(3) NEIL GAIMAN –

THE SANDMAN (DC Vertigo 1989-1996)

You knew this was coming. Neil Gaiman may simply be the greatest living writer of fantasy, the literary (and suitably English) heir to J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (both of whom were substantial influences on him). Stephen King has praised Gaiman as “a treasure house of story” and added that “we are lucky to have him in any medium”. And indeed we are – with his lyrical prose, his power of story and his sensibility of fantasy as ultimately the layers of story within our world.

His most mythic work – indeed, the core of Gaiman’s mythos – is The Sandman. It is of course within the genre of fantasy, with an episode even winning the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Fiction (prompting the awards administration thereafter to revise – or remember – the rules to exclude comics or graphic novels, those snobs!). Indeed, it “falls within the dark fantasy genre, albeit in a more contemporary or modern setting”, but transcends genre into urban fantasy, epic fantasy, historical drama, superheroes, mythology and more. Its mythos, and even more so its mythic themes of the power of belief and the power of story, recur throughout Gaiman’s writing.

The plot or mythos of The Sandman revolves around the titular character, also known as Morpheus from the god of dreams in classical mythology or simply, Dream, one of the seven cosmic alliterative and anthropomorphic personifications known as the Endless – Death, Destiny, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium (formerly Delight). Dream along with Death and Destiny is one of the big three players of the Endless – which may initially seem surprising given that dreams seem somewhat minor compared to death or destiny, but the sheer scope or force of dreams and dreaming which he personifies becomes manifest through the series. As Dream tells Lucifer when the latter threatens to renege on Dream’s safe passage out of Hell and mockingly asks what power dreams have in hell – “what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?”

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(4) TRUDY COOPER & DOUG BAYNE –

OGLAF (Webcomic 2008 – present)

A weekly webcomic every Sunday by Australian creators.

A fantasy comic and comic fantasy – the latter in that it deconstructs, parodies or subverts virtually every fantasy trope, many drawn from the creators’ obvious familiarity with Dungeons and Dragons. In the words of Comics Alliance – “Oglaf is a sex comedy webcomic set in a world created by shoving every existing fantasy world into a blender and setting it on puree. There’s no overall plot, but many recurring characters and storylines, all in service to some of the funniest smut on the web”.

Yes – it is funny. And yes – oh my goddess – it is smutty. As per its origin in its opening disclaimer – “This comic started as an attempt to make p0rnography. It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately”. Definitely not-safe-for-work (NSFW). Indeed, it’s an exceptional Oglaf that isn’t smutty. Of course, a large part of the smut is also part of the comic fantasy, playing with those fantasy tropes or the sexuality, repressed or otherwise beneath their surface. So yes – it’s mostly a fantasy sex comedy, well – ah – serviced by Cooper’s art. One should note that it is extremely diverse in its sexuality and indeed its multi-racial or polysexual characters – strikingly so for fantasy, which despite its premise is all too often traditional in its mores.

It’s mostly an episodic gag a week, although there are recurring characters. There also are (or at least were) occasional longer story arcs involving them. Ironically, the title character, although technically recurring (in a couple or so episodes), is essentially a gag character for the title – a shepherd boy with a very unusual (and NSFW) magical talent which somehow annoints him as the chosen one (although not chosen for much beyond the title). The closest thing the comic had to a protagonist was Ivan, a literal sorcerer’s apprentice (of sorts) to the sadistic Mistress. Other recurring characters occasionally rise to the fore as semi-protagonists – kinky female vampire Navaan, humorless female mercenary Greir and my favorite, Kronar, an obvious parody of Conan from a tribe of male barbarians so manly they don’t contaminate themselves with women and show each other their honor (and yes – that is a euphemism).

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) TOM PARKINSON-MORGAN –

KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS (webcomic / Image 2013 – present)

“The king of creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the third conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast – and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of heaven will quake with his coming. And his name – his name will be – Kill Six Billion Demons.”

Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan (or Orbital Dropkick as he presently styles himself on social media) is a ‘New Weird’ fantasy webcomic, “stuffed with sumptuous insanity”. Or as I prefer to call it – psychedelic cosmic fantasy. Funnily enough, I see parallels between it and Garth Nix’s The Keys to the Kingdom, although it is a lot more, well, psychedelic and cosmic than the latter’s young adult fantasy.

God is dead and so are the gods, leaving only war in heaven as the most powerful beings vie to inherit the multiverse, although for now there is an uneasy truce between the seven beings – the Seven – that have emerged victorious to rule it between them in Throne, the heart of the multiverse. But before them was the legendary Conquering King, first to rule over Throne, but who abandoned it and disappeared with the Key of Kings, which holds the power to overthrow the Seven and conquer the multiverse itself. Which he returns from death itself (no big consequence to such beings) to give to Allison Ruth, a simple barrista from Earth, who finds herself plucked to the very heart of multiverse as its new champion and with a quest evoked by her new name – Kill Six Billion Demons.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Halfling ranger Belkar Bitterleaf in perhaps his most iconic scene (and one of my favorite scenes) from episode 439 Seeing Orange

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(6) RICH BURLEW –

ORDER OF THE STICK (WEBCOMIC 2003 – present)

“Roy Greenhilt: The rogue is ambitious and greedy, the ranger is a complete psychopath, the wizard is trigger-happy and never stops talking, and the bard is as dumb as a box of moldy carrots!

Durkon Thundershield: As I recall, ye called me “surly and unpleasant” shortly after ye met me. […] Maybe all these folks need is a good strong leader like ye ta whip ’em inta shape.”

And that pretty much sums up The Order of the Stick webcomic and the titular protagonist adventuring group.

A stick figure fantasy webcomic – although ‘stick figure’ belies the versatility of the art style, particularly in later comics – primarily based on Dungeons and Dragons, specifically the so-called 3.5 edition of the game (which has moved on to other editions since). Its origin as a gag-a-day strip, parodying the idiosyncrasies of the game and its rules in a classic dungeon crawl, belied its depth as it has evolved into a sweeping fantasy epic, retaining its humor but with cosmic stakes as well as plot twists and turns that make The Lord of the Rings look like, well, The Hobbit. Speaking of hobbits, or more precisely the game’s namesake halflings, much of the comic’s humor originates in its halfling character, who is indeed a chaotic stab-happy psychopath.

Beyond its humor and epic fantasy, it extends well beyond a parody of Dungeons and Dragons to deconstructing the fantasy genre itself and its narrative tropes. The characters, not unlike actual players in Dungeons and Dragons, are well aware that they are characters in a fantasy game universe, but also in a webcomic, and are extremely genre savvy to show for it – not just about the D&D rules and gameplay mechanics by which their world operates, but general storytelling tropes as well.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Cover of Empowered volume 1 by creator – artist and writer – Adam Warren

(7) ADAM WARREN –

EMPOWERED (Dark Horse 2007 – present)

“A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn’t)”

The titular heroine and her series, originated from commissioned ‘bondage’ sketches of a comics superheroine ‘damsel-in-distress’, which then became the basis for the episodic shorts for the commencement of the series, illustrated in Warren’s characteristic ‘manga’ influenced style. The series started (and still continues to some extent) as a playful deconstruction of superhero comics tropes, particularly those involving female superheroes, along with (in the words of TV Tropes) “healthy doses of bondage, fanservice and comedy”.

Indeed, it’s a fantasy kitchen sink of comics tropes and more – alien doomsday technology, clans of ninjas in New Jersey, grandiloquent interdimensional hell-beings (trapped in coffee table ornaments), deals with the devil, psi powers, undead superheroes (or the ‘superdead’) and catgirls (nyaan!)

Empowered herself is a “plucky D-list superheroine”, who is precariously dependent and constantly betrayed by the fragile, fickle source of her superpowers – her skin-tight ‘hypermembrane’ suit. As a consequence, Empowered spends most of her time with her suit in tatters or various states of undress, bound and gagged by supervillains or even common criminals, a joke to her superhero peers and supervillains alike (albeit something of status symbol as arm candy to the latter).

As the series has progressed however, it has developed deeper, darker and longer story arcs – and Empowered has emerged as an increasingly formidable superheroine, relying on her wits and strength of character to overcome the flaws of her suit. On the other hand, her superhero colleagues or ‘Capes’ have become increasingly darker – beware the Superman! Remember San Antonio!

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) MARK MILLAR –

THE MAGIC ORDER (Image 2019-2023)

“We live in a world where we’ve never seen a monster, and The Magic Order is the reason we sleep safely in our beds.”

The Apocalypse according to Mark.

Mark Millar, that is.

Of course, that epithet of the Apocalypse according to Mark applies much more to his American Jesus – indeed literally but it is intriguing how often Millar gets apocalyptic in his comics, literally or figuratively.

I have two favorite particular subgenres of fantasy. The first and narrowest is what might be termed apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fantasy, particularly if based on the actual Book of Apocalypse. The second is posthumous fantasy – not in the sense of being published posthumously, but set posthumously or fantasy set in the afterlife.

And I’ve been I’ve been a fan of Mark Millar even since his surreal and characteristically irreverent fantasy comic Canon Fodder in 2000 AD, one that was again apocalyptic in a literal sense and one of the few fantasy works to combine both subgenres. Well, apart from the original Book of Apocalypse.

The Magic Order isn’t apocalyptic in the literal sense but is in the figurative sense of its stakes. The titular order secretly safeguards the world from supernatural and magical threats – such as guarding a magic tome containing the dark spells of Old Atlantis so powerful that it is “”said to cause two world wars and can slay a deity”.

“Magic meets the mob in THE MAGIC ORDER, as five families of magicians-sworn to protect our world for generations-must battle an enemy who’s picking them off one by one. By day, they live among us as our neighbors, friends, and co-workers, but by night, they are the sorcerers, magicians, and wizards that protect us from the forces of darkness…unless the darkness gets them first.”

The first volume featured the American Magic Order while the second and third volumes move to the Magic Order in Europe and Asia.

By the way, Millar returned to posthumous fantasy in his 2017 Reborn comic.

But in a sense this entry bookmarks a place in my top ten I tend to reserve for Millar with one series or another, although The Magic Order does indeed rank as my favorite Millar title at this time. The point is that he consistently writes his own independent creator-owned comics under his unified label Millarworld, usually for Image or Icon – such that I could compile my Top 10 Mark Millar Comics.

It helps that his comics have a healthy rate of adaptation to film or television. The former include titles such as Kickass and Kingsman. The latter is particularly so after his Millarworld label was purchased by Netflix to adapt his comics for television, with my favorite so far as the animated adaptation of Supercrooks. Sadly, The Magic Order is still in production as I understand it.

He also has a very personable profile on X or Twitter.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(9) CHARLES SOULE & SCOTT SYNDER –

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (Image 2019 – PRESENT)

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early…what the hell is that?!

Undiscovered Country starts from what might seem to be a familiar premise but one that becomes increasingly audacious…and beautifully weird. The titular Undiscovered Country is the United States or or what has become of it after it literally walled itself off from the rest of the world for thirty years (the Sealing) – land of the free and home of the brave become literal land of the lost. And by walling, I mean not just the massive physical walls but the ‘Air Wall’ of experimental force shield technology. Of course, there’s more than a few echoes of contemporary political events – and even more so in 2020 for the premise of its plot, a global pandemic that requires a team seeking a cure to breach its borders and venture into this strange and deadly ‘undiscovered’ country.

And that’s where things go “from prescient to Beyond Thunderdome: giant land sharks, tribal lunacy, jingoistic madmen galore…Forget the Land of the Free. This was Mad Max by way of the bastard son of Roald Dahl and Hunter S. Thompson. If they let the baby smoke crack a lot”. And then there’s the fact – evidenced by those mutated land sharks and jingoistic madmen – that as an effect of that force shield, much more time has seemingly passed in the lost United States than should actually be possible…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(10) KIERON GILLEN –

THE POWER FANTASY (Image 2024)

“Superpowered.” You have certain preconceptions. They’re incorrect. Here, that word has a specific technical definition. Namely, “any individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of the USA.”

Okay – I’ll admit that this entry is aspirational, in turn reflecting that it is my usual wildcard tenth place entry for the best of the present or previous year.

And by aspirational, I mean it is this year’s comic that I want to read but haven’t read yet.

In fairness to myself, the first issue was only just released in August 2024 – with issues to follow each month after that. So it will be some time before the first collected edition comes out – generally it take six issues or so before they are released together in a collected edition.

Also in fairness to myself, I have enjoyed previous series written by Kieran Gillon for Image Comics, so have high expectations for this one.

“You are of the Pantheon. You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant. Within two years, you will be dead.”

The first was The Wicked + The Divine from 2014 to 2019, a series I previously ranked in my top ten and still one of the best from Gillen or Image Comics. It featured the Pantheon, a shifting rotation of gods in the Recurrence – when twelve gods (and goddesses) return (or incarnate) as young people for a bright, shining two years before burning out, as they have every ninety years for millennia. Except, you know, God, because that would just be boring. We’re talking beautiful, sexy, pop-star pagan gods and goddesses here, although they change with each Recurrence. Or something like that because the rules are not entirely clear and keep changing.

The second was Die from 2018 to 2021, a series I would previously have ranked as my wildcard tenth place entry in my top ten. It featured “a pitch-black fantasy where a group of forty-something adults have to deal with the returning unearthly horror they barely survived as teenage role-players” – a concept the writer pitched as “Goth Jumanji” but was more using Dungeons and Dragons as an intriguing exploration of fantasy as a genre.

That extends to the character classes of the game in the story as an intriguing exploration of character classes in Dungeons and Dragons – Dictator (like a bard with mind control mojo), Neo (a cyberpunk mage powered by fairy gold), Godbinder (like a cleric cutting deals with gods), Grief Knight (paladin literally powered by emotion), and Fool (combination of rogue and bard powered by luck). Indeed, the classes and game mechanics were so intriguing that Gillen spun off an actual role-playing game for them.

“There are six such people on Earth. The planet’s survival relies on them never coming into conflict.

Come dance to the ticking of the doomsday clock…”

So I’m looking forward to the collected edition of Power Fantasy…although I also want to read We Called Them Giants released in collected edition in October 2024 – which also qualifies it for my wildcard tenth place entry.

RATING: 4 STARS**** (based on my ratings for his previous series)

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The famous and iconic cover of Superman’s very first appearance in Action Comics

COMICS: TOP 10

Exactly what it says on the tin – my Top 10 Comics, including webcomics (as three of my top ten entries, indeed three of the top five).

You don’t need me to explain what comics are, but I might need to explain some things.

First, comics are my guilty reading pleasure I have retained from childhood, much like animation in TV or film. And much like animation, whatever the comic, I’ll usually enjoy checking it or its characters out.

Second, perhaps surprisingly after the first, I don’t read that many comics, let alone actively follow them. For most comics, I don’t go beyond checking them or their characters out in brief overview or review to reading them in depth. Usually, my interest is satisfied by the idea of a comic – or ideas in a comic – rather than the comic itself.

In particular, I don’t follow or read any comics from the ruling duopoly of DC and Marvel, with the exception of the former’s, ah, former label of Vertigo, although I have an enduring interest in and familiarity with many of their characters – but more in their film or television adaptations (or in their art and cosplay) than their original comics.

Anyway, these are my Top 10 Comics.