Best Comic Storlines or Ideas

[DarkSoldier]

Chris Claremont's record-setting run on Uncanny X-Men: So many characters, so many wonderful stories.

Watchmen: I wonder what it would've been like if DC had allowed Alan Moore to use the Charleton characters instead of these analogues. It could've got an Elseworlds label, if "Elseworlds" existed back in 1985. Rorschach 4 Life!

Kingdom Come: The not-so-subtle jabs at the "new comics" characters and the quick cameos in the backgrounds make it worth reading carefully.

Ultimate Marvel: I hope they'll allow the characters to age decently this time around.

Crisis on Infinite Earths: It was the first megacrossover, and it wasn't the "buy everything we produce for the next four months" style that Marvel and DC would hack out during the 90's; what happened in those pages actually affected the DCU.

 

[Mog Elffoe]

Ultimate Marvel: I hope they'll allow the characters to age decently this time around.
QUOTE]

I read an interview with Brian Michael Bendis where he said that as long as he wrote Ultimate Spider-Man he planned on keeping Peter Parker in high school (which is fine by me.) Of course, he also said that he'd never do an Ultimate Venom so clearly anything can still happen. Regardless of the silly 'aging in comics' argument, Ultimate Spidey is THE best superhero book on the market and you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not reading it.

I also highly recommend the following:

Tom Strong
Promethea
Top Ten
Smax
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

(and anything else that Alan Moore's ever done. I really don't think that I've read anything of his that was bad. I liked some better than others, but they're all good. He's really required reading as far as I'm concerned.)

JSA
Astro City
Powers
JLA/Avengers (old-school goodness! I was kind of iffy on it with my first read but I've grown to totally love it since.)

All of the above are still running now or are easily available.

For some really trippy reading (no, not anything by Grant Morrison) try the trade paperback Tales From the Bizarro World. You'll never be the same afterwards!

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Since it hasn't been spoken in name:

Batman: "Cataclysm" and "No Mans Land"

For current comics:
Y-man

 

[DMScott]

Ultimate Marvel: I hope they'll allow the characters to age decently this time around.

Kinda doubt it. One of the reasons for publishing Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men was that Stan Lee's teen heroes were no longer teenagers - they were twenty or thirtysomething, often married, sometimes with kids, etc. Hitting the reset button let Spider-Man get back to juggling high school with a superhero secret identity, let various X-Men have crushes on one another and get upset at teenage slights even when they're facing down villains who might destroy the world, and so on.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Sort of off topic rant

Kinda doubt it. One of the reasons for publishing Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men was that Stan Lee's teen heroes were no longer teenagers - they were twenty or thirtysomething, often married, sometimes with kids, etc.

Though I have every issue I haven't read them all but I do agree it's nice to have a book with little to no back-story. Now that said I would disown marvel if they decided that the ultimate line was their primary universe. Sounds unthinkable but...

Hitting the reset button let Spider-Man get back to juggling high school with a superhero secret identity, let various X-Men have crushes on one another and get upset at teenage slights even when they're facing down villains who might destroy the world, and so on.

"Hitting the reset button" is marvel's way to fix everything, if you have a title struggling change the writer/artist, not the issue number. The older I get the more I like DC cause they show more loyalty to their characters, but of course their far from flawless, but at least nightfall and the death of superman was more readable than the spider-man clone saga.

So in till I see Captain America 99, make mine DC!

Batman: Death in the Family