"Although, I'll never understand how people can swoon over Watchmen and turn around and say Squadron Supreme was garbage..."

Hint: the writing and the art.

"and I'd guarantee your tastes would be almost identical to that of the "hip" writers and editors of said magazine."

SQUADRON SUPREME is number 22 in their best comics of all time.

What's an original list of favorite superhero comics? There's so little that's even readable that it's hard not to reach a consensus pretty fast. Even you and Wizard are going to pick correctly sometimes due to the embarrassingly bad quality of the population whence the choices are coming. What's more embarrassing: agreeing with Wizard magazine on 10 to 20 best superhero comics or agreeing with them that at least 50% of the best comics ever published are superhero comics? Your elitist attack is just silly.

Reece, I'll admit the art, while competent, was nothing spectacular.

But the writing? Well, let's just say I'm getting a bad case of deja vu...

Wasn't Wizard the Mag that spent years fawning over Valiant, Image, and Marvel's X-stuff, back when they sold so well?

I'll admit that I haven't read Wizard in, say, ten years at least, so if your basing your criticism on overlap between Dean's reading and subsequent published lists, forgive me. But back in the day when Wizard was becoming Wizard, it pimped the hell out of a bunch of crap, much to the detriment of other good stuff. For that reason, I have a pretty hard time viewing Dean's list as some sort of "Wizard List." Now, if it included, say, Harbinger, Archer and Armstrong, Deathmate, Pitt, and Prophet, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

And even if something was mentioned as worthwhile in Wizard, it certainly doesn't follow logically that it's 'unoriginal' to count that as a favorite or worthwhile reading. At this point, lord knows that most of the stuff on Dean's list (and yours, for that matter) has been pointed out as excellent by someone else (see the comment re: Wizard's view of Squadron Supreme). I certainly don't think that, say Wizard (or any other publication, for that matter) coming out and saying that it thinks the O'Neil/Adams GL/GA stuff is very good somehow makes that GL/GA run something to be shunned, or makes any reader who points to that as good work 'unoriginal.' Using that critiera, I seriously doubt anyone who posts here would be able to have a favorites list that couldn't be referred to as CBG's, or Wizard's, or TCJ's, or OMAR's.

For the record, my favorite superhero books are Nexus and American Flagg!.

Jake

By the way, when did TCJ and Wizard's tastes converge to the point that X-height calls Dean the perfect TCJ reader, while Bags calls him the perfect Wizard reader? I missed that one completely...


X-height: I'm probably more on the ideal TCJ track, if you want to know. Religiously reading Love and Rockets, Eightball, Pallookaville, love The Complete Peanuts....


Jake

If American Flagg! is a super-hero book, put it in my "Cream of the Crop" list.

(Personally I think it lacks enough of the genre conventions to qualify, but I'd be willing ot hear the argument for its inclusion.)

Can't say I've ever seen someone put it like that. Ever.

Squadron Supreme, garbage? Not at all. Not even close.

In the same league as Watchmen? Not at all. Not even close.

(I own and enjoy them both)

Well, Dave Gibbons certainly helped elevate Watchmen to a far greater artistic level.

And I'll admit Moore had a LOT going on in that tale.

But as far as themes go? I think Squadron Supreme turned the tables on the 'superhero' genre a lot more effectively.

I still fail to see how that would some how make my list "unoriginal" unless I were deriving my own list from it. Maybe I'm just getting hung up on the term "original".

Fair enough.

Squadron Supreme may have been a shining star in a sea of relative crap when it was published, but after hearing about it for a couple of decades, and then finally getting a copy of the trade in my hands, it didn't look like it was worth the purchase price or the time that would be spent reading it at half the cover price. Garish colors, unattractive art, were a turnoff just at first glance, but what I sampled of the writing just made me put it back on the shelf.


Like I said, i fail to see how my list is unoriginal by any reasonable definition of the word. As Charles said, it's not like there is a mountain of quality to sift through when talkinga bout super-hero comics. In fact, I don't think there is a mountain of quality when talking about comics in general. I recently discovered that my local library had, hidden away in its teen section, an excellent collection of comics, super-hero stuff, alt comix, manga. It also occurred to me that anyone getting into comics for the first time, would be able to work through decades worth of the best of the medium in no more than a year or two. Compare that to prose, or film. Not a lot of bench strength in comics.

You apparently believe that you've found overlooked gems, that the rest of the world, in its originality has missed. With the exception of your Avengers favorite and Namor, it's not as if your own list goes terribly far off the accepted canon. I'd guess that both Miller Daredevil and some Claremont X-Men (probably Dark Phoenix) are on the wizard list. A part of the Iron Man run you favor was amongst the first of Marvel's TPB collections. I could go on...

Merely that any seeming "unoriginality" in my own list, would be dwarfed by a list of top comics of all time dominated by super-heroes. Such a list to me would seem highly unoriginal, that's all.

[/quote]Oh, and I'd be more than happy to give reasons why I included any of the books on my quickie-list (I'll admit it was nowhere near as thought-out as yours) that you see as "bad." Just so you know where I'm coming from... [/QUOTE]

I think you described your tastes fairly accurately. Looking at things like Grell's Green Arrow, and Hawkworld, and Namor and the two interations of WildCATS and Iron Man, I think it's clear that you like stories that use the super-hero trappings to focus on real world concerns (crime, drugs, business, racism, alcoholism, relationships). I never really thought about it before, but I don't think those types of works appeal to me anymore. I prefer something genre bending like Doom Patrol, or the sheer undiluted big fun of the Lee/Kirby FF.

Let me ask you this though, my impression is that Squadron Supreme ends with a big fight and good vanquishes evil (I've never read it so I don't know for sure). Watchmen (of which the end is the weakest part) ends far more ambiguously forcing the reader to try to suss out who was the good guy and who was the bad guy (although as Charles pointed out, Moore, by killing Rorschach, lands pretty firmly in one camp).

Assuming I'm not totally mischaracterising SS, wouldn't the tale that didn't have the typical super-hero ending do more to turn the genre on its head?

I agree that genre is self-reflexive but there's a matter of degree that separates the sort of genre-work that X-height was calling "unreflexive" from the type that is more obvious about its reflexivity. To take just two of his examples, I would agree that NEW TEEN TITANS is less reflexive than THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS because the former is more concerned with giving the readers the sense of an endless text that, like the Energizer Bunny, just keeps going and going, regardless of whether the originators stick with it. Or, if it seems unfair to draw comparisons between an ongoing series and a limited one, I for one have never been able to get into PLANETARY because it seems too bloody self-conscious. In X-height's terms, it's not "unaware" enough for me.