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Today, we continue our countdown of your picks for the greatest comic book storylines of all-time with #92-89.
You voted (over 1,000 ballots cast and a little bit more than the last time we did this countdown) and you all sent in ballots ranking your favorite storyliness from #1 (10 points) to #10 (1 point). I added up all of the points and here we are!
92. “The Death of Speedy” by Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets #21-23) – 118 points (3 first place votes)
For a story that is actually CALLED “The Death of Speedy,” you would figure that by the time it came around, the actual death would not have as much impact.
You would be wrong.
In one of Jaime Hernandez’s strongest story arcs in his long and accomplished tenure on Love and Rockets, the Death of Speedy focuses on a small group of young men and women in the barrio, as Hernandez brilliantly lays their limited life options out plain to see, and it is depressing while still being quite moving.
Even as you sit there and think, “How foolish can these kids be?’ when you marvel at the problems their machismo gets them into (and the girls, with their own form of machismo – what IS the female equivalent of machismo?), you still get that this is not really much of an overstatement of the reality of the situation.
Hernandez seems to truly give us a glimpse into the lives of real people here, and perhaps the most brutal aspect of the whole thing is that as they fight over ridiculous notions like “this is OUR turf” or “he’s MY man,” their lives continue to prominently revolve around LOVE.
Maggie, the story’s protagonist, particularly seems to view love as a motivating factor.
But even ideas based in love can end up in heartbreak and pain, and that’s what happens in the Death of Speedy.
That the whole thing is handled in Hernandez’s Dan Decarlo-esque artwork, allowing the pathos to almost sneak up on you, like a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.
91. “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” by Don Rosa (Uncle Scrooge #285-296) – 121 points (3 first place votes)
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is the type of comic book project that really should not work as well as it does. Over his decades of writing Uncle Scrooge, Carl Barks threw in little details of Scrooge’s past here and there. Occasionally, the details even conflicted (although that might not be Barks contradicting himself, it could have been another Scrooge writer contradicting a Barks detail). So writer/artist Don Rosa decided to use all those little details about Scrooge and then fashion a 12-part detailed life of Scrooge from boyhood until his first appearance as regular comic book character.
That might sound like something better suited for an essay or a spreadsheet, yet Rosa’s brilliance as a storyteller make the whole endeavor an utter marvel.
Scrooge’s adventures are all pretty much “done in one”s, yet they continue an overarching character development that is quite impressive. Also impressive is all the actual historical details that Rosa peppers in with Scrooge’s travels. It’s strong historical fiction.
Here’s a bit from an early part of the story where young Scrooge is working as a cowboy and has to rescue a stolen bull from some cattle thieves…
You might recognize a certain future president there. As you can see, Rosa’s art is a detailed delight. He’s amazing.
90. “Perfect Strangers” by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Cory Walker and Bill Crabtree (Invincible #1-12) – 123 points (1 first place vote)
This one is a bit tricky, as a lot of people just voted for “the first Invincible storyline,” but I don’t think they were intending to vote for that first trade, as a number of OTHER people voted for Invincible #1-12, so I’m going to just assume that people meant the full twelve issues (and there were some who outright voted for the THIRD trade, but I’m definitely lumping THOSE people in there with the #1-12 voters).
Invincible was about a young man who grew up knowing that his father was Omni-Man, the greatest superhero on Earth, basically the Superman of this universe. All Mark Grayson wanted to do was to grow up to be like his father. He kept waiting for his own superpowers to kick in and eventually they did, and Mark took the superhero name Invincible and began to fight crime on his own in a fun, throwback style of adventure (think early Spider-Man comics or early Static comics). Then, of course, the other shoe dropped (just when Ryan Ottley joined the series as the new main artist, a role he would keep for much of the rest of the series long run). Omni-Man drew his superhero friends together and then…slaughtered them all.
Omni-Man, it turned out, was an advance scout of a race of planet dominators and Earth was to be their next target. However, the only person who could possibly stand in his way was his own son and, well, that did not go Mark’s way…
It’s one of the most dramatic superhero fights of the past two decades (Ottley and Crabtree really cut LOOSE with these battles) and it changed the direction of the series forever (by the way, Omni-Man is not fully telling the truth, with the first hint being the fact that he spares his son in this fight).
89. “Superman Smashes the Klan” by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru (Superman Smashes the Klan #1-3) – 124 points (2 first place votes)
This 2019-2020 prestige format miniseries was loosely based on a famous 1946 storyline in The Adventures of Superman radio series, where Superman ran afoul of the Clan of the Fiery Cross, a stand-in for the Ku Klux Klan that it was very notable to see Superman actively target in his radio series.
Here, Yanh introduces a Chinese-American family who move from Chinatown to the suburbs of Metropolis and soon find themselves targets of the racist organization known as the Clan of the Fiery Cross. Superman, naturally, smashes said Klan…
However, just as important as Superman (who also comes to terms with his own alien heritage during this story. It is set during the 1940s when Superman was not yet flying or using his vision powers, but he does so once he comes to term with the fact that he is not human) is the story of the young people in the story, primarily Lan-Shin Lee (who goes by Roberta to fit in with her new White neighbors), who struggles with her brother’s willingness to play up stereotypes to fit in with the other kids. It is Lan-Shin who helps discover a number of clues and even determines Superman’s true heritage all on her own.
This is a charming but also timely tale (it is striking just HOW timely some of the plot points hit, which I know were not a coincidence) and Gurihiu’s deceptively simple artwork does wonders in making it all so very accessible for readers of all ages.
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