So what is the greatest comic story of all time?

My immediate response was, like many, Watchmen. Although, like everyone said, it hasn’t aged especially well (although better than Dark Knight Returns, I think, which I don’t even know if I would put on my top 5).

However, I think a case can be made for the original Lee/Kirby Coming of Galactus. True, we get as far away from political or social relevance as you’re ever going to get, but I’ve always thought that a strength of the comics medium rather than a weakness or something that the medium has to overcome in order to be worthy of praise.

Since it’s two in the morning, I guess I’ll just say that I think of this as the ultimate super-hero adventure, and that’s what comic books are about to me.

Preacher. It just rocks in so many ways.

Oh and I also enjoyed Camelot 3000 too.

This is going to sound fanboy, but Wolverine’s Origin.

Maus and Maus II, taken together, are the best. Brilliant.

Runners Up:

V for Vendetta

Ghost World

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

David Boring

Frank Miller’s Born Again run in Daredevil.

The Dark Knight Returns

Ghost in the Shell

Howard the Duck, the original run of 27 (I know, not one story, but dang, comics don’t get much better than this).

Ronin

The following Calvin and Hobbes story lines:

Calvin makes a duplicate of himself and sends it to school in his place.

Any story line involving the Transmogrifier.

The Sunday strip in which Calvin tries to hit Suzy with snowballs, missing until he has only one left. Contains the single greatest exhchange in the strip’s run.

The Sunday strip in which Dad explains to Calvin why black and white photos are in black and white.

The family goes camping and it rains the whole week.

Hobbes gets lost.

And finally, Akira. 2000 pages of comics goodness.

Moore’s “Batman: The Killing Joke”

“Maybe I’ll kill you, maybe you’ll kill me. And I’d like to say I’ve at least made an attempt to avoid that.”

I’d support “Watchmen” - I still find it pretty readable, even with its dated references, unlike “Dark Knight Returns” which has aged very poorly. I’ve never been a huge fan of Miller - I find he ises a chainsaw when a scalpel would do, but I think that’s what a lot of people like about him.

For those nominating “Kingdom Come” - have you read it lately? I have, and it’s not that good. It’s not as bad as I remembered it being, but it is not up there with Watchmen or even DKR. There’s a mish-mash of ideas, none of them well-realized. Waid tries to do several things at once and succeeds at MAYBE one of them.

I would nominate Alex Robinson’s “Box Office Poison” series. For specific Sandman arcs, “A Season of Mists” is, I think, the best. Maus is always on lists like this, but for a good reason. There are individual issues of Morrison’s Doom Patrol that are wonderful, as well as his Animal Man.

Single greatest?

Alan Moores’s “The Watchmen”

Followed by 3 or 4 different Batman story arcs. My favorite are the post-Bain breaking his back stories. But that’s just me.

“I think that everyone will write Watchmen in their top ten, but is it really the best book ever written? It’s firmly grounded in the eighties, with a political situation that doesn’t always ring true today, much like DK Returns.”

I actually think the dating has improved Watchmen because we in the hinesight of history know for certain that it was just Veight’s arogance that lead him down that path, that no matter what he tells himself his mass murder wasn’t justified, and that if anything he made things worse in the long run.

Count me in as another who likes High Society better than Church and State but both are brilliant. Church and State is just so unfocused even if it does have great moments (particularly the Judge handing out Cerebus’s final fate).

To pick one Sandman story I’ve got to go with the Midsummer Night’s Dream one as a gem among gems.

I enjoyed Kingdom Come a great deal but as a rant against the state of the comic book industry than the actual story.

Brian Talbots * “The Adventures of Luther Arkwright”*

Maus and Crisis on Infinite Earths. Maus was a unique and incredibly moving story. Crisis was a huge gamble for DC and is still one of the best storylines from a Mainstream comic publisher.

Also, Seasons of Mist.

Oh goody! I get to be the first to mention…
“The Kree-Skrull War”
This is one of the first (I think) multi-issue, crossover type of epic for comics. Still holds up in my opinion.

“The Coming of Galactus”
I agree, this is what comics is all about. The charactors and energy just leap off the page at you.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow team-up in GREEN LANTERN #90-122 1976-1979 or so if memory serves)

Really broke some interesting ground here.

What rant? That’s one of the ideas that totally fizzles out. Supposedly Magog represents the Image era of comics, but halfway through we apparently decide we like him too much to be mean to him, and he just kind of wanders out of the storyline, with pretty much nothing resolved. If the book had been a rant against the industry it might have been pretty good, but that angle is pretty much abandoned by issue 3 in favor of a “Hoo’d win” with Capt. Marvel and Superman.

Starman: Sins of the Father. The rest of the Starman run was good, but the book’s incredible, somewhat overrated reputation (and I really, really do like it) was won in that first story arc. And it deserved it, then.

Legion of Super-Heroes, the Beirbaum-Giffen issues (1989 series, issues 1 - 36, Annuals # 1-3). Many people don’t like it because of the retcons, but most of those were dictated by above. The actual story was masterfully executed.

People really like Crisis?

Sure the storyline might have been good but the actual writing was miserable. I think my kid sister could have done a better job on dialogue and expostulation.

Word. I like flipping through Crisis every now and then to see some obscure characters and the great art, but the writing itself makes me cringe.

Magog? By himself? And just Image? No, the whole state of the world in Kingdom Come reflects the dark “grim and gritty” trend in comics that started with Dark Knight Returns and just went downhill from there. When “heroes” were borderline psychopaths doing massive property damage and never dealing with any real consequences of those actions. Image was far from alone in that.

Superman after fading away reaches the breaking point and wants to remake the world to the way he used to know it; the four color, easy morality. A healthier attitude than the adolecent power trips that were playing out with the younger generation of characters but obviously one with it’s own flaws such as the failure of his easy solution and how his own work is tainted by the power justifies itself attitude. So at the end it comes down to Superman representing the old-style of comic books vs. the tainted and corrupted “hero” of the new.

The rant against the comic industry was prevelent through the entire story and perhaps if it had been better formed and not as watered down by the less strong theme of a biblical apocalypse then there wouldn’t be the response against it.

Good choice. I stuck with the series until the end. Towards the end the pacing slowed to an utter crawl, incredibly stupid things happened, and I felt the final issue was a huge “screw you” to anyone who had stuck with the book and weren’t reading JSA. But at the beginning, it was really really nice. I liked seeing Jack turn from a reluctant hero into a true hero.

I’m not as schooled in comics as most of the other people here, but I enjoyed reading the original “The Crow” graphic novels. They created a whole alternate universe so compelling that I couldn’t put them down. They are the only comics that have ever absorbed me so completely.

I also liked the “Infinity Gauntlet” series, as well as “Death of Superman.” Apparently, I’m the only one.
Could somebody please enlighten me on what “The Watchmen” is all about?