5. Alan MooreWatchmen
To me, no comic has ever been written as well as Watchmen. It’s on a level that most people don’t even understand that it’s on. They just think: "Oh, it’s a really good comic book." But it’s a work of literature in a way that no other comic has even attempted. It’s not even the best of what it does, it’s the only thing that has ever tried to combine that kind of narrative richness in the comic book form. So it’s a shame that instead of being the first of a new level of a way of storytelling, even 30 years later it’s still unique. But that’s what’s great about it too. The fact that it is a superhero story is immediately off-putting to so many people, that it maintains this misfit outsider status. It’s never going to be accepted as a work of literature because it’s obviously a pulp comic book – it has people in costumes punching each other in the face and flying through outer space – so it really has these completely unacceptable lowbrow elements that make it unappealing from an academic perspective. And yet in that way I think it’s more interesting and more brilliant than if it was a straight literary work like any of these academically acceptable comics, like Maus, for example. I like the fact that it really can’t be assimilated into literary culture because it is so lowbrow, and yet it’s undeniably of a level of richness to which no other comic has ever come close.
I bought Watchmen and the Daredevil ‘Born Again’ collection with money I made from this Say No To Drugs poster contest when I was 12. I won $50 and used the money to buy some expensive comics that I wouldn’t have the money for otherwise.
