part.

How about favorite Marvel list ? fav DC list ? fav non-Big 2 list ? fav non-superhero list ? fav sci-fi run ? fav licensed properties ?

The Lee / Romita Spidey run was great, but doesn't hold up to the purity of character and originality that the Lee / Ditko initial run had IMO. That's not to short Johnny Romita by any means. I just prefer the Ditko version. The original is not always the best, but in this case, I think the original Lee / Ditko run, dated though it is, best captures the truest aspects of the character.

I've never read Runaways or Bone but have enjoyed BKV's other works and though I haven't read it yet, the tiny snippet that I did see previewed on the internet was wonderful that Jeff Smith did with his Captain Marvel mini.

The Ultimates is definitely the amped up version of The Avengers and I love it. The R-rated not for kiddies version. Captain America makes all the sense in the world, as does the Hulk. A lot of people knock Millar but I love his stuff and Hitch did some of his best work and left an indelible impression on the title.

I don’t think every superhero character can be made more realistic by turning them into lethal government operatives or something. For instance, there is nothing in Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, or Flash that lends to this kind of thing.

Rene, I totally agree with you that nearly all the Avengers you mention are more consistent as characters in the Tom Clancy style that Millar created for the Ultimates than they are in the Marvel U. Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Nick Fury, the Hulk and Black Widow were a lot more fun for me to read about using that approach than they'd been in years. The Wasp was not really that much changed.

The problems with the approach started when they expanded the cast beyond the original (or "core") Avengers, which were mostly Kirby characters. Hawkeye lost a lot of his charm in "The Ultimates", since a quipster with some trick arrows makes very little sense in a realistic fire fight. The same is true for many of the second tier Avengers.

I thought that Millar and Hitch had an interesting and enjoyable approach on "The Ultimates". It was just more limited in the directions it could go than the Roy Thomas-John Buschema version is all. It was fenced into the military/spy sub-genre within the broader superhero genre. That isn't a bad thing. I mean, so was the utterly brilliant "Suicide Squad". It is just limited.

Bone was great. Loved it back in the day, and still holds up well.

The SL/JR run on Spider-man includes one of my favorite lines ever..."Face it, toger..." (too bad JQ decided to pimp-slap her out the current issues). JR version of Peter is a bit more handsome and manly, but I choose to see it a growth of the character. And Peter didn't have it all that easy with MJ or Gwen, he still had money problems, juggling school, work, and being Spider-man, etc. And even by the standards of the universe he was in, he was never considered a 'hunk'. Didn't other characters think Gwen and MJ were lowering their standards when they hooked up with Peter?

I don't think every superhero character can be made more realistic by turning them into lethal government operatives or something. For instance, there is nothing in Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, or Flash that lends to this kind of thing.

But several of the Avengers DO lend themselves very well to this sort of thing, and have concepts that invite some cynicism:

- Captain America. He IS a supersoldier. That is his basic concept. I think it's realistic for Spider-Man to be reluctant to kill, since he is a everyman, and most every day people are reluctant to kill. But Captain America is his country's greatest soldier. A supersoldier that kills when the mission calls for it is more realistic and logical than a supersoldier that never kills. It also follows that such a person would more likely have some conservative values, than the enlightened liberal values of the regular Captain America.

- The Hulk. He is one of the few superhuman characters in comics that really should be a killer. He is an irrational, absurdly strong, freaking berserker monster. Even if we use the childlike version of the Hulk that only wants to be left alone, lots of people would be killed by accident whenever the Hulk loses control. He too is more realistic as a killer.

- Hank Pym. He is another character that invites a lot of cynicism. I mean: "Hi, I'm Hank Pym, I'm a split personality with chronic low self-steem, and multiple nervous breakdowns, but I'm really nice and heroic. Really. Honest. Would I lie to you?" A guy with his medical history "realisticaly" would be far more dysfunctional than the regular version of Pym's.

- The Black Widow and Nick Fury. They also already are superspies in the regular Marvel Universe. That superspies should be a bit ruthless and deceptive isn't too big a stretch.

- Thor. Guy comes from nowhere, has more raw power even than most superheroes, says he is the Son of God. It's realistic and logical that he would develop a cult following, and also realistic that most other people would think he is either a superpowered madman or a con-man.

- Iron Man. He is essentially the same from the regular Marvel Universe. Millar went easy on him. A alcoholic playboy that designs weapons for the government, Iron Man already has grim 'n' gritty all written over him. That Millar doesn't make him a scumbag is even a bit "unrealistic".

- Hawkeye. This one isn't a concept that pratically invites cynicism, like the others. But it still makes some sense. He is superbly trained at weapons use, superbly skilled. That such a man would be the product of government training and a government operative makes a certain sense.

In short, I think most of the Avengers lend themselves well to this sort of story, and have concepts that not only can be turned to the "dark side" with little effort, some of their concepts already invite this sort of thing. In a way that, for instance, the Fantastic Four doesn't. There is nothing in the Fantastic Four that makes them candidates to become more realistic by making them killers or more ruthless. Their concepts are not soldiers or spies or irrational monsters or weapons designers.

There are degrees of realism, I think. It isn’t all-or-nothing. A world where the government uses superior assets to invade other countries (The Ultimates) feels closer to our reality than a world where a benevolent god-on-Earth helps out everyone (All-Star Superman).

Rene, you make several very good points, but rather than focusing on degrees of realism I'd say "types". Virtually every superhero you can name is built upon a "magical exception" from the reality. I mean, even highly trained blind people aren't doing Parkour-style maneuvers. Building a universe of superheroes almost requires adding dozens of these exemptions on top of each other. The odds of the end result being within a million miles of our reality are very long indeed.

But that is not the type of realism that I think you are talking about.

Your focus appears to be on character. As an adult, I certainly agree that reading fully realized characters are a lot more interesting than two dimensional ones. Where you and I disagree is in what constitutes good characterization. While I read and enjoyed "The Ultimates" in its early going, it was very clear that Millar was borrowing types from spy novels and putting them in superhero garb. The neurotic scientist and the hard-nosed soldier are just as off-the-shelf as the prior depictions of Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers. It is just that the shelf is a more recent vintage.

Conversely, neither Morrison, nor the Silver Age writers of Superman, have the slightest interest in appealing fans of other currently popular genres. Their interest was in surrealism. Unlike Millar, Morrison is neither updating the types, nor unpacking the Freudian metaphors. He is going off on his own slightly surrealistic tangent and using the classic Superman as a point of departure. What I was saying earlier was not unfavorably comparing "The Ultimates" to "All-Star Superman". I enjoy both on their own terms. I'd love to read an Ultimate style Superman that does update the borrowings from other genres and deconstruct the metaphors.

It is just that I do not think one is more "real" than the other.

There are degrees of realism, I think. It isn't all-or-nothing. A world where the government uses superior assets to invade other countries (The Ultimates) feels closer to our reality than a world where a benevolent god-on-Earth helps out everyone (All-Star Superman).

I like diversity. I like it that I can read Millar's Ultimates one day, and Busiek's Avengers on the other day. All-Star Superman appeals to my imagination and sense of wonder. Ultimates appeals to a different kind of imagination, the "what if" kind that asks what would happen if me and the people around me, with all their foibles, lusts, and pecadillos, gained superpowers.

I do think we'd act more like the Ultimates than like All-Star Superman, if given superpowers. I do think my family life has had more of the unhappiness and co-dependence of Hank and Janet Pym than the paradisiac joy of Martha and Jonathan Kent. I do think the repression and emotional abuse suffered by Bruce Banner are closer to my experience than the flawless, upstanding morality of Clark Kent. In that sense, the Ultimates feel more "realistic" to me than All-Star Superman.

Obviously, Millar magnifies the foibles. Hank and Janet Pym aren't only unhappy, they're spectacularly unhappy. Bruce Banner isn't only repressed, he is spectacularly so. Grant Morrison also magnifies Superman's nobility in All-Star Superman. Most fiction does this. You magnify certain traits to make your point or create a certain mood.

I like both, and I'm not offended by either. The one thing that truly offends me is the idea that superhero comics must be all a certain way. I didn't like it when Image started and suddenly everything had to be dark and edgy. I also don't like very much some fans' rethoric that everything superheroic must be Silver Age-y. The subgenre is already very limited, why limit it further? There is room for everyone.

The comics also represent different mindsets and ages. Ultimates is the bitter, cynical teenager, All-Star Superman is the nostalgic middle-ager. Depending on my mood a certain day, I'd prefer to read one or the other.

Also, the big-Two seems to funcion in cycles. There are periods of pessimism followed by upbeat periods. We're sorta in a pessimistic period for the last 5 years or so, but I don't think it will last forever, and there is always upbeat stuff being published simultaneously.

For instances:
• I can't really get behind the first collection of Fables, but once Mark Buckingham joins Bill Willmingham, the book is piles of awesome.
• The difference between a Tony Harris Starman and a Harris-less Starman was not subtle, despite Robinson's continuity throughout.

As for making it further lop-sided toward the Big Two. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Just sort of the nature of the question. If it had been Top 100 Grapic Novels/Done-in-One Volume Books (so things like Marvels and Watchmen could count), the numbers would obviously favour Off-Two publishers (as a whole, if not individually). With the current question, creator-owneds are far less likely to be interested in the option of a run, so we shouldn't feel the need to shoehorn them into the definition or contest just because we like their work so much.

And, honestly, I think it’s pretty damn condescending to think that the adults who were working on these books didn’t KNOW they were trying to be funny.

Basically, I think it’s bad faith criticism based on a false sense of superiority to assume the creators of ANY work don’t know what they’re doing. Silver Age DC books have a lot of humor in them. Gardner Fox books, for instance, are FULL of site gags - The fact that this style of visual play has completely fallen out of favor in the current SERIOUSCONTINUITYANGST”REALISM” modern storytelling doesn’t mean that he was unaware of what he was doing.

MarkAndrew, I pretty much agree. The dominant mode of superhero comics has been in one direction for a very long time now. It is called "realism", but it really just as stylized as the Silver Age stuff in its way. It focuses on violence and takes a very cynical view of human motivations. They are pretty much the post-Vietnam era action movies in tights.

The biggest innovation in this sub-genre (well ... since "The Watchmen" opened the door) has been the move to "Widescreen Comics" in superhero teams. Some of these stories have been well worth reading, but "The Ultimates" really showed the limits of that space. The fact of the matter is that a lot of great characters just do not translate well into that type of story. "The Ultimates" started really strong, but flagged as more Avengers were brought into the story. It really should not have come as a surprise that the Kirby characters worked great Widescreen. However, Roy Thomas, Don Heck and John Buschema were not working on that scale. Sadly, Millar and Hitch only had the one trick up their sleeve. The Ultimate versions of Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and etc were pale imitations of the originals.

What that told me was that there are different modes of telling stories that work better (or worse) for different characters.

Some concepts, like the JLA, work almost exclusively Widescreen. When creators are allowed scope (i.e. Morrisons' run, "The New Frontier", "Kingdom Come"), the JLA is the coolest concept going. Scaling the stories down is the problem. Other characters lose something when you scale them up, or make them more violent and/or angst-y.

As you suggest, Superman is the classic example of the later problem. He works great in big stories, but ultra-violence and suffering ill become him. This isn't because Superman is less "realistic" than, say, Thor. It is because Superman is about a different part of the human condition, namely love. In his best stories, the Man of Steel is constantly balancing his love (or compassion) for one person with another. Think of the scene in "Superman the Movie" in which he has to choose between two missiles headed in opposite directions, or the Donner cut of the sequel when he has to choose between his love for Lois and his duty to humanity. In classical terms, this makes Superman a comedy. The humor is a pretty natural out-growth of the "love triangle for two" that Lois, Clark an Superman are in.

That does not mean there are not mature themes to be looked at in Superman. Mort Weisinger injected a lot of his own Freudian analysis into the Silver Age version of the character. There are a lot of rich metaphors to unpack and explore. However, those metaphors are not about anger and, by extension, violence in the manner of Batman. They are metaphors about love and sex. Like many marriage delaying bachelors, Clark Kent piled a LOT of love interests: Lois Lane, Lana Lang and the rest of ladies with LLs in their name. There were even issues that explored the prospect of romance between the Superman and Supergirl, who were the male and female last survivors of an entire race after all.

For whatever reason, no one writes those types of stories for modern audiences. The same phenomenon has hurt Spider-Man for slightly different reasons. Lee-Romita was a bold move forward in TIME for Peter Parker. The guy matured at very nearly a natural rate, which gave all the soap opera some weight. The power of the various monsters that became his rogue's gallery was in turn from the soap opera. Stan Lee got this in a way that Marvel seems to have forgotten.

I didn’t even vote for Bone, even though I think it’s a significantly better body of work than a lot of the stuff that did make my list. It’s just that I have a ridiculously hard time thinking of the book as “a run.” To me, it seems, that a run should describe a particular creators work on a book that stands within a larger body of work crafted by a plurality of creators.

Dane, I could not agree more.

I would take it a step further and define a run as a series of contiguous (or very nearly contiguous) issues of a title by a specific writer AND artist within a larger body of work. The problem with this definition is that it creates an even bigger bias toward the Big Two, in general, and Marvel, in particular. However, I think it creates a more direct apples-to-apples comparison.

Silver Age DC comics have their moments, and some are high-water marks in the super-hero genre (or sub-genre, whatever), but they don’t age well (mostly). The ideas in the scripts were often exciting, but the scripts themselves were often formulaic. I have a hard time reading more than one Silver Age DC super-hero comic in one sitting (not that they were ever meant to be read in huge chunks, Essentials/ Showcase-format). Sure, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, and Joe Kubert were among the top artists to work in the medium. Sure, Jimmy Olsen comics are goofy, ironic fun. Still, a lot of readers who were too young for the Silver Age, like myself, have no emotional connection to the material.

I think that the challenge of the DC Silver Age is that it is hard to figure out how to vote for them. For example, I actually prefer reading the Silver Age Superman to the current stuff, but for whom would I vote? There really is not a "run" by a particular writer and/or artist to really there. Marvel really created that idea, which DC adapted to more than a decade later. The 'voice' of the title was really the editor. However, I would be stunned if Julie Schwartz's "Green Lantern" got a single vote.

Alternately, folks could have voted for artists. Gil Kane's "Green Lantern" might have garnered support, as would have Infantino's "Flash" and Kubert's "Hawkman" However, that does not seem to have been the approach people took. There has yet to be an artist only run in the Top 100, but a lot of writer only runs.

I don't believe Ultimates was conceived as that; it was an ongoing volume, which they rebooted because of publishing concerns; or else, like Sleeper and LOEG, series of miniseries count.

I had my 5 guesses prepared in advance, but just to be sure I waited until the last day to send them, just in case one of them appeared in the list "too early", but none of them did.

I think the Top 5 runs must be those HUGE names that have lots of recognition among almost all comic book fans. Romita's Spidey I think fall just a bit short of this, likewise for Mark Waid's Flash, that another fellow had in his guesses.

Still, I had 8 runs that I think fit the criteria, but having to guess which of them would get the Top 5, and in what order... damned hard.

Series of miniseries were counted as runs under the rules. Hence League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc.

Which makes sense. Ultimates 2 reads like a continuation of the series rather than a sequel. It's just for practical publishing reasons that it got referred to as two miniseries.

Whereas I'd be more skeptical if say Dark Knight Returns were counted as a run because of Dark Knight Strikes Again, clearly a separate miniseries.

Ultimates and Runaways both seem too new, but I'd have Runaways in my top 50 anyway. I like Ultimates, but love it less than most. And it loses points for being written by Millar, though it stands above a lot of his work.

Bone I dearly love and wish I'd found room for in my top 10. I didn't but it was darned close (as were many things)

Not sure how you can say that when DC did Watchmen some 20-plus years earlier.

And while I'm at it (and at the risk of re-opening a can of worms): How is it, Brian, that Ultimates (clearly two separate mini-series) qualifies as a run, but Watchmen does not?