Top 10: America's Best Comics (Top Ten) [Hardcover]

Alan Moore (Author), Zander Cannon (Illustrator), Gene Ha (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics; Collected ed edition (October 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563896575
• ISBN-13: 978-1563896576
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,736,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hysterical!, March 25, 2004

By 

A. Trotter (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Top Ten, Book 1 (Paperback)

This is what would happen if everyone had a power. This is the sort of "Law and Order" or "NYPD Blue" you'd get. Only funnier. It reminds me of the new online game "City of Heroes" in a way, except I doubt the game has anything as useless as swelling up like a balloon as a power, or producing lots of sand all over the place.

Ok, so it's not gonna win any "Most Dramatic New Comic of the Year" awards. It's not grim, depressing, real, or awe-inspiring. It's fun and funny and tough and cool, and I loved it. It's well written, and well drawn, and a little bit raunchy (there are lots of hookers so it kind of has to be).

It's also totally accessable to almost everyone, which some of Moore's other work isn't. It uses the sort of TV style we're all familiar with to make it seem closer to us. I like it a lot. So it won't stay with me and haunt me like some of Moore's other stuff... but not everything has to haunt you to be good.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Man is A Genius, October 13, 2003

By 

Felixpath (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Top 10: America's Best Comics (Top Ten) (Hardcover)

Ah, Alan Moore, where would I be without you? What meaning would my life have without "Watchmen," "Swamp Thing," and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"? Time and time again, you've taken the graphic novel medium to new heights, and now you've brightened my existence with this gorgeous, hilarious, powerful work of storytelling. I think everyone who likes superheroes should be required to read "Top 10" for the insights it offers -- and everyone else should read it just because it's such a bloody good piece of work.

At first glance, "Top 10" seems like "Watchmen Lite" -- it imagines an alternative world where a boom of costumed crime-fighters in the 1940s and 50s has left a large glut of out-of-work superpeople, most of whom inhabit the pseudo-futuristic city of Neopolis. It's tough work to police a city where each and every citizen has some kind of superpower, and the job falls upon the shoulders of Precinct Ten (named because this is number ten in the multitude of parallel universes). As the story starts, we meet the latest addition to the precinct team, Robyn "Toybox" Slinger, who carries around a crate full of intelligent supertoys who do her bidding. Her new partner is a hulking, sullen, blue dude named Smax who shoots energy beams out of his chest. Robyn soon learns that at Precinct Ten, lunacy is status quo.

Half the fun of "Top 10" comes from the colorful, expansive cast of characters. Robyn's coworkers include Girl One (whose bioengineered skin constantly changes), Jack Phantom (a lesbian who can phase through solid matter, Hyperdog (a sentient Doberman in a cyborg skeleton), Irma Geddon (a middle-aged housewife with a nuclear battlesuit), King Peacock (worships Satan; punches through solid stone), Synaesthesia (listens to smells, feels colors, sees sounds -- believe it or not, this is a real condition), Janus (a switchboard operator with two faces and two personalities), Alexei (a Communist telepath with a chimanzee for a wife), and a number of others. Somehow, Moore takes this massive cast and makes each character into a fully-realized individual with his or her own motives, fears, desires, etc.

And somehow, this happens at breakneck speed as the members of precinct Ten get themselves into one bizarre situation after another. The psychopathic, telekinetic Santa Claus; the fat, middle-aged Godzilla clone; the cosmic mice; the porn star from Venus, the Ghostly Goose (name refers to what he does, not what he is)...I simply can't bring myself to give away any of the plot's oddball twists any more than necessary. All is not comeday hijinks, however. I express my admiration that Moore can cause such laughter while at the same time dealing with such serious issues as STDs, drug abuse, teen prostitution and pedophilia, closet homosexuals, bigotry, and interspecies realationships (Hyperdog falls for a human woman, and vice versa). One minute you're laughing uproariously, the next minute you're struck into silence as a character is forced to make a painful personal decision, or another tries to cope with the knowledge of his impending, inevitable doom. It's amazing that Moore can throw all this together and have it come out so well. And it would be unfair of me not to mention the exquisite artwork of Gene Ha, who fills each panel with a glorious swamp of detail.

So yeah, that's my rant. "Top 10" is now my favorite Alan Moore comic, and my second-favorite graphic novel of all time (despite everything, I still like "Sandman" best). If you happen to spot this treasure on the shelf of your local bookstore -- by all means, spend the $14.95. Buy Volume Two as well. It's worth it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alan Moore delivers once again!, August 10, 2001

By 

Todd Grotenhuis "tgrotenhuis" (Grand Rapids, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Top Ten, Book 1 (Paperback)

I was a little skeptical about this book when I first picked it up. Alan Moore is someone who is easily judged by his own standard, and with the absolute classics he's put out before (Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Batman Killing Joke, From Hell, etc.), I was afraid Top 10 would pale by comparison. Plus, Alan Moore was writing about 4 other comics at roughly the same time as he was doing Top 10, so he was probably getting a little burned out. Right?

Wrong. The only reason this book doesn't get 5 stars from me is that it doesn't quite measure up to the Alan Moore classics listed above. But Top 10 is not far behind. In the hands of virtually any other writer, this concept would have fallen flat on its face: the premise of having a whole city full of super heroes is easy to mishandle. But Moore treats everything so realistically, that you just can't help but find these stories believable. And the stories are filled not only with plot development, character development, and believable dialogue, but with humor as well. There are subtle parodies of Marvel and DC comics throughout, as well as some outright funny scenes that stand alone. After reading Top 10, I could understand why it won the Eisner award for Best New Series -- I can't wait for Top 10, Book 2 to come out!