Issue 3

A few hours ago I was reading a review of an upcoming issue of Fables 100, written by Bill Willingham when, something wonderful happened. I thought about all the pinnacle issues in Vertigo's storied history, and with what Fables has come to represent, this should be mentioned along with the great issues in Hellblazer, Preacher, Swamp Thing, and Sandman canons. Now if you're not reading this Fables story, I will go over that in a later post, but a simple explanation is, it revolves around characters from fairy tales, who have been cast out of their homelands, and have settled into New York City present day. The ones that are able to blend into society walk around in the general public, while the more fairy tale like, reside away from society, in what they call "The Farm" in upstate New York. This all reminded me of an issue of Wizard from years ago, I am still looking online to see if a copy still exists, I may have this in storage someplace. The issue had a list of the top 100 single issue comics since you were born.

These are the moments that I live for. Moments when it becomes clear that, almost without help, forces us to focus on something bigger.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what you read, or who told you to read it, just keep reading. Nothing beats a good story, whether it is instant or unfolds slowly, it’s the opening up that’s so magical. That moment of realizing that you’re connected to something so much bigger than yourself. I remember, years ago, when I was just beginning to read Planetary, sitting there, on my couch, reading issue 4. I had to go back and pay out the ass for the earlier issues, this being one of those comics that collectors wanted to have, not for the story, but because there weren't many issues around. That truth hit me with even more impact a few months later, when I was able to read what had been written before. The first few issues of Planetary were, at that point in my life, the best writing I’d ever seen; they were so good, in fact, that I was hounding my local comic shop owner, to order everything from this author. Warren Ellis.

I gave in.

Not willingly, not happily, maybe not even consciously; but however it happened, I spent the next year reading all of Ellis' work, and as any faithful reader knows, you will be get pissed off, if you read a serial comic book. I started way back in the early 90's with my reading, and here we are 20 years later, and the problems still exist, late books, either by writer delays or publisher delays. With Ellis, The Authority and Transmetropolitan soon followed. That was when I understood, in a way I never had before, as the years have passed—and this is something that deserves a lengthy post of its own—I’ve come to believe that the writers we love—not the ones we merely like, but the ones whose stories set our souls on fire and settle into our very cells—become intimate parts of our lives; dearest of friends who we visit with time and again over the years. It doesn’t matter how much time passes between visits: when something draws us to the library shelf, when we pull one of those old, familiar books down, we pick up exactly where we left off.



The 100 Best Single Issues Since You Were Born
001 – Top Ten 8 (“The Overview”)
002 – Sandman 8 (“The Sound of Her Wings”)
003 – Batman Special (“The Killing Joke”)
004 – Superman Annual 11 (“For the Man Who Has Everything”)
005 – Ultimate Spider-Man 12 (“Battle Royal”)
006 – Astro City 0.5 (“The Nearness of You”)
007 – Saga of the Swamp Thing 21 (“The Anatomy Lesson”)
008 – Ultimate Spider-Man 28 (“Sidetracked”)
009 – Elseworlds: Batman (“Gotham by Gaslight”)
010 – Daredevil 191 (“Roulette”)
011 – 100 Bullets 27 (“Idol Chatter”)
012 – Superman 9 (“To Laugh and Die in Metropolis”)
013 – Planetary 3 (“Dead Gunfighters”)
014 – Starman 11 (“13 Years Ago Five Friends”)
015 – Uncanny X-Men 159 (“Night Screams”)
016 – Amazing Spider-Man 239 (“Now Strikes the Hobgoblin”)
017 – Fantastic Four 245 (“Childhood’s End”)
018 – Justice League – 1 (“Born Again”)
019 – Spider-Man Versus Wolverine (“High Tide”)
020 – Planetary 13 (“Century”)
021 – Action Comics 775 (“What’s So Funny About Truth Justice and the American Way?”)
022 – Flash 182 (“Absolute Zero”)
023 – Ultimate Spider-Man Annual 1
024 – Incredible Hulk 341 (“The Savage Bull Doth Bear the Yoke”)
025 – Elseworlds: Batman (“Holy Terror”)
026 – Incredible Hulk 420 (“Lest Darkness Come”)
027 – Preacher 18 (“Texas and the Spaceman”)
028 – Batman 424 (“The Diplomat’s Son”)
029 – Green Lantern 188 (“Mogo Doesnt Socialize”)
030 – Avengers 189 (“Slings and Arrows”)
031 – Tangled Web 4 (“Severance Package”)
032 – Incredible Hulk 340 (“Vicious Circle”)
033 – Lex Luthor Special (“The Unauthorized Biography”)
034 – Birds of Prey 8 (“On Wings”)
035 – Omega Men 26 (“Brief Lives”)
036 – Amazing Spider-Man Annual 15 (“Spider-Man: Threat or Menace”)
037 – Fables Special (“The Last Castle”)
038 – Spectre 5 (“A Rage in Hell”)
039 – Captain America 7 (“The Lonesome Death of Jack Monroe”)
040 – X-Factor 87 (“X-Aminations”)
041 – Iron Man 128 (“Demon in a Bottle”)
042 – New Teen Titans 38 (“Who Is Donna Troy?”)
043 – H-E-R-O 11 (“The Great Leap Forward”)
044 – GI Joe 21 (“Silent Interlude”)
045 – Sandman 18 (“A Dream of a Thousand Cats”)
046 – Hitman 34 (“Of Thee I Sing”)
047 – Flinch 1 (“Rocket-Man”)
048 – What If 4 (“The Alien Costume Had Possessed Spider-Man”)
049 – Ghost Rider Annual 2 (“Wish for Pain”)
050 – Iron Man 237 (“Star Hunter”)
051 – Classic X-Men 25 (“Just Don’t Look in its Eyes”)
052 – 100 Bullets – 11 (“Heartbreak, Sunnyside Up”)
053 – Hellblazer 63 (“Forty”)
054 – Secret Origins Special 1 (“Original Sins”, “The Killing Peck”, “When Is A Door”)
055 – Legion of Super-Heroes 13 (“If You Think Khunds Are Cuddy, You’ll Love the Lythyls”)
056 – Animal Man 7 (“The Death of the Red Mask”)
057 – Dark Horse Presents 1 (“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”)
058 – Dr. Strange 56 (“A Mystic Reborn”)
059 – The Thing 2 (“For Beauty Passed Away”)
060 – Sandman 50 (“Ramadan”)
061 – Incredible Hulk 393 (“The Closing Circle”)
062 – Batman Black and White 1 (“Two of a Kind”)
063 – Avengers 217 (“Double-Cross”)
064 – Sandman 40 (“The Parliament of Rooks”)
065 – Avengers Annual 10 (“By Friends Betrayed”)
066 – Adventure Comics 466 (“Never Say Die”)
067 – Nightwing 25 (“The Boys”)
068 – Gotham Knights 8
069 – Sandman 17 (“Calliope”)
070 – Planetary Special (“Night on Earth”)
071 – New Teen Titans 20 (“Dear Mom and Dad”)
072 – Preacher Special (“Tall in the Saddle”)
073 – Justice League Annual 1 (“Germ Warfare”)
074 – Batman Black and White 4 (“An Innocent Guy”)
075 – American Century 9 (“Route 66″)
076 – Batman Adventures Annual 1 (“Laughter After Midnight”)
077 – Web Of Spider-Man 1 (“Til Death Do Us Part”)
078 – Fantastic Four 3 (“Happy New Year, Reed Richards… Now Die!”)
079 – Astro City 1 (“In Dreams”)
080 – Preacher 50 (“The Land of Bad Things”)
081 – Legion of Super-Heroes 296 (“What Do You Do on the Day After Doomsday?”)
082 – Adventures of Superman 474 (“Face to Face With Yesterday”)
083 – Conan the Barbarian 100 (“Death on the Black Coast”)
084 – Amazing Spider-Man 248 (“The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man”)
085 – Robin 46 (“Dark at Dawn”)
086 – Tales of the New Teen Titans 1 (“Cyborg”)
087 – Fantastic Four 60 (“Inside Out”)
088 – Semper Fi 1 (“Reunion”)
089 – Preacher Special (“Blood & Whiskey”)
090 – Batman: Underworld Unleashed (“Devil’s Asylum”)
091 – Exiles 16 (“Nocturne and Evensong”)
092 – Legion of Superheroes Annual 1 (“Who Shot Laurel Kent?”)
093 – Hitman 22 (“The Santa Contract”)
094 – Demo 3 (“Bad Blood”)
095 – Animal Man 15 (“The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”)
096 – Legion Of Super-Heroes 3
097 – Uncanny X-Men 268 (“Madripoor Knights”)
098 – Punisher 10 (“The Creep”)
099 – Alias 10
100 – Ghost Rider 68 (“The Curse of Jonathan Blaze”)