ComicsAlliance continues its Top 10 Best Comics of 2010 with...


Scott Pilgrim – the story of a hapless sort-of hero on quest to defeat his girlfriend Ramona's seven evil exes – has always been a series about being in your 20s, a chronicle of the journey towards responsibility. Laced with a hot chiptune beat and infused with the style and sensibilities of 8-bit video games, it is also very much a story about nostalgia, about the power of the past to frame the way we see the world, and how our personal history pulls against us when we try to move forward.

On its face, it is a literally a story about a guy trying to claim a future with a woman by defeating the men in her past who haunt her, although Scott's greater challenge has always been defeating his own past. We open in Vol. 6, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, on Scott dealing with the aftermath of his breakup with Ramona. And now that the great rollercoaster of sex, intrigue, and problems he could defeat through punching has come to a rather sudden stop, we find Scott lost in a haze of oversleeping and video games, emerging zombie-like into the larger social world just long enough to embarrass himself publicly by making spectacularly inappropriate decisions.

Because we're feeling the pull of the yuletide (whatever the heck that is), ComicsAlliance decided to start a countdown to Christmas in the tradition of that old holiday standard, The 12 Days of Christmas. Except we shook it up, tossed it over to some of the craziest and most talented comics creators we know, and made our own version: The Twelve Days of Comic Book Christmas. Each day until December 24th, we'll post an original piece of art from a creator telling a very different story about what their true love gave to them. So enjoy this gift to you, fair readers -- and make sure to spread the good comics cheer!

"On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
eight drunken elephants!" - Molly Crabapple

As the year draws nearer to a close, ComicsAlliance has gathered its annual list of the top 10 best comics and graphic novels of 2010, as selected by our staff. Like any list, it is naturally subjective, but we've packed it chock full of books that had awed us, excited us, and entertained us, and books that we're passionate about recommending. Yesterday we ran #10 - #6, and now we've got the next two for your viewing pleasure.

5. Phonogram: The Singles Club by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Production delays, a printing error, and that pesky need to make a living nudged this seven-issue series into this year, when we were finally able to see the completion and collection of one of the best comics of 2009. It may be a cliché, but some things really are worth the wait. Just don't ask anyone who bought Chinese Democracy.

Phonogram: The Singles Club is among the rarest of comics: the kind that appeals to non-readers. Easily accessible but intelligent single-issue stories packaged in lovingly designed art objects that leap out from the trashy clamor of everything else on the shelf. You know. Cool. The concept of "phonomancing" – using music to perform magic – is not only an instant classic to build a comic around, it's an idea that just about everybody in the world can jive with. Everyone has a song that's magic for them. Man has been making music since developing ears, and performing magic to it in various ways, from gamelan rituals to Jimmy Page nastily infecting us with demon semen via backwards guitar solo.

Obviously, there's nothing good about war. You've got untold devastation, countless deaths, the crippling of peaceful relations for decades to come, and none of the fighting technology looks even remotely as cool as the vehicles and weapons we see in our favorite comic book and science fiction films. It just doesn't make any sense, right? BAE Systems agrees. The world's largest defense contractor decided to stop screwing around and design a war machine based on the most incredibly useful yet vaguely plausible film gadget we've seen in the last few years: the Batmobile.

On sale now is Archie #616, which contains part one of the "Campaign Pain" storyline, guest-starring President Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Although the story by Alex Simmons and Dan Parent is way too late to be part of the wave of Obama-exploiting comic books we've seen over the past couple of years, Archie #616 is without question the single best comic to feature the current President and/or Mrs. Palin that we've seen so far. While other books slapped Obama's image on ghastly variant covers or crammed his persona into stories that were variously cute/terrible, Archie's "Campaign Pain" manages to make its sensational guest stars' appearances completely sensible in the world of Riverdale just by availing itself of the classic characteristics of the Archie gang.

In our recurring feature, ComicsAlliance writer Chris Sims and a rotating cast of talented artists imagine a finer world to bring you a look at the Best Comics Ever that Did Not, Will Not, and occasionally Can Not Happen! This month, we're switching it up a little to bring you a special holiday themed installment every week, and for the last week before Christmas, Chris and artist Steven Sanders (Marvel's S.W.O.R.D.and Deadpool Team-Up) bring you a true Yuletide Tale of Terror: O' MAN-ENBAUM Check out the full cover and a look at every one of our GCTNH Holiday Specials after the jump!

Christopher Tierney's prognosis is good, but the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark stunt-double's condition is nevertheless considered "serious" as he remains in New York City's Bellevue Hospital with broken ribs following a malfunctioned fall from 20-30 feet into the orchestra feet at Foxwood Theatre, apparently caused by human error. Although one matinee was cancelled in the wake of the aerialist's terrible Monday night accident, performances of Turn Off the Dark are to resume Wednesday evening as scheduled. These recent events have prompted comment by the musical's director, Julie Taymor, as well as extremely critical remarks from within the acting community, with one Broadway performer suggesting Taymor should be incarcerated for her role in the plainly hazardous production.

If you've enjoyed Sean Phillips' soft and gritty style in Incognito or Marvel Zombies, there's no reason at all that you shouldn't have already stumbled across his ever-expanding feed of sketches and watercolored side work. Even his simplest layouts and bare-bones planning stages are feasts for the eyes, especially if you're fascinated by behind-the-scenes looks at process. If you aren't, well, he's still got some Spider-Man and decapitated zombie Cyclops pieces worth looking over.

I've been writing full-time for ComicsAlliance for almost a year now, but it was only a few weeks ago that I realized what may be the most important thing I've discovered since I quit my day job: Since I work from home, I can watch two hours of Walker, Texas Ranger every single day. And that has been a life-changing realization.

Okay, look: I know the whole Chuck Norris thing is played out, but seriously? This show is amazing. In the few weeks I've been watching, I've seen episodes where Walker went back in time to solve two crimes that took place 150 years apart, one where he fought the Macho Man Randy Savage in an underground pit fighting league in a Louisiana prison, and one truly astonishing hour of television where -- and I swear this is actually the plot -- Gary Busey attempted to assassinate a Special Olympian by karate-fighting her in the middle of the day in a public park.

And then I found out there's a Christmas episode.

And not only that, but according to the episode summary, it's one where Chuck Norris fights a gang of evil Santas.

If there's one thing we learned from the latest batch of images from Batman: Arkham City, it's that the more awesome the game looks, the farther away release day is going to seem. At the moment, we're about a million billion years away from when Arkham City goes on sale, but we're relieved that the torturous wait has been mitigated by the release of previously unseen conceptual designs from the previous Batman game, Arkham Asylum. Courtesy of artist Carlos D'Anda, the beautiful illustrations reveal the developers' desire to find a happy marriage between the classic and fairly simple appearances of Batman and his rogues' gallery and the more intricate and perhaps overly detailed 3D designs for which gaming technology finally allows.

D'Anda's complete archive is viewable on his DeviantArt page, but you check out our favorites after the jump.

Because we're feeling the pull of the yuletide (whatever the heck that is), ComicsAlliance decided to start a countdown to Christmas in the tradition of that old holiday standard, The 12 Days of Christmas. Except we shook it up, tossed it over to some of the craziest and most talented comics creators we know, and made our own version: The Twelve Days of Comic Book Christmas. Each day until December 24th, we'll post an original piece of art from a creator telling a very different story about what their true love gave to them. So enjoy this gift to you, fair readers -- and make sure to spread the good comics cheer!

"On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
seven infections previously unknown to science!"

- Warren Ellis, art by Gary Erskine