Items14The creator’s order
  1. 1The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (2012)The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012The book that convinces people a robot comic can make them cry. James Roberts sends Rodimus and a shipful of misfit Autobots across space hunting the legendary Knights of Cybertron, then spends much of its 57 issues on the crew rather than the quest: their friendships, their regrets and what…0
  2. 2Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers (2010)Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers (2010)Published Jan 1, 2010If More Than Meets the Eye is the long novel, this is the short, brutal war film that came first. Nick Roche and James Roberts send the Autobot commando squad known as the Wreckers into a prison held by a rogue Decepticon, and not everyone comes back. Five issues, one self-contained mission and a…0
  3. 3Transformers (2023) (2023)Transformers (2023) (2023)Published Oct 4, 2023Daniel Warren Johnson's run, issues #1 to #24 The easiest Transformers comic to hand someone who has never cared about Transformers. Johnson treats the robots' war reaching Earth like a monster movie, with ordinary people caught underfoot, and draws the first six issues himself in a scratchy,…0
  4. 4G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero (1982)G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero (1982)Published Jan 1, 1982Larry Hama's run at Marvel A comic built to sell action figures that its writer refused to treat as disposable. Hama wrote nearly all of Marvel's 155 issues, then returned when IDW revived the book in 2010, and Image picked it up after #300 with the original numbering intact. What sets it apart is…0
  5. 5Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW, 2011)Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW, 2011)The cartoon-era Turtles are fun; this version is a proper saga. Co-creator Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz rebuilt the mythology from the ground up in 2011, pulling in pieces from every earlier version, and the series ran 150 issues before ending in 2024. Splinter, the Foot and Shredder get motives and…0
  6. 6Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last RoninTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last RoninThe one TMNT book to hand a skeptic who wants a single, finished story. In a battle-ravaged future New York, the last surviving brother sets out alone to avenge his family, and black-and-white flashbacks fill in the losses that led him there. It grew from a lost outline by co-creators Kevin…0
  7. 7Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (2007)Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (2007)Published Jan 1, 2007The rare licensed comic that is the official continuation rather than a side story. Joss Whedon picked up after the TV show ended in 2003 and used the page to do what a network budget never allowed, starting with Buffy leading an army of Slayers. It won the 2008 Eisner for Best New Series, credited…0
  8. 8Aliens: Dead Orbit (2017)Aliens: Dead Orbit (2017)Published Jan 1, 2017Four issues that get closer to the dread of the first Alien film than most of the sequels did. James Stokoe wrote and drew it alone, which shows: every pipe, rivet and frosted window of the space station Sphacteria is rendered in obsessive detail, so the station itself feels like a character…0
  9. 9Godzilla: The Half-Century War (2012)Godzilla: The Half-Century War (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012A Godzilla story with a human lead worth caring about. James Stokoe, writing and drawing again, follows Lieutenant Ota Murakami, a young Japanese tank officer, from Godzilla's first Tokyo landfall in 1954 through five decades of encounters, so each issue is a different era and a different brawl,…0
  10. 10Conan the Barbarian (1970)Conan the Barbarian (1970)Published Jan 1, 1970Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith's early issues, from 1970 Proof that a licensed comic can outclass the house characters around it. Marvel licensed Robert E. Howard's barbarian in 1970, and Roy Thomas scripted the first 115 issues, adapting many of Howard's own stories. Most of the first 24…0