Well? Is it good?
Alan Moore is generally excellent. TOP TEN is very good; the quirky artwork and incessant visual puns makes it excellent. No, I have not read Smax #1 except for previews at Mile High Comics.
I have decided to celebrate Moore’s retirement by cutting waaay back on my comics reading. I’ll get SMAX, TERRA INCOGNITA and the 49ers when they all come out in softcover trades. I’ll buy PROMETHEA, TOM STRONG and TOM STRONG’S TERRIFIC TALES until Moore’s ready to wrap them up.
Is the LoEG hardcover two-volume with Moore’s scripts worth the 75.00?
Hard to say at this point. If you read Top 10 you know Smax was reluctantly visiting his homeworld and had surprisingly invited Robyn to accompany him. The first issue of this series follows them leaving Neopolis and arriving in Jeff’s homeworld. Some questions are partially answered but new ones have arisen. So it’s tough to judge the series until I see where it’s going.
It’s okay. I wish they’d just do more issues of “Top Ten” though.
Art stinks. Plot’s okay. Incidental touches are clever.
ooh… steady on, Xander posts on these boards.
He seems like a nice guy (this pertains to that thread the other day about celebrities who might be dopers- and the effect of ripping their work on the boards).
so, um… Xander, if you’re reading this, ‘You go girl!’ (sic).
You’re working with Alan Moore, how cool is that?!?!
I’m here. I’m thicker-skinned than all that, don’t worry. If you’re a big Gene Ha (or Dave Stevens, as the case may be) fan, you’re not necessarily going to be a fan of my stuff.
Of course, no one’s going to offer a genuine opinion now, so I’ll ask: What can I do to improve the series in your opinion (I’m on issue 4 now)? Obviously most of people’s preferences will be for art style, which I can’t do much about, but what about other elements? Detail level? “Good girl art”? References?
As for references, got any favorites/groaners? They’re about half Alan’s and half mine, and the editors do their best to make sure they’re colored all screwy so that they’re not legally actionable, but usually they’re still recognizable. Let me know.
Zander
Shit, Zander, you put a challenge to me like that and I might break my vow of self-imposed poverty and go buy up SMAX issues right now instead of waiting for the trades.
If this were some 500 issue series that has had rotating art and writing teams since time immemorial, I’d probably suggest some stuff I’d like to see. But as this [SMAX] is a spin-off of a quirky mini-series you and Alan and Gene did, I’m more content to sit back and watch you guys come up with the visual contortions. Besides, with Willingham’s FABLES and other titles, there seems to be a lot of cross-pollinating of quirky fantasy/ fairy tale visuals lately anyway.
I trust your instincts. Hell, in all of TOP TEN there was hardly a visual joke to complain about. Re-reading the series (I was on my tenth last go-around) I’m STILL noticing things I missed before, even with those annotations and such online.
Since you asked for faves, I suppose mine was King Peacock’s whole trip to parallel Roma. Trying to draw a fish-out-of-water tale in a place as quirky as Neopolis and pull it off --? Utterly fantastic.
The end-series issue with the depiction of the Seven Sentinels was also great, if only to see Joe Pi go all “Hal” on Atoman. I was pleased when I instantly caught the reference to the Superman “Geezer” issue from way-back-when.
Gratuitous cursing alert/ w possible spoilers: Yo, yo, yo – what the FUCK was up with The Rumor? Who was the Ghostly Goose? Were they the same person? I think we fans deserve more TOP TEN just to answer that!
In regards to your spoiler question, I don’t know. I think that the end of the Top Ten series came up on Alan unexpectedly, and he was intending to resolve it an issue or two down the line. However, Alan has expressed his intentions to retire from mainstream comics once his commitments with ABC are finished, and so we may never know. Other writers may take the reins, of course, as the characters are owned by DC Comics, but I’m sure that would meet with widespread rioting, looting, and irritated message board posts.
Zander
I thought the “banquet” offerings were pretty revolting, although I liked Jeff’s description of the cherubs.
What!? Alan doesn’t own his characters? I thought that was one of the conditions of his working with DC again, albeit through a very flimsy firewall.
Is that just Top Ten, or does DC own all the ABC books?
DC owns all the ABC books except for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was negotiated differently.
As for the conditions of working for DC again, well, Alan struck a deal with Wildstorm to create a line of comics just before Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC. They had to make some hasty promises to keep Alan from walking away from the project, but the deal was always that Wildstorm (and later DC, by extension) would own the rights to the characters (it allows a bigger page rate for the creators).
Zander
Zander - first, thank you for participating in the thread. Top 10 is one of the few comic books I have read as an adult and I really, really enjoy it.
Since I am the one who started this question about Smax, my question is: Do you know when the trade paperback will come out, if ever? For that matter, do you as a creator have a preference for whether readers buy the issues or the trades?
I will definitely buy the series, but would prefer to do so as a TP, simply for convenience.
And I am bummed that it appears we aren’t going to see resolution to the characters mentioned in the Spoiler above. Heck, I am bummed that you guys are going to keep Top 10 going - talk about a richly realized universe. Any way you can influence Alan Moore to write one more story arc?
Hmmmm; I seem to have put my foot in it; sorry if I offended you, Zander. But I see that you apparently correctly divined my real meaning, which was that “the art’s not to my taste, although I could never in a million years do as well myself.” 
Now I have a question: What the heck is Smax? His homeworld seems to be mythological, so I suppose he’s some mythological figure or another, but “huge, blue, shoots fireballs from his chest” isn’t ringing any bells.
Zander:
An Alan Moore series ended before it was supposed to?
As I sit here, cataloguing my twelve issues of Big Numbers, bagging my complete set of Lost Girls and reminiscing fondly on the revelations in the last issue of 1963…
…well, all I can say is I’m shocked.
Too funny! You do have a point, Fiver - Mr. Moore does sometimes leave things unresolved. Thank og that didn’t happen with the Watchmen, eh? What if it ended right after Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre broke out Rorschach? Hurm!
And at least Top 10 had the Seven Sentinels story arc resolve…
Rocketeer- I’m not at all offended. There are many artists that I don’t or didn’t care for (particularly when I first began reading comics) whose skill I can certainly appreciate. Generally the artists that focus on storytelling and panel-to-panel transitions rather than rendering do not attract mainstream fans very readily (Eddie Campbell, Steve Ditko, Steve Lieber, etc).
Smax is not intended to be any existing character from history or folklore, but just a superhumanly capable (if a little dim) hero, in this case a dragonslayer. As for the bolt of blue from his chest, I think that was simply the origin of the character’s name and didn’t come from any old stories that I know of.
WordMan - I don’t know what DC would like me to say about the trade paperback, since it might affect whether you buy the individual issues, but here’s a subtle hint that I have put in a secret code so no one will know what I am saying: 00101001001010Yes, of course there will be a trade paperback. DC always reprints everything in a trade or a hardcover if it sells.11010000100101010
As for convincing Alan to do another Top Ten story arc – It’s unlikely at this point, but seriously you guys, “I’m retiring from superhero comics”-- ever heard that one before?
Fiver - You’re right, though I think that Top Ten can be spun a little differently from the very obviously unfinished Lost Girls and Big Numbers. There is the possibility and the hope of more Top Ten, but season two never coming out would not necessarily invalidate season one, the way that LG and BN have been, and are now kind of only of interest to collectors and big Alan Moore fans. Also, keep in mind, V for Vendetta was unfinished for about 5 years.
Zander
Update: I saw a comics store in Times Square (Midtown Comics) and ducked in and got Smax #1.
I thought it was good. Zander, I enjoyed the references, like the Tron motorcycle and the Hanna-Barbera car (can’t remember the name of the series, but featured Muttley the dog), and “I should’ve taken the blue pill” Pharmacy and a bunch of others. Jaffs doesn’t seem quite as “hard-boiled” as he did in Top 10 - neither good nor bad, just different. I think Gene Ha’s artwork makes him look a little more like a bulked-out Clint Eastwood, whereas Zander’s leans more towards a thinner blue-skinned/white-haired Hulk (and his sister has a She-Hulk feel) - why is he in jeans and not that trench he wore in Top 10? Since none of the cops wore a standard uniform, per se, I assumed that was his normal outfit…
What I found frustrating is that I had not realized how much I had come to depend on TP’s - individual issues leave me hanging on so many levels that I don’t find it satisfying. I guess I didn’t notice that as much when I read X-Men at age 13…I think I will be waiting for the Smax trade paperback.
All in all, very fun - I look forward to reading the rest of the story and learning more about the characters. Flying Love-Rats! Ha!
Well, I rather enjoyed the fantasy sequences, from the EC witches to the classical fairytale innkeeper. Frankly, I thought the blasts were just his “extra”, like Siegfried being able to understand the speech of birds. He has bathed in dragon’s blood, though, no doubt.
Anyhow, welcome, how’s Alan to work with, and what do you see yourself doing next? Still superheroes? Who would you want to work with next… what would you like to work on? Anything you see that really grates your teeth in modern comics?
Heck, what do you read, what do you watch?
Wacky Races is the name of the HB Series. Oh, and I got a mention on a Yes message board for the “Visit Yesworld” poster on the left side of page 6. I thought that was nice.
Well, I guess I was operating on the assumption that it was his uniform, and that when he wasn’t in costume, he dressed just like anyone else. I also figure-- he’s over seven feet tall, blue, and muscular. He already stands out; he doesn’t need to wear crazy clothes. It’s one thing in Top Ten, when the whole thing is about superheroes and he more or less fits in, but in this world, I felt like it would be a little odd to have people dresses as superheroes walking around a fantasy world commenting on how strange it all is.
I came to Top Ten about halfway through issue 1, so I wasn’t involved in the design of the characters or the city, but I always kind of thought that the cops at Precinct Ten should have had something of a uniform to make them stand out (or be recognized as an authority figure). It seemed kind of showy to have everyone in a costume that reflected their personality…
My take on Jeff’s size is to some degree to simplify storytelling. Gene was somewhat more hard and fast about his extreme height and bulk and it sometimes got in the way of fitting everyone in the panel. When you add the She-Hulk sized sister into the mix, it would get very difficult to tell a coherent story without huge panels. Also, Jeff is sort of a grouchy background character in Top Ten, and a full-on hero in SMAX (if not always heroic), so I felt it would be beneficial to bring him down a peg to (more or less) human size.
I’ve got a few pitches in to DC comics, and naturally those would be superhero based, but I’ve got a few other ideas up my sleeve that have more to do with sci-fi and pulp adventure fiction that I hope to be doing soon. Though once I’m done with Smax, I’m going to draw another chapter of my old unfinished fantasy series The Replacement God.
As for what mostly sticks in my craw about comics, it’s this:
Not WordMan’s opinion; the fact that individual comic issues are wasteful. You pay 3 bucks for each one, and then a couple months after the last one, you might as well throw them all away because you want to buy the trade. Of course you want to buy the trade. That’s the easiest way to read them over and over again.
I wish there were a system in place that had, say, serialized comics as part of an anthology title-- say, Batman stories in a big, monthly, 150-page “Detective Comics Magazine” that also included Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, Elongated Man, etc. Then when any of these stories are collected into a trade, the individual issues are not useless, they’ve got all the other stories, plus perhaps prose stories, a poster, maybe some puzzles, a big letters page, etc. You know, something you can read on the bus for an hour.
Sorry about the comics rant, just my pet issue.
Zander