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The latest in a never-ending string of theme months for Little Movie Review is Comic Book Month. We here at LMR are actually more into comics than we are movies, and are always disheartened at the defeatist attitude most folks take to the medium. “They’re not for me” or the even more baffling “I don’t know how to read them” are frequent but insufficient excuses for dismissing an entire art form as varied as movies or novels and intrinsically more accessible than both. (The answer, by the way, is “from left to right, and read the words and look at the pictures in any order you want.”)

One of the point-of-entry problems for comics is that the “classics” are greatly admired by experienced comics readers, but not necessarily great starting points. Watchmen? Too dense and too dependent on a knowledge of comics history to be enjoyable as a first read. The Dark Knight? Juvenile and violent. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not everyone’s cup of tea. Maus? Would you give someone War and Peace as their first book? Probably not. Comics Month here at Little Movie Review will be about providing some more accessible points of entry into comics for those unsure of where to start with them.

Top 10 is written by Alan Moore, also the author of Watchmen, and while it might be close to as dense as his most famous work it’s also light and fun, lacking any of the back-breaking context that makes Watchmen such a labor to read. It’s certainly not better than Watchmen, but it’s very, very good, and it would make a much easier first encounter for the comic-shy. It’s about a police force in a city full of superheroes. It’s Law & Order, but everyone has super powers. The police, the criminals, the judge, the file clerk, everyone. Where Moore takes this is a never-ending series of wry super-heroic puns on crime genre norms. Dealers sell super powers rather than drugs, robots are disenfranchised second-class citizens, and blind cab drivers use Zen super-senses to get you to your destination:

But all of the clever puns are really the garnish on a well-done and engrossing character play, which Moore can do in his sleep. And it doesn’t hurt that every panel is jam-packed with appropriately gritty detail by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, who have also taken the liberty of hiding about a million Easter eggs in every panel. Everyone from Huckleberry Hound to Dr. Who to Waldo can be seen wandering the streets of Top 10, and I can’t imagine anyone who enjoys a good story wouldn’t have a good time there either.

A hardcover of the first six issues of Top 10 is a steal at $15 on Amazon right now, or you could place an order at the excellent local comics store Dark Side Comics.

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