50 Things I Love About Comics

Though I usually devote this blog to rock music geekery rather than comic book geekery I happened across a pair of top 50 lists at The Savage Critics and got inspired.

What can I say? It was a slow day at work.

1 Buddy Bradley
2 Getting excited when a friend is reading Watchmen for the first time
3 Bendis/Maleev's dialog-free issue of Daredevil
4 Miss Misery, the epitome of the "that gal is trouble" archetype used in what seems like all of Ed Brubaker's stories
5 Batman vs Superman fight in the Justice League New Frontier Special
6 Gotham Central
7 Smax explaining that a vision of a three-headed woman with a serpent's tale holding a flaming sword and a human heart is not sign that he's supposed to go on a quest but an "atmospheric phenomena"
8 Spider-Man trapped under heavy machinery
9 Astro City
10 The repeated humiliation/mutilation of Herr Starr
11 Joe Matt's pornography woes
12 Warpsmiths
13 David Mazzucchelli
14 Sensual Santa
15 The opening sequence to the first issue of Suicide Squad wherein super villains really fuck shit up for once
16 The Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club
17 The before and after "yearbook photos" in Black Hole
18 The brightly colored but eerie psychedelic landscape of Jim Woodring's Frank
19 The Amazing Screw-On Head
20 The predestination paradox denouement of the "Story of the Year" arc in Supreme
21 The repulsive yet somehow adorable recurring characters in Kaz's Underworld
22 That the Acme Novelty Library is so formally and aesthetically stunning and evocative that I keep coming back for more even though I find it invariably depressing
23 Ivan Brunetti's "humor" comics
24 Henry Hotchkiss
25 This "What If Harvey Pekar got super powers?" web comic by Gregg Schigiel
26 Jim Steranko's pop art-inspired work for Marvel in the 60s
27 "You don't get it, boy. This isn't a mudhole. It's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon."
28 Darkseid's cameo on the last page of each issue of the original Ambush Bug mini-series accompanied by the (unfulfilled) promise that the following issue would be "When Titans Clash!"
29 Jules Feiffer
30 Drew Friedman's caricatures
31 Concrete's neuroses
32 Why I Hate Saturn
33 Seeing Jen Grunwald's name when I open a Marvel book (Hi Jen!)
34 Continuity bean counters loitering in any given comic shop
35 J. Jonah Jameson
36 Mike Carey's Crossing Midnight
37 Adam Warlock stealing the soul of his future self using the vampiric soul gem on his forehead (don't ask)
38 The insane Mr Fantastic pastiche talking to his "invisible" wife in Marshall Law Takes Manhattan
39 The Green Lantern Oath
40 Peter Bagge's under appreciated Sweatshop
41 Reading old Life in Hell strips and marveling that a mind that irreverent could create one of the biggest institutions in popular culture
42 Shamrock Squid
43 Chester Brown's The Playboy
44 The fact that I know anyone with a decal of Calvin peeing on something is going straight to hell
45 Dennis Eichhorn
46 Wimbledon Green
47 Pictopia!
48 Douglas Wolk and Scott McCloud discussing the medium intelligently
49 Back issues of Weirdo on sale for the original cover price
50 Knowing that the artist for The New Yorker's post-9/11 cover and the creator of Garbage Pail Kids are the same person

(Editor's Note: I just noticed that aside from the Sensual Santa there is nary a mention of Daniel Clowes here and do I love Daniel Clowes. Maybe he should remind me how much I love him by, oh I don't know, PUTTING OUT ANOTHER COMIC BOOK!)