Top Ten: The Forty-Niners [Hardcover]

Alan Moore (Author), Gene Ha (Author)

Book Description

Series: Top Ten | Publication Date: August 1, 2005

The multiple Eisner Award-winning team that brought you TOP 10Alan Moore (WATCHMEN, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN) and Gene Hareunites in its first original graphic novel to bring you the origins of Neopolis and the first officers of Top 10! America is swelling with postwar prosperity after humanitys greatest threat has been defeated, but the country faces a new dilemma: what is to become of its heroes? Where will they go? To the glistening towers of Neopolisthe city of the future. But Neopolis is full of the roughest and toughest villains the world has ever known. It is a city in need of taming by a new breed of cop, a super police force. Hence, the creation of Top 10. Youve met the current cast of Top 10Smax, King Peacock, Toybox, Joe Pi and more; now meet their forebears, the ones who blazed the trail and made Neopolis the city it is today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Retro-futuristic art meets postwar expansionism and superhero psychology in this tour-de-force graphic novel. It's a prequel to the often hilarious Top 10 series, which followed the cases of the police force in Neopolis, a city populated entirely by people with superpowers who are as petty, selfish and drunk and disorderly as normal humans. In The Forty-Niners, we see the Neopolis Police Department's early days attempting to bring order to a new city created just to contain the "science heroes" on both sides of WWII. Among the problems: German skull-masked ne'er-do-wells who have some secret plan afoot, and a gang of vampires who have taken over as the mob, running the prostitution franchise and shaking down bar owners. Moore (Watchmen; From Hell) has sketched the entire pecking order of this fantastic world and the wistful nature of the superhero diaspora. "You're gonna have a lot of feelings you ain't had before," warns the mayor of the super city. "Feelin' ordinary. Feelin' uesless. Feelin' like you're in the world's biggest freak show." Moore's boundless imagination dazzles as it reinvents the archetypes of religion, mythology and comic books. Ha's subtle, fluid watercolor-like art is equally rich in background sight gags, making this a book to savor. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Top Ten was a 12-issue series often described as "Hill Street Blues with superheroes." Set in futuristic Neopolis, where the residents all have superpowers and a colorful, costumed constabulary maintains order, The Forty-Niners is the prequel to the series set in 1949, when extrapowered humans from both sides of World War II relocated to a city new-built for them. Among them are 16-year-old ace pilot Steve Traynor, who flew under the name of Jetlad, and his former enemy Leni Muller, the Skywitch. Steve (who is to become Neopolis' police captain) casts his lot with the city air force, while Leni joins the fledgling police department. Obstructing the effort to found a city are vampire gangsters and former Nazi scientists. The concept is shrewd and imaginative, and Moore's deft plotting, artful characterization, and dead-on dialogue make this flashback more impressive than the series that spawned it, though it wouldn't be half as convincing without Ha's intricate, realistic artwork. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: WildStorm (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563897571
• ISBN-13: 978-1563897573
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,242,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific addition to the Top Ten saga., August 7, 2005

By 

Harvey H. Meeker (Shelton, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (Hardcover)

Top Ten: The Forty Niners takes us back to the very beginnings of Neopolis the setting for all the previous Top Ten books (except for most of SMAX). The city of Neopolis was chosen by the government as the place to corral the dearth of super-heroes and villains that appeared during and after World War II.

The Forty Niners is really the story of Steve Traynor aka Jetlad and Leni Muller aka Sky Witch and the new start they make in Neopolis. Traynor is a character that fans of Top Ten will recognize as the modern series chief of police in Neopolis. In this book he is sixteen and fresh out of World War II.

The two characters meet up at the beginning of the book on the train to Neopolis and after that Moore successfully weaves the book around their two stories. Leni becomes a police officer with the fledgling police force of Neopolis, while Steve joins the local air guard as a plane mechanic. Both of their narratives tell us a lot about Neopolis at the time of its founding.

Part of what makes the story so successful is the fantastic artwork by Gene Ha. The little details he puts into each panel really help to bring the story to life. The subdued coloring by Art Lyon definitely gives the book a historical feel, if that makes any sense, and it also allows the little details in Ha's artwork to filter through.

The packaging of the book is very well done. The wraparound dustjacket cover art is fantastic and the inside covers also contain more renderings of the characters from the book. There is also a bookmark ribbon in the binding of the book.

Overall, I would recommend this book to just about any comic book fan or graphic novel fan. It will certainly make you want to read the other Top Ten books if you haven't already. It's a fine addition to anyone's collection.

For fans of Top Ten you can look forward to a new Top Ten mini-series called Beyond The Farthest Precinct set five years after SMAX. Alan Moore hands over writing duties to Paul Di Filippo and artwork will be done by Jerry Ordway. This apparently goes on sale 8/17/05 and I can't wait.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top 10's Heroes of the Past, November 10, 2005

By 

Rodney Meek (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (Hardcover)

Imagine, if you will, a world filled to overflowing with superheroes, supervillains, and supercivilians, all brimming over with superpowers, and all brought together to live in one city, Neopolis. And then imagine that the Earth of Neopolis is just but one of an infinite number of parallel versions scattered throughout the multiverse--and that dimensional travel from one reality to another is cheap and easy. So, on top of the superfolk, you have aliens, magicians, robots, time travelers, sword-swinging fantasy warriors, talking animals, and more. All of whom have to earn a living, whether that means driving a cab, manning the receptionist desk, working the deli counter, or trying to eradicate pesky infestations of mega-mice. This is Alan Moore's world of Top 10.

Top 10 is a comic book title that is released in fitful outbursts as loosely connected miniseries. Thus far, it has been collected in two softcover collections and the "Smax" spinoff (highly recommended). There is currenty a "five years after" miniseries moving to a conclusion on the newsstands, but it's the first non-Moore-written installment, and it's a tad overambitious and unfocussed.

"The Forty-Niners" steps back a few years back to 1949 to show us the founding of Neopolis in the wake of the conclusion of a World War II that seems to have ended a little later than our version. And of course, this variation of the global conflict featured dueling American and German masked avengers, science heroes, and flying superaces. Arriving in the city, just beginning its transformation to a "gee whiz!" metropolis filled with epic architecture and bizarre skyscrapers, are the youthful Steve Traynor, the former Jet Lad, and Leni Muller, the reformed Sky Witch who fought on the side of the Nazis before switching sides in '43. They meet cute on the inbound train and find lodging at the same boardinghouse.

It's not too long before Traynor, who we know will one day become the police captain of the Top 10 precinct in Neopolis, finds a job as a plane mechanic with the Sky Sharks, and Muller becomes a rookie cop. They meet such figures as Steelgauntlet, the exoskeleton-wearing cop with a secret, the Maid, a modern-day version of Joan of Arc, and the Black Rider, a motorcycle-riding Zorro-type. And of course, they encounter legions of vampires. And haughty Nazi scientists such as Professor Gromolko, Die Eisen Maske, and the Panzer, brought to Neopolis to work for America in building the future.

We also see a little bit of Slinger, the cop who controls regiments of toy soldiers, who we know will become the father of Toy Box in the "modern" stories.

The art is very finely rendered, and many of the panels are packed with background figures that you will recognize as Li'l Abner, Popeye, and that captain from "Tin Tin"...Captain Haddock, I think? The architecture and vehicle and passersby are all quite nicely detailed. Also memorable is Muller and the Black Rider's encounter with the Green Gun and his kid sidekick the Bullet, who are beating the tar out of their arch-enemy Puzzleman, who only speaks in crossword clues, such as "Void, confused in thong (7)" and "Bantam popsicles (4,7)", the latter of which I have yet to figure out.

This is a love story (that may go in a surprising direction for some readers), a vampire-fighting story, a story about robot rights and tolerance for all, a story about cops and the city. It's good stuff. If you read Top 10, definitely pick it up. If you're new to this part of Moore's work, you should probably start with the other Top 10 volumes. Either way, you won't be disappointed!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unfulfilled Potential..., May 25, 2008

By 

B. G. Rood - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (Hardcover)

I am afraid to say that the Booklist review listed here is very wrong... This 6-part story is not superior to the original 'Top Ten' books.

While Gene Ha's artwork is fantastic, the one that doesn't come to the show this time is Alan Moore. It's all too crammed, half-baked and without the feeling that 'Top Ten' had. As inventive as some of the elements are, ultimately the writing of the characters and their dialogue is like weak tea compared to what Moore is capable of. It just all feels rushed - a story with a massive world like this needs more time given to it, both in the amount of pages (there's half what there should be) and from Moore himself.