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A review by blatanville
Top 10, Vol. 1 by Alan Moore
4.0
I don't know if this series was always planned to end at certain point or not (it would seem weird to cancel an Eisner-winning series at 12 issues if it was making money. It would seem weird that a series written by Alan Moore wouldn't sell. Maybe I answered my own question?)
Anyhow; using the time-honoured traditional "beginning" to a storyline, the series starts with a new character "coming to town" (Toy Box joins Top 10) and gets thrown into the action. Several stories (cases) are underway, new cases develop immediately. The characters Toy Box (and the reader) meets are already moving on their arcs and have history together. This is not unusual. What _is_ unusual is that this new person isn't going to be the POV character. In fact there is no one POV character. And that's a good thing. Moore and Ha have taken the "expanded" stories of a police procedural show, like Hill Street Blues in its day, and applied that to a world where everyone has a "super power."
And it's terrific.
Reading this (again) 20-some years after publication, it doesn't seem quite as remarkable as it might have at the time. The medium has matured, and the kinds and depth of stories writers like Moore were bringing to it starting in the 80s are now as likely to appear as more-traditional "comic-book" stories.
And, back to what I said about the ending before: there "isn't one"? Yes, some of the cases get solved. Yes, characters change and grow. But their stories aren't finished or neatly wrapped up. The series could start publishing again tomorrow, picking up with issue 13 and carrying on the cases still unsolved...This series was like a 12-issue run plucked from somewhere along the line of a much-longer series...and that's neat.
Anyhow; using the time-honoured traditional "beginning" to a storyline, the series starts with a new character "coming to town" (Toy Box joins Top 10) and gets thrown into the action. Several stories (cases) are underway, new cases develop immediately. The characters Toy Box (and the reader) meets are already moving on their arcs and have history together. This is not unusual. What _is_ unusual is that this new person isn't going to be the POV character. In fact there is no one POV character. And that's a good thing. Moore and Ha have taken the "expanded" stories of a police procedural show, like Hill Street Blues in its day, and applied that to a world where everyone has a "super power."
And it's terrific.
Reading this (again) 20-some years after publication, it doesn't seem quite as remarkable as it might have at the time. The medium has matured, and the kinds and depth of stories writers like Moore were bringing to it starting in the 80s are now as likely to appear as more-traditional "comic-book" stories.
And, back to what I said about the ending before: there "isn't one"? Yes, some of the cases get solved. Yes, characters change and grow. But their stories aren't finished or neatly wrapped up. The series could start publishing again tomorrow, picking up with issue 13 and carrying on the cases still unsolved...This series was like a 12-issue run plucked from somewhere along the line of a much-longer series...and that's neat.