Top 10 #5: Great Infestations

[superboyprime]

"When I found myself working, even remotely, under the auspices of DC [after the Wildstorm purchase], I had very different intentions. Well, maybe they were the same intentions: to do progressive comics that adults could enjoy. But by then I'd become very tired of the wave of grimness that seemed to have been unleashed by Watchmen. When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn't have to follow Watchmen and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route." - Alan Moore

Comments

[superboyprime]

Those of you haven't ready the full series, can *you* figure out the true identity of the Ghostly Goose? The clues are all right there in these pages.

[randyripoff]

I must have read this series 20 times or more, and I've never figured that out.

[thatnickguy]

Yeah, I never figured it out, either, for some reason.

[captainbellman]

He's the checkered tablecloths, isn't he.

[superboyprime]

The one that shape-shifts between panels, yeah.

[captainbellman]

Huh. I joined the dots with the final panel of Vol. 1 originally, but never noticed that. Thanks!

[thanekos]

Hahaha, putting Pete on the outreach poster with the robots.

[thatnickguy]

The super-mouse infestation side plot is probably my favourite part of this whole series. It's just so ridiculous. Especially one page that comes up in a later issue.

[dcbanacek]

Is one of them a "Mighty" Mouse?

[randyripoff]

Better.

[thatnickguy]

So much better!

[icon_uk]

That is definitely the best subplot of the series.

[laughing_tree]

Given how influential Moore's 80s work was, it's surprising how little influence this second superhero phase of his ended up having. It was critically well-received but that particular aesthetic of his ABC and some of his Image stuff -- heavy in playful meta about genre tropes, using the story as a show-and-tell for clever and imaginative concepts, prioritizing that show-and-tell over internal logic -- never really spread to other writers, did it? Morrison sometimes does it, and so does Tim Seeley. I can't think of anyone else.

[lordultimus]

Al Ewing does it sometimes. Then there are retro books like Big Bang Comics and The Age of the Sentry mini.

[laughing_tree]

Hmm, I don't really see that. Ewing's playful with continuity but not in a meta way, and he's not one to put internal logic on the backburner. Almost the opposite I'd say: Ewing rigorously works to make all the pieces fit together as one grand, big picture.

[thatnickguy]

I think it was two-fold:

1) It wasn't at DC or Marvel, so it didn't make the same kind of big splash.
2) The whole ABC line in general was pretty short lived. Which is sad because I loved those books.

[laughing_tree]

By that point, all of Wildstorm belonged to DC, though. If you mean it wasn't in the DC Universe, the same can be said of WATCHMEN.

And while there weren't all that many issues, there was so much in the way of publishing delays that I feel the ABC line still ended up lasting quite a while.

[thatnickguy]

The ABC line started before DC bought them, though. Some say they bought Wildstorm (and ABC) specifically to get Alan Moore again. Which I think is partly why the ABC line fell apart so quickly, because they pissed off Moore.

I'm not sure how far Top 10 had made it before it all went down, though.

[laughing_tree]

IIRC, the ABC line was conceived before the buy-out but by the time the first issue was released, Wildstorm already belonged to DC. For what it's worth, according to Gene Ha, Moore was actually fairly open-minded about the situation initially, in a "Well, what's done is done. Might as well give it a chance" way.

[alicemacher]

Also, after the purchase, DC assured Moore's Wildstorm editor there would be no meddling with Moore's ABC line. A promise they subsequently broke more than once, which is why, after he'd completed Promethea and returned to Tom Strong for the final issue (a crossover with Promethea), Moore left Wildstorm and took LoEG to Top Shelf.

[bmaryott]

Fantastic series, and I wish he'd make more!

[lordultimus]

That would require Moore to regain interest in superheroes and make amend with DC. So I don't think that's going to happen

[icon_uk]

The follow up, non-Moore written "Season 2" of Top 10 was such a disappointment. Not actively bad, but so much less than it could have been.

[beyondthefringe]

I personally only believe there was the initial 12 issue run, and the 49ers graphic novel. There was never a Beyond the Far Precinct mini, or a Season 2, and even the Smax mini was just a fevered hallucination. :)