Here's a look at the 5 best comic books I'm reading currently:
- Y: The Last Man -
Brian K. Vaughn's masterpiece about the lone survivor of a plague that killed all men on earth continues to be as thought-provoking and suspenseful as ever. I especially appreciate how the mysteries of the story are unfolding at a gradual, but steady, pace. While the last storyline revealed the answer to one of the series' biggest questions (why Yorick survived the plague), it didn't place all cards on the table, leaving readers to still wonder how the plague was created and what the motivations are behind those who are apparantly seeking to stop its cure. Unlike The X-Files, which eventually fell under the weight of its own unresolved plot threads, Y seems to be moving to an eventual end, though not at too quick a rate as to rob it of its excitement.
- Gotham Central -
Though it places a central focus on the detectives of Gotham City and includes only minimal appearances of the Dark Knight, Gotham Central reads like the only true Batman book on the market right now. This makes sense, considering that the series' alternating writers Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker have pretty much been the only writers to contribute relevant stories to the mainstream Bat-books in the past 3 years. Sadly, Brubaker's recent signing of an exclusive contract with Marvel means that his days breathing life into the world of Gotham City have come to an end.
- Wonder Woman -
Yeah, I realize how homo it sounds to say that Wonder Woman is one of my favorite comic books, but the fact that I'm doing so is a testament to the excellent writing that Greg Rucka is also doing in this title. Rucka has taken the two core elements of the heroine's character, her role as an ambassador and her ties to Greek mythology, and crafted an interesting product that is just as much a politcal drama as it is heroic epic. Particularly stirring was WW's recent battle with Medusa, in which the title character was forced to permanantly blind herself in order to defend against her enemy's ability to turn people into stone with a single gaze.
- Green Lantern: Rebirth -
After several years, DC has decided to bring hero-turned-villain-turned-dead Hal Jordan back to the Green Lantern identity, and it is doing so with a bang. In this mini series, details and plot threads dating back to the earliest GL stories have been woven together to form a highly original explanation for Hal's descent into madness, as well as a legitimate reason for his return. It's almost as if the past 15 years of Green Lantern comics have been leading to this point, and I'm a sucker for a continuity-based climax.
- The Ultimates -
It's hard to pick just one of Marvel's "Ultimate" titles (a set of modern-day restarts of the company's classic heroes) for my top 5, but the others don't quite match up to the movie-quality plots being told in The Ultimates. While leftist writer Mark Millar likely intends his morally ambiguous government-funded superteam to be a metaphor for his disapproval of the Bush administration's foreign policy, he doesn't hesitate to allow readers to feel sympathetic for the heroes' goals. Though I usually don't consider art as a criteria by which the quality of a book should be judged, penciller Bryan Hitch is doing some of comics' best work in this series.
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the worst comic books that I'm reading. (Which, if I'm smart, I soon won't be reading.)
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