3. Smax
(5 issues, America’s Best Comics, 2003)
Jeff Smax is a character we first see in the superhero police procedural Top 10 by writer Alan Moore and artists Zander Cannon and Gene Ha. He is an immense, super-strong blue-skinned being who is invulnerable to damn near anything, but – he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
In this spin-off series, the main plot-point is that Smax reluctantly travels back home to attend his adoptive father’s funeral, and he brings his partner on the force, Robyn Slinger, AKA Toybox, with him. His home, by the way, is a parallel Earth in a dimension where everything operates under the laws of magic and science doesn’t really work. So his world is very much like a fairy tale setting (which Robyn initially finds quite delightful; Jeff, however, is perennially annoyed and embarrassed by it all).
While there, we learn that Jeff’s name is actually Jaafs Maksun, that his biological father was a vile ogre, that he has an equally powerful – and rather more intelligent – twin sister named Rexa, that he had an ulterior motive for bringing Robyn along, and that he has some unfinished business with a dragon that he failed to slay, which was in fact the reason why he decided to leave his world. That thumbnail description covers many of the elements that drive the story here as we delve into Jeff’s, erm, unusual family life and very troubling parentage and why he has that small white hand symbol on his chest. The story is told with a great deal of humor, but it also goes to some *really* dark places as well – esp. concerning Jeff’s childhood and the unfinished business with the dragon. The latter task, on this world, requires going on a quest.
(Jeff and Robyn in line to get a permit from the Department of Quests, Trilogies and Sagas; note Robyn’s interactions with the Thark behind them)
The art here is done in a very cartoony style by Zander Cannon – so quite unlike his high-polish collaboration with Gene Ha that we saw in Top 10 – and it really works quite well for the story.
Like Top 10, there are so many layers and facets to this story (as well as tons of Easter eggs in the art), and it’s such a pleasure to read.

Bay of Threes

#3- Penny Century (1997-2000)




Jaime's first storyline "Mechanix" was vastly different from what became Locas but retained a majority of the characters throughout his career. The original Hoppers crew: Maggie, Hopey, Izzy, Daffy, and many more as their lives intersect in many ways. People come and people go in the lives of Maggie and Hopey, but Beatriz Garcia became something special. One of the original Hoppers gals, Beatriz grew up wanted something more. She wanted to be a superhero, a role model, a lover and just wanted to be her own person. Died her hair platinum and became the amazing Penny Century!



What Jaime doe so well with this books, like his brother Gilbert, he take care a character like Penny Century and create something much more amazing. With her spin-off book, we see that she's married to the richest man in the world, wears superhero costumes in public (sometimes nothing at all!), but lives her life that she wished when she was a rough and tough teenager in Oxnard. Due to her marriage to HR Costigan, who has horns on his head and might be the devil (possibly) gave her anything she wanted... her dreams come true. Becoming a superhero that does the most mundane heroic things but has the powers for her own selfish reasons. Mainly she's just being her true self.



With a ton of accolades for his comics, Penny Century (like Whoa, Nellie!) falls on the periphery of his already brilliant storytelling and artwork.

3. The Teen Titans



First appeared in: (various)
Spin-offs: Brave and the Bold (1964), Teen Titans (1966), Teen Titans (1976), New Teen Titans (1980) and others.


A new generation of comic book heroes, spun-out of core titles where characters once locked in perpetual sidekick status had the freedom to evolve into something more. Sure, It was just a commercial stunt trying to appeal to adolescents with characters who looked and spoke more like them, but it also inadvertently paved a path forward for DC's second generation of heroes, creating a more meaningful legacy in the DCU over time. It was one thing to cheer for the adults who already had things more or less figured out, but another entirely to root for the less tested and decorated teen counterparts who were still figuring out themselves and their places in the world. And while this is certainly played up more in the 1980 New Teen Titans volume, it's there at critical moments in the original Teen Titans adventures as well.

#3 – Death (The High Cost of Living: 1993) + (The Time of Your Life: 1996)






Plenty of other people have chosen Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series in this year's event, so there's probably not too much left for me to add.

That said, I will say that of the two mini-series that focused on Death, I feel that the first, The High Cost of Living, is by far the best. The story centres around the idea that once every hundred years Death takes human form on Earth to better understand and relate to the humans that she eventually has to "reap".

The thing with the character of Death is that Gaiman made a bit of a genius move in making her a kooky, perky, cheerful young goth woman, with a permanent smile on her lips. The fact that this depiction of "death" is so at odds with the depictions that we learn from our collective histories and social traditions, and yet is so believable and easily swallowed by the reader as something that makes perfect sense, is testament to Gaiman's writing skill. It's as if he has tapped into a hitherto unexplored collective need in us humans for death to be a kind, fun-loving young lady, rather than the skeletal, hooded, scythe-wielding figure that more readily comes to mind.

Both of these mini-series are decent reads, but it's more due to my love of Death as a character that she's made number 3 on my list than for any intrinsic literary worth in the two mini-series themselves. Having said that, even slightly less than amazing Gaiman is still a better read than probably 90% of comics.

On the Tenth Day of Christmas, Disney gave to me, the heir to a legacy...



Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa. 

We've seen Scrooge before.  And we'll see him again. 

I think it's safe to say that Don Rosa took Carl Barks' world of ducks and "nerded" them up.  This is particularly true with Uncle Scrooge.  Rosa's magnum opus The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck takes the threads, hints and pieces that were left by Carl Barks and made them in to an amazing romp through history that is one of the truly great extended stories in funnybook history.  And in the process he helped to make one of the most complex characters in comics...a little more complete and complex.  

3. THE KENTS, DC Comics, #1 (August 1997) - #12 (July 1998)

By John Ostrander, Tim Truman, Tom Mandrake and Michael Bair



Spun-off from MORE FUN COMICS #101 (Pa Kent, narrator)

So how do you get away with getting DC to greenlight an epic Western generational maxiseries with no SF, fantasy, or superhero elements in the late 90's? John Ostrander does it by framing it as part of the history of Superman's adopted paternal line, the Kents. Originally, this was conceived as a spin-off of SUICIDE SQUAD, telling the story of Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton's family, but Paul Levitz suggested the change to the Kents, despite there being some skeletons in the family history.

At the time this came out, I wasn't a fan of Westerns, neither comics, nor film, nor television, nor literature. While I can't credit this epic alone for making me a convert, it did open me to the potential breadth in the genre, and I would come to explore it in a lot more depth. I did, however, embrace this wholeheartedly at the time, and continue to appreciate it as a deeply engaging and serious work, woven richly with actual American history, and establishing a foundation for the family's commitment to the values it would imbue in its adopted son, justifying the "American Way" part of Superman's creed.