Reviewed: Top 10 #1 by Alan Moore and Gene Ha

The Plot: Robyn Slinger, known as Toy Box, arrives for her first day on the job at a police precinct in a world apparently filled with superpowered beings. In the world of Top 10, everyone's a superhero.

Hmm. What is it with this theme? Worlds filled to the brim with superheroes, or nearly so, have been the milieu of no fewer than three recent series: Kingdom Come (and it's execrable sequel The Kingdom), Earth X and now Top 10. Perhaps the idea is one possible consequence of a world populated in part with superbeings, but so far, for me, it isn't a very compelling one.

The appeal of superheroes has always been largely one of wish fulfillment. Man has always yearned to fly, and Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound. People have an inborn desire to see justice, and Batman delivers that in spades.

The primary method of drawing the reader into a comics (or any, really) story is through characters we can identify with. For Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen. For the Hulk, Rick Jones. Even in the be-all and end-all deconstruction of the Marvel Mythos, Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, we saw the events played out through the eyes (and eventually eye, yes I know) of a single, fragile human being.

And here we have Top 10. A world populated by superbeings, with a story focusing on just one more. In this story, there is literally no one that is not a superbeing. We're given reason to sympathize with Robyn Singer, on the last page, but other than that, we're on our own in interpreting the events and significance of these characters. We have no guide, none at all.

You know, it's no coincidence that Alex Ross and various of his series have been referenced in this review; he's made a career of either deconstructing or paying tribute to the comics icons of the past. An entire sub-genre has arisen in the past decade or so, much of it owing to the work of Alan Moore in the mid 1980s.

I'm thinking specifically of that scene early in his Swamp Thing run where he showed the Justice League in a manner no one ever had before; as Gods, seperate and removed from the humanity they have vowed to serve and protect. Those few panels nearly two decades ago laid the foundation for some of the most successful works of the past few years, notably Grant Morrison's JLA revival.

My problem with what has become of these types of stories is typified in a scene from Morrison's JLA run; during the Rock of Ages arc, when some of the JLAers found themselves on a world, yup, populated by superbeings. Like much of Morrison's work on JLA, it was unfocused and vague; but Morrison played the same card Moore does here in Top 10; he casually creates ideas and concepts for superheroes that immediately seem familiar, and of course they intrigue us. But what happens then?

In the case of Morrison's JLA, not a hell of a lot. In Moore's, I'm not altogether sure yet. Top 10 is an ongoing series, and I've only read the first issue so far. But I was less than mesmerized.

Maybe, in this post-Watchmen world, I'm just getting tired of these meta-comments on superheroing and just want to see a good, old-fashioned superhero story that doesn't aspire to explain, parody or comment on the genre in every panel.

It's difficult not to see Top 10 of a piece with the other series I've mentioned. After all, the cover by Alex Ross could very well pass for an issue of Kurt Busiek's Astro City...and Alan Moore, of course, has been deconstructing superheroes for most of his career. Swamp Thing. Watchmen. 1963. Supreme. Judgment Day. And of course, Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?

And I've enjoyed most of that career, to be sure; I'm not entirely sure I won't enjoy this title, even. But this first issue left me, well, disappointed.

Toy Box (as officer Slinger is known) certainly has one of the most original superpowers I've ever seen: she has a box of toy robots that she sends out to look for clues to the crimes she is investigating. On her first day at the Top 10 precinct, she encounters some interesting co-workers, including a mutated dog-man (reminiscent of a character in Kirby's Kamandi, and quite on purpose I'm sure), a lesbian cop whose senses work a little differently from everyone else's (and who makes a modest pass at Robyn, to no ill effect), and her new partner Jeff Smax, an embittered giant of a man who looks like a big, angry cross between Cable and Nightcrawler. Smax refuses to warm up to his new partner, much like I was unable to warm up to this first issue.

I wanted to like it, I really did. Moore handles the dialogue well, and there are some clever conceits along the way, as you'd expect. A Zen taxi-driver, a super domestic dispute, and a new Metropolis (Neopolis, get it?) designed by Nazi scientists and supervillains with over-the-top architecture and another astonishing, run of the mill oddity around every corner.

But, for me, the last page, which offers a quiet insight into Robyn Slinger, did not redeem or justify the charmless chaos of the previous two-dozen or so pages. Maybe Kurt Busiek just does this sort of thing better, but I was not intrigued by most of the characters, and even Toy Box leaves me mostly cold.

It came as a surprise of sorts; Alan Moore is, in my opinion, one of the Top 10 (ha, ha) best writers the industry has ever produced. The way he reinvented Swamp Thing in the 1980s led the way for all the reboots (good and bad) that followed, only he did it without violating the previous, beloved origin. He also

created a mythos for the character that carried it for years to follow. His Watchmen, despite a flawed ending, remains one of the classics of the artform, and one of the best thought-out and executed comic books ever.

The first time I was disappointed by Moore was when he wrote a three-issue Violator miniseries for Todd McFarlane and Image. I knew Spawn was irredeemable crap, but I thought if anyone could make the concept take flight, it would be Moore. I was wrong. Moore appeared, to me, to be "phoning it in," on that title, and on many of the books he did for Image after that.

Sure, there were flashes of brilliance in the abortive 1963 miniseries, and in Supreme, but even those thrills were of a decidedly retro nature.

When the America's Best Comics line was announced, then, I was skeptical. Moore's rep had suffered in my eyes (through almost no fault of his own) from his association with uber-crapmeister Rob Liefeld. I'd been sucked in by Supreme, only to be disappointed when it was cancelled, then excited when it was brought back, then annoyed when I found out Robby was using scripts on hand rather than continuing an ongoing relationship with Moore. I knew it wouldn't take long for those scripts to run out, even if Liefeld could somehow produce the announced issues on time (itself doubtful; Liefeld's like that friend who owes you a hundred bucks, and is always telling you, "I'll have it next payday--"...a payday that never comes.)...and once the scripts ran out, pfft. Nothing. I find it hard to get excited about a project I know is doomed to trickle out to nothingness.

So I pretty much ignored ABC, especially after reading the Wizard freebie. Nothing in there made me want to jump back on the Moore bandwagon.

But, the buzz is that Moore is back in true form, turning out brilliant scripts like Liefeld turns out empty promises and ugly artwork. So, I picked up Top 10 #1.

And I didn't much care for it. But, y'know, it's Moore. I'm willing to give him a chance. I wasn't blown away by this issue, but neither was I repulsed or offended. Gene Ha's artwork is competent if unspectacular, but then, the story is just that as well. Maybe Ha would have done better had the material been more inspired. I'm seeking out the next few issues to see if Moore will win me over, so look for that review soon.