Best of the Decade #1

I believe that most successful comics recreate Action #1. They can't do this by retelling the exact same story -- readers are already familiar with the legacy of that story. Instead, it's necessary to create for today's reader the same sense of amazement and exhiliration that 1938's comics created, despite the fact that today's reader already expects those qualities as an absolute minimum. The need to out-do what's already been done leads to stories that exceed older ones in trivial ways; for example, the Flash running seven times the speed of light in one early story, then ten times the speed of light in a successive one. Sheer arithmetic alone is not the wellspring of great fiction.

Action #775 was one of the greatest comics ever written, and it did so by establishing a team of villains who had the means and the inclination to bully anyone on the planet around -- a threat that begged for someone to rise up and challenge them. How does a writer make a threat like that work in 2001? In the Thirties, the writer might give the villain whatever pseudoscientific menace came to mind -- a ray beam, say, or mind control powers. It's very hard to be original with villains. Joe Kelly made What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way? work on an entirely different level -- he dug into the comic literature of the time and found a real challenge for superheroes -- antiheros. And so, his invention, The Elite, is based on the existing characters The Authority. But instead of competing with the Justice League and their kind at the cash register, and in fans' hearts, The Elite was placed into the DC Universe and became the antagonist facing the representative of all superheroes for all time -- Superman.

In a series of encounters, Superman and The Elite faced brazenly evil opponents in contrasting styles, the contrast keying on whether or not to kill an enemy. This difference of philosophy rapidly escalated into confrontation, with the brilliantly insolent dialogue of The Elite's leader Manchester Black insulting Superman with a passion for antagonism. The action opened when The Elite handled a case in Libya in their own murderous style before Superman got to the scene. Then they were just getting started in Tokyo where their awesome powers dropped Superman from the sky as collateral damage while they massacred another threat. In their third encounter, Superman arrived on the scene first, sparing the lives of alien invaders; when The Elite were about to kill Superman's captives, Superman threw a punch, prompting the challenge of an all-out dual between this Macchiavellian foursome and the Man of Steel.

In their earlier encounters, The Elite had twice gotten the best of Superman with their various superpowers. Lois attempted to talk Superman back from the confrontation on the grounds that he might not win, but found her husband's principles to be unyielding. And as the fight began, things went against Superman from the beginning, leaving him apparently incapacitated. Until, as The Elite tramped on his cape, with the hero's body altogether absent, The Man of Tomorrow launched his counterattack, unseen, with feats of superspeed and power that quickly took them down one by one. When the telepath Manchester Black was the only one left, a bloodied Superman showed up to win the argument after the fight, and it was a win for the entire genre of superheroes. In a face-to-face confrontation, the antihero had no powers left to use, and no argument left to offer. And the mountainous Superman, told that he was living in a dream world, closed with a manifesto: "I wouldn't have it any other way. Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice becomes the reality we all share -- I'll never stop fighting. Ever."

There are no flying men who can lift mountains. But there is a Superman, and he is a dream, and lifting us up is exactly what he does.

Best of the Decade #2

During 2009, I spent a lot of my comic-reading time reading stories from the Thirties forward. By and large, the older stories were formulaic and offered no surprises to readers who remembered how the previous month's stories went. The hero received notice of a problem; he faced the problem; he beat the problem. Repetition of this formula continues to the present day, although by and large, for a story to be interesting, it has to offer something else. In my view, the opening scene of Final Crisis #5 simply carried out this simple formula to perfection, and if the genre were to be summed up in six pages (the typical length of a Thirties story), it would be hard to do better than Grant Morrison's depiction of Hal Jordan bursting free.

The story up to that point was one of unstoppable losses for the heroes. The strongest players in the DCU were either banished, captive, in retreat, or diminished. Darkseid's grip on Earth had been hammered home in issue #4, and the heroes who were holding on showed broken confidence in their defiance. Issue #5 opened with a hero who by definition refuses to acknowledge underdog status. And so Hal Jordan faced a trial whose outcome he had already predicted with, "I'll be fine."

The trial concept was, in fairness to earlier creators, a refinement and retelling of earlier stories. In Green Lantern v2 #11, writer John Broome put Hal on trial on Oa for the first time. Later, Steve Englehart's wonderful story in JLA v1 #140-141 repeated the premise, with the Manhunters in that story serving very clearly the inspiration for the Alpha Lanterns in Morrison's version. In all three stories, Hal was being framed; in all three, he went willingly before the Guardians. And in Final Crisis, Hal was utterly confident that he was to be vindicated by the proceedings.

The last-minute appearance of Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner turned suspicion to Hal's accuser, the Alpha Lantern Kraken who was hosting the mind of Darkseid's crony Granny Goodness. When she took advantage of her location to try to seize the power of the Central Power Battery, Hal Jordan effected the miraculous turning of the tide that defines superhero comics.

Despite being the only person in the room who did not have the power of a Green Lantern ring, Hal broke apart his green-energy chains and ran across the room to charge the evil god with pure physical intimidation pitted against her power ring. With a head-butt and a left cross, he put the villain on the floor while a veritable squadron of Green Lanterns did little more than watch and defend themselves. For the record, the matchup of fists against Kraken's power ring was the same struggle Batman had lost three issues earlier.

With his own imprisonment suddenly cast off, Hal heard of the predicament of Earth, and the possible universe-destroying threat created by Darkseid's fall. Against the backdrop of the Justice League on the run and the Justice Society under siege -- with Batman and Wonder Woman trapped and Superman sidelined -- the news of Darkseid's conquest was received with awe even by the Guradians. This same threat prompted Hal merely to reach out and accept the most powerful weapon in the universe in his outstretched palm and give a cocked-head promise to kick Darkseid's ass. So the tide of the crisis turned, and in perfect born-without-fear style, Hal showed as much concern for the task of beating Darkseid as he might have shown for removing a raccoon from a garbage dumpster. Sealing the victory, a Guardian declared Hal innocent of all charges and announced that Jordan had 24 hours to save the universe. An interesting quirk of this scene, one I regard as virtually untoppable for its purity, was that it was released for free on the web as the preview for the issue.

Just one scene remains in this countdown, and the only hint I'll give is that it was penned by a writer who hasn't made the list so far.

Best of the Decade #3

The scene that made #3 on my list was all about build-up, and it's not possible to describe what made it work without going into the background.

During the early part of this decade, a tension built with many fans and certain creators at DC calling for the return to action of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern who had been in the meantime replaced by various successors. Hal Jordan's return in Green Lantern Rebirth capped a nine-year "death" of his character and made him once again the front-and-center Green Lantern at DC Comics. But not before his return had been teased in Identity Crisis #4. In that scene, Hal Jordan as the undead Spectre was asked by Ollie Queen when he would return and he answered, "I'm working on it." That story was written by Brad Meltzer.

A year later, Hal was back but Barry wasn't and -- remember my refrain that real drama requires an uncertain ending -- there was no guarantee that he would. It was much debated by fans whether he would or should displace Wally West, his one-time sidekick, as the main Flash in the DC Universe, a proposition largely equivalent to whether he would return from the dead. His death in Crisis on Infinite Earth #8 had come with an "out" that writer Marv Wolfman intended to allow Barry to come back -- the fact that he had traveled in both directions through time before his demise, allowing for the possibility that he might appear in present-day stories living on time provided before his sacrifice, with the poignant requirement that he would have to return to die after some arbitrary time alive. That was way back in 1985, but as of 2006, the creators had not taken advantage of Wolfman's loophole except to give Barry very brief appearances that were not proper returns. One of the first teases that he might come back to stay was in Infinite Crisis #4, when a very-much alive Barry Allen, apparently with no time travel required to put him into the story, emerged momentarily from the Speed Force to help his grandson Bart Allen. This set into motion a change of status as to who was the Flash -- installing Bart as the new adult Flash while Wally West disappeared into limbo. An obscure element in Bart's brief series (and one that was seemingly disavowed by the powers-that-be) told us that Barry and other Flashes were alive in an alternate plane of reality. But still, Bart and old-timer Jay Garrick were the only Flashes, with Wally and Barry gone and perhaps never returning.

But Bart's series had a poor reception, and it began to wind down to a finish at issue #13, a fact that was not communicated publicly in advance (in fact, it was obscured by bogus solicits for issues #14 and #15), but was sensed by fans. This coincided with an intriguing and complex crossover between the Justice League series penned by Brad Meltzer and Justice Society by Geoff Johns. The day came when the final issue of this story, The Lightning Saga, was released along with the final issue of Bart's series, and while nothing on the pages of either issue told the reader that they were tied together, in the bigger picture, they very much were. Many of us read the saga of Bart's death at the hands of the Rogues, the top villains who had plagued three Flashes over the years. Without moving from my seat, I picked up JLA v4 #10 and began to read. With Bart's death a fact, it seemed clear that JLA #10 was going to bring an old Flash out of retirement.

Meltzer's conclusion to the story built on the mystery that harkened back to a Legion of Super Heroes story from 1963 in which several Legionnaires put up their own lives as sacrifices to return Lightning Lad to life. The newer story used several elements of the older, such as the handing-out of lightning rods to several Legionnaires and the repeated use of the key phrase "Lightning Lad". The combined forces of the Justice League and Justice Society were determined to stop this sacrifice, perceiving it as suicide. The LSH is uniquely capable, however, and even the JLA and JSA found themselves one step behind the plan as seven Legionnaires dispersed to locations associated with the Flashes and the Speed Force.

As the seconds counted down to the moment that a lightning bolt was destined to strike one of the seven locations, and putatively take the life of a hero, the JLA, the JSA, and readers alike were uncertain of what, exactly, the LSH was trying to achieve. Were they trying to bring back Lightning Lad, Garth Rannz? Or Wally West and his family? Since Bart had just been killed off minutes earlier (in my reading time frame), he seemed an unlikely possibility. But then, while the 21st-century heroes scrambled to stop their successors, the significance of the locations involved began to dawn on some of them. This was the moment of truth. As Batman realized that he was in one of two places where he'd seen Barry Allen's life tick away, the panel reprinted the exact art from COIE #8. Simultaneously, Hal Jordan realized that he was at the lab where Barry Allen had become the Flash in the first place, and the two heroes began to believe that if they succeeded in stopping the LSH, they would prevent the resurrection of their long-dead friend.

And we had to believe it, too. Showing the art from COIE again -- that was a bold move. Drama is about uncertainty regarding the outcome. Suddenly, Batman and Green Lantern froze in their tracks, and wanted to see the LSH succeed. There wasn't much doubt that they would -- someone was coming back. But had DC dared to bring back Barry Allen?

No -- it was a colossal headfake. When the lightning struck, Karate Kid was on the ground in Blue Valley, former home of Wally West, and Wally was alive nearby, along with his wife and kids. How a reader took it came down, perhaps, to how they felt about the Barry-vs-Wally question. I personally took it the way Batman did; pleased, no doubt, that Wally was back, but surprised and upset that Barry was not.

As it turned out, Barry's return was only eight months longer in coming. When it did come, the very fine prose of Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns closed DC Universe #0 in fine fashion, guaranteeing that Barry would be back in the flesh. We now know that the LSH had succeeding in bringing back Bart Allen (himself deserving of the monicker "Lightning Lad"). The creators at DC had already decided to resurrect Barry Allen, but not at that time. I still think in many ways, that was too bad, because while they managed to surprise me, I couldn't imagine a better set-up for his return than the scenes in JLA #10 that seemed to promise his return, but left me only with the consolation that Batman had fallen for the same trick.

At #2, a scene with no surprises at all. A superhero prevails against the odds, and the scene employs every cliche in the book, but is so over-the-top that it defines, for me, this entire genre which is after all about being over-the-top.

Best of the Decade #4

We've certainly seen over the years that Batman is an individual of unsurpassed talent and efficacy. When his deeds aren't speaking for themselves, we've been told by the narration, his own thoughts, and those of his friends and allies. We've heard the fist-shaking curses of his enemies in their moment of defeat. But nobody's ever described Batman's invincibility more convincingly than the account given to Doctor Hurt in Batman #681 by the one person who should know best -- the Joker.

With unmistakable glee, and a kind of pride-by-association, the Joker got the show-stealing moment in Batman, R.I.P., the scene that set up one other scene on my ten-best list. In lines as brief and as pointed as a needle, the Joker grinned at Hurt and declared, with sure knowledge of being correct, "I'd like to bet you have no idea what you're dealing with."

The Joker summarizes elegantly his own record of futility in trying to beat Batman: "Every single time I try to think outside his toybox he builds a new box around me." And after relating how even his attempt to offer a totally meaningless clue, the Red and Black, failed to stump Batman, the Joker practically salivates as he tells the Devil himself "Now it's your turn... Now you're in his box, too." Each one of these spare sentences reaffirms the metaphysical certainty of Batman's victory, and the Joker knows that he's telling this to a force of nature -- one that had treated him as well as Batman with insufficient respect.

And so, just an hour after having offered, wryly, to shake hands with the Black Glove, the Joker asserts his own superiority over the Devil as a mere deuce, trumped by the joker. You can hear the venom in his words as he closes, "I'm saying adieu. Pleased to meet you, admire your work but don't -- don't -- call me servant." And then with menace, he promises to collect the winnings he's sure he'll be owed. Events in Morrison's Batman and Robin may eventually show us that he's begun to collect.

In contrast to this exchange between villains, the next scene involves no one but heroes. At #3, a race to stop death suddenly halts and becomes something else, with DC's past, present, and future -- in more ways than one -- all coming together.

Best of the Decade #5

The story of Superman has been retold many times in many media, with the basic facts rearranged. A common, but not universal, element is that sometime during his young adulthood, Superman endures the death of his adoptive father, the Midwestern farmer Jonathan Kent. (Somewhat less often, he also loses his adoptive mother, Martha.) As a consequence, Superman has the distinct tragedy of losing two sets of parents in a life which is otherwise generally gilded and overflowing with blessings.

Grant Morrison's twelve-part All Star Superman crafted a continuity all its own, largely drawn from continuities we'd seen before -- conspicuously the comics of the Bronze Age of 1972-1986. However, its depiction of the death of Jonathan Kent -- a heart attack suffered while he stood outside on his farm, leaving his wife Martha as a survivor -- more closely resembled the facts of Superman The Movie. This death, in issue #6, did not come as a surprise, as it was apparent on the cover of the issue. But there was a twist coming, a trick in which Superman even outwitted his younger self.

The issue unfolds with Clark Kent on a return visit to Smallville shortly after having moved to Metropolis. Mystery is afoot from the early going, with three strangers arriving to help with the Kent's harvest, with each of them looking like a figure from elsewhere in the All Star story or the Superman mythos. We soon find out that the three are future Supermen, apparently descendants of the original, on a mission to battle one of Morrison's great inventions, a lethal time-eating beast called the Chronovore.

As the three even-stranger visitors try to lasso the Chronovore, and keep the current Superman from getting entangled in the fight, the fatal moment draws nearer. Jonathan perhaps knows it's coming, telling the bandaged Superman, of Martha's plan to move into town, "It's the end of the line for me and the farm." Then he asks, clearly intuiting something of the nature of his farmhands, "He'll be okay, won't he? The boy." That last endearing appellation is perhaps owed to Eliot S. Maggin's Miracle Monday, in which Jonathan Kent calls his adopted son "the boy" as a matter of course.

When the Chronovore has prevented Superman from coming to Jonathan's aid, Superman realizes the loss, bitterly regretting the impotence of his mighty powers when it comes to the irreversibility of death. That's a regret expressed elsewhere in the comics and the movies when Jonathan's death comes about. But as he mourns, the twist (Superman had noted "There's something weird about all this!") is finally revealed to us when we find out that one of the future Superman is the original Superman, from the not-so-distant future, thankful for having had "the opportunity to see my Pa one last time." It's a moment that resonates brilliantly with his earlier mourning; Superman can't reverse death, but he can cheat it a little. At the end, it's hard to say whether Jonathan was more thankful to know that his boy would be all right or Superman to have truly said goodbye, and Superman has rarely felt so human.

At #4, is a sort of reverse angle shot -- we see a hero through a villain's eyes, and it confirms everything we ever thought about both of them.

Best of the Decade #6

As I've mentioned in previous posts, a common problem in superhero comics is that the predetermined outcome often hinders the possibility of real drama. While some of my other favorite scenes of the decade beat that problem by allowing things to end badly, my selection at #6 did so by pounding the expectation that the story would end badly, and then let the hero defy that expectation by winning -- again.

The backstory of Grant Morrison's Batman, R.I.P. is that for about ten of the fifteen years of Batman's career, he's been the subject of a single plan to bring him down -- a noose that had been placed around him almost without his noticing, then allowed to tighten slowly before being set into its final phase in the year following "52". Interviews, solicits, several consecutive ominous events in Batman, and finally the title of the story itself indicated that for once, the Caped Crusader would not prevail. When issue #680 ended, Batman was unmasked at the feet of the Joker, grinning maniacally from a dose of fatal Joker toxin, at the mercy of Doctor Hurt and the Black Glove organization, left for dead and isolated from any allies in a deep basement of Arkham Asylum. By this time, we had seen how deep Doctor Hurt's plan had run, a concoction of Morrison that integrated the plots of stories as far back as the Fifties.

It was the culmination of a fear Batman had expressed to us in issue #674 -- "an ultimate villain out there, unseen... an absolute mastermind, closing in for the kill... an invisible, implacable foe who'd calculated my every weakness... who had access to allies, weapons and tactics I couldn't imagine. An adversary whose plots and grand designs were so vast, so elaborate, that they went unnoticed until it was too late." That's a real nightmare of a possibility. And by the time of DC Universe #0, we had Batman losing his cool for the first of several times, clenching his fists and asking "Who is the Black Glove?" while the Joker taunts him, "Scary, isn't it? When you can't see what's coming." By the end of #680, we'd seen it come -- a plan that split Batman from the inside, psychologically, stomping him into the ground when he was down. This plan was so complex, it was hard for the casual reader to grasp it in full. To freshen up on it, consult my 11-point summary of the Black Glove's plan. Even when the first pages of #681 were released as a preview a few days before the full issue, things were still grimmer, with Batman straightjacketed in a coffin.

There were the slimmest of hints that Batman would turn it around. The fact that he had tried to grapple with the concerns he raised in #674; the comment (perhaps the figment of madness) that he made to the Joker in #680 that maybe he had worked it all out and was playing with his enemies; the fact that he had obviously escaped the episode with the monk who tried to poison him, and the likelihood that that story within a story was a microcosm of the larger plot.

This set up the moment of greatness. (Remember, this is a list of my favorite scenes of the decade, not necessarily my favorite stories.) And then, in about ten pages, Batman sprung surprise after surprise on the Black Glove, and on us. It turned out that he not only had the physical means to dig himself out of the hole he was literally in, he also had been planning this for a very long time. The signs of his derangement -- the broken radio and his tattered Zur En Arrh costume -- were among his instruments of victory. He not only suspected Jezebel Jet of having betrayed him -- he never trusted her at all, and had taken out a symbolic revenge on her long beforehand -- something we learned with a line that pointed all the way back to a scene in Batman #664. He had built a defense mechanism into his mind that beat Hurt's efforts to brainwash him, and immunized himself to the Joker's toxins. Just as he had switched cups with the monk, Batman had beaten the Black Glove, and soon had Hurt running, futilely, from him.

Put aside the utility belt and the pointy ears, even the myth of avenging his parents -- the legend of Batman is more than anything else that of a man who can rise to any challenge without having godlike powers, just absolute self-actualization. Out-thinking the Devil himself, and summoning the willpower to beat the ultimate challenge, Batman had his finest hour in issue #681. A victory summarized in Morrison's elegant prose:

"In my attempts to see clearly in the deepest dark, in my efforts to go to the still eye in the storm of madness, did I open up myself to some pure source of evil? Did I finally reach the limits of reason? And find the Devil waiting? And was that fear in his eyes?"

Yes.

My countdown of the best scenes of the decade is half done, with the best half yet to come. At #5, we'll see a mighty hero brought down low by a situation he cannot change. And then perform a miracle that makes something good of it.

Best of the Decade #7

It's been often observed that the hero of a serial cannot be allowed to die, for the sake of the series, and therefore the drama is lessened. This has often been doubly true of superhero comics, wherein the hero not only must survive, but also win. When this constraint is lifted, the results can be shocking and powerful. And that's just how Blackest Night #1 ended.

The Silver Age Hawkman and Elongated Man represent a decade and a half of the prime years of the Justice League of America; they were among the first and the last, respectively, JLA members to have joined during the Satellite Era when the comics showed a bit more complexity than in the feel-good early Sixties, but were still a venue in which the good guys always won. Moreover, Elongated Man was always a very light-hearted hero, smiling and wisecracking his way through cases. When you put a character like that into a dark situation, the darkness is felt all the more so. This added to the impact of the Dibnys' victimization at the hands of Doctor Light in Identity Crisis. And to the impact of the Black Lantern Dibnys attacking Hawkman and Hawkgirl as the first appearance we'd seen of a Black Lantern in action. We didn't know what the rules were, but it proved to be about as dark as possible: Black Lantern Ralph Dibny spoke with whimsy ("Hiya, Winged Wonder!") while his actions spelled bloody murder. Carter Hall's bloodied face and Ralph Dibny's rotted, grinning maw turned the whole genre from superhero to horror.

However, this affair ends (potentially, any of the foursome could end up resurrected; but then again, they could remain dead), this scene will never be forgotten by DC comic fans.

At #6, we'll see a scene that plays the opposite end of our expectations -- a story that sold us an unhappy ending all the way, and then showed us just what the hero was made of.

Best of the Decade #8

A common story structure is to introduce a complication early in a story, then to resolve it at the end. Superhero stories tend overwhelmingly to have happy endings. Detective #826's "Slayride" adhered to that general structure, but it had a middle that was uncommonly horrifying. When Tim Drake, the current Robin, is in trouble one night and flags a ride, he has the poor luck of riding shotgun with the Joker. Writer Paul Dini racheted up the dissonance by setting the story during Christmas.

The psychological aspect of the story starts with the fact that the narration places us in Tim Drake's thoughts. The genius of the scene is that it begs us to hope for some mercy -- the Joker claims at first that he will play by some rules, according to a code of honor. Then, with a number of murders and revelations of yet more, he pulls that hope away sharply. It works as well as ever a scene that I've read has in putting the reader's sympathy into the role of the victim of a supervillain, and in facing his cold wrath. Inevitably, Tim escapes, but not before we ourselves felt hope recede multiple times. Unmistakably, this comic is to be remembered not first and foremost for the heroism of the hero but for the look we get into the eye of villainy.

#7 has something in common with "Slayride". We look in the eye of pure evil and feel the pangs of the hero who faces it. But this time there's no escape.

Best of the Decade #9

Doctor Fate began as an almost disembodied entity, telling us early on that he'd always been Doctor Fate and had never lived as an ordinary mortal. That was soon retconned with one of the great origin scenes of the Golden Age, with the channeling of Egyptian magic into a young Kent Nelson, on the occasion of his father's death. Created in 1940, back in the day when superheroes always won, Doctor Fate lived long enough to die on the printed page, passing away with his wife Inza after a post-COIE career.


Brave and Bold v2 #30 revisits Kent Nelson's death, telling a story set entirely in flashbacks, retroactively explaining Nelson's death as a consequence of vanity, heroism, and fate. Green Lantern Hal Jordan
plays two roles in the story, both unusual for him -- one, as a victim to be saved, with Kent playing the savior; and the other, as a compassionate friend of Nelson (in original continuity, they met during JLA/JSA crossovers, but since COIE, they have always existed on the same Earth together). While the story skips about through time, showing, for example, the late Eighties Black Canary in cameo, the pivotal scene of the story features Hal begging Kent not to lend his assistance to Hal but to save himself. Things get philosophical, with the man of free will, who in Nelson's future knows of his eventual death, debating the man of fate. Nelson's adamant heroism and espousal of predestination make it no argument at all; Hal can't hope to convince his friend not to save him. And in an almost biblical moment, Nelson tells Hal to rejoice, for at that moment, they get to be together. Michael Straczynski's one-issue tale is deep and touching. It happens to be at the moment the most recent new comic I've read; my favorable opinion is no artifact of that recency -- it's poignant, builds on a rich history, and is a true story of heroism.


So far both of the scenes on my list have come from the same title; rest assured, that streak will not last. #8 is from another story that is long on talk and short on action, but this time between a hero and a villain.

Best of the Decade #10

Brief explanation: Top 10 lists are fun, and I've pondered a few possibilities: Scenes, comic books, stories, characters. Of all time, of the year. But since the odometer is about to roll on the decade of the 00's, I decided to run a countdown of my personal favorite scenes of the decade. (Of course, there are two Wednesdays left in the decade, so my apologies if one of the best scenes occurs in the next fortnight.)

Making this list taught me something: It hurt to leave some of the next-best entries off the list. And that tells me how much I enjoyed reading the stories I did. I wasn't reading comics basically at all from 1992 to 2004. I went back and read some of the ones I missed, but of course there are huge gaps in my reading overall; I can only include the comics I read. It also struck me how some really great issues didn't make this list, because they were good, but the quality was spread out over the whole issue; no shame there.

Seven writers made the list, and it pained me to leave a couple of other writers off. Once again, a sign that there was some top notch material out there and that my comic-reading time was well-spent.

#10 was in Brave and Bold v2 #6, the finale of a very fine story written by Mark Waid. An ensemble cast revolving around Batman fought against the Luck Lords, some bad guys who had the Book of Destiny (which debuted in Weird Mystery Tales, a comic I used to read in the Seventies). Because they had total knowledge of the future, they were a match for the heavyweight team pitted against them, including Supergirl and Hal Jordan. But they were scared of Batman, and the world's greatest detective used that knowledge to find the only way to beat them, to pit them against the Challengers of the Unknown. This worked because the Challengers have always been, by their tagline, living on borrowed time, and therefore live outside of Destiny.  Once the Challengers showed up, the Luck Lords lost their advantage, and the Challengers made their omniscience evaporate simply by running around and doing things.

Regardless of who was throwing the punches, it was Batman's victory, and the moment when he realized who could beat the Book of Destiny was one of those "stinger" moments that make heroes worth rooting for. Kudos to Mark Waid for tying together several non-superhero characters and concepts into a tight story that is great in many places, but culminates with the kind of moment that makes writing Batman so hard -- the writer has to touch upon a stroke of genius.

Next post: #9, the most recent scene to make the list, featuring two very powerful superheroes just standing around talking.