Why is it just “Grant Morrison’s” Doom Patrol - Richard Case illustrated almost every issue. How about some love for Richie?

That strikes me as right.

Grant Morrison is a great comic writer, but he is really reliant upon his artists to make the story understandable. Many of the symbols and metaphors that he traffics in are visual. An awful lot of his character work is very subtle. When you see his scripts drawn by a Frank Quietley, a Richard Case or a Ryan Sook; it is a totally different experience than seeing his scripts drawn by others. IMO, that is why his "Invisibles" struggled until Phil Jimmenez took the assignment.

This is more true of Morrison than any other great comic writer I can name.

None of these runs made my Top 10 despite me loving all of them.

Simonson's Thor was great, yes, but would be in my Top 50. Very good yes but apparently I wasn't quite as taken with it as most. That cover to 337 was truly shocking back in the day. Besides Tom Scioli and Jose Ladronn, Walt Simonson certainly has his own style but really vibes dynamic Kirby. I loved his Thor and I think I liked his Fourth World the best. For some reason his sci-fi FF felt kinda clunky.

Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol is probably the essential Grant Morrison work in my mind. They were so bizarre, psychedelic and wild that you had no idea what was going to happen. I esp liked the issue that showed The Chief to be a real sicko who set all of them up to fail and become part of his group. What a mind bender ! Richard Case's art was great and fit the book well.

I've only ever read the first 3 issues of Y but I was blown away by how good I thought it was. In fact, I loaned it to a non-comics reading friend and never got it back but plan on getting the mega huge complete collected version later. BKV rocks. I'm shocked at the negative feedback here about Y.

Here's the best point of Y: every time you read (past-tense) an issue, the first thing on your mind is "damn, I really wish the next one was already here." There were very few times during the entire run when the ending of one issue didn't get me incredibly excited to see the next one.

Since this is a survey of comic *runs*, that more than qualifies it in my book.

Joe: What was wrong with what happened to 355? The series was building to a bittersweet ending for a while.

(I personally thought that the fanboys would be more riled up about what happened with Beth.)

Incidentally, the reason why I disliked Y is that most of its plot arcs and character points didn't seem very well thought through and didn't follow logically from the set-up established in the book. It was a series that wanted you to stop thinking about how they got from A to B, and instead dwell on the situation created (which was... sadly generic to "what if women ruled the world??" sci-fi stuff, if well-done in terms of craft).

Funny that the efforts to argue in the series favor also don't seem to be thinking very hard about how to illustrate the series virtues!

My certainty that Tintin and Nth Man will make the 100 is beginning to wane.

And "cosmic rays" turning you into a rockman does?

-355 and Dr. Mann hooking up midway through just felt like fanboy pandering.

-Someone else already mentioned the plague revelation. It's convoluted, boring, and means there was a huge bit of coincidence in the series (more than one, actually).

-355's final fate I'm shocked didn't inspire some backlash. Even morseo, I'm shocked that the bit immediately beforehand didn't raise the ire of the blogosphere.

-Alter. Some people dislike Preacher because of how Starr's treated in the series. Well, Alter is the anti-Starr. She's built up and built up, but ultimately it's all sound and fury. She seems to be there more becuase long running Vertigo books need to have a big bad post-Sandman than any story need (Transmet- the Smiler, Invisibles- Sir Miles, Preacher- Starr, Fables- the Adversary).

So sorry, Y could have been great, but instead it wound up being merely medicore, with one brilliant arc in it.

And I liked Beta Ray Bill as much as anybody.

Love Simonson's Thor and am glad to see it this high.

Think Y is an excellent series, though I'm in the camp that cynically believes its high placement has more to do with it being both good and recent. But whatever. Brian will do this again in 5-10 years (right?) and we'll see where things land then. Come 2050 or so, we'll get to see what runs made the list over and over again.

That comic has so much testosterone and closeted (and denied) homosexuality that it fascinates me. Not the sort of thing I'd vote for or even buy, but I'll certainly read it if a friend lends me his copy.

I think Marvel opened a real can of worms when they rebooted so many of their titles in the late 90s. FF, Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Avengers, Daredevil, Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man, most of which had over 400 issues logged were suddenly back to zero. I HATED it at the time, and took consolation only from the fact that somehow, my beloved Uncanny (even though it had been mostly crap for years, with the exception of Seagle's run) was spared. I love big numbering because of the sense of continuity it gives. I know it's geeky but I have a big left brain and I loved being able to reference issue numbers like born-agains use Bible verses, and that's a lot more fun when you've got one large run, with big numbers to use.

But once they pulled those rugs away it's kinda like there was no going back... even though they did reinstate the old numbering for a lot of them, and with FF and ASM it actually stuck.

These days, now that we don't have those big numbers to play with, it might actually make more sense to just give a fresh, full volume to a creative team, at least if they're willing to stick around for a few years. It's worked well enough with Priest's Black Panther, Bru's Cap, and I almost wish Morrison's New X-men were a complete series because it stood on its own so profoundly. Coversely, the way they've handled the Hulk's numbering for the last ten years seems silly because there's no method to it. Sometimes they reboot, sometimes they don't, and it doesn't seem to have any consistent correlation with how much of a shift there is in the actual title. Why didn't they give Pak a new number 1 if they're giving Loeb one (he wasn't a big enough name I guess, but his take was more distinct that any we've seen in a while)?

Good point about Swamp Thing, though... maybe they should keep a title going until they really do find a creator who hits his stride and sticks around long enough to finish a story, and then relaunch. Oh, wait, I guess they did that with Pak's Hulk! So maybe there's no problem, lol

Green Arrow & Atom vs. Darkseid: possibly the best moment in Morrison's JLA. My other favorite is J'Onn's "Joker... STOP!" Way more mature than Sin City.