Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5941
EAN: 9781563899669
ISBN: 1563899663
Label: Wildstorm
Manufacturer: Wildstorm
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 2003-06-01
Publisher: Wildstorm
Release Date: 2003-06-01
Studio: Wildstorm

Customer Rating:
Summary: I Seen Plenty--I'm Omniscient, Right?
Comment: I wouldn't know a thing about comics without the advice of my young friend Marcus Ewert the author of 10,000 DRESSES, and he steered me into reading the adventures of Toybox and the rest of the gang of TOP 10, a fictional big city precinct very much like the world of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct, only a little bit different. McBain changed reality by showing that not all the men in blue were superheroes, but now Alan Moore is changing it up again by reverting to an oldfashioned mode of bourgeois narrative in which the force is literally composed of superheroes--the twist here is that the villains are too--and the further twist is that literally everybody, every citizen of the artificial city of Neopolis.

Book One takes the traditional approach to threading the reader's eye through a complex stratification of society by presenting it all from the viewpoint of a newbie--here Toybox on the first day of her job, encountering friendly faces, antagonistic ones, reacting to weird sights, and rapidly acclimatizing herself to the strange. Here everyone on the force has superpowers, though to me it seemed unclear what her own amount to--is is that she has a box of lifelike little automata who perform difficult tasks for her? That box looks cumbersome to me, and yet she has to haul it around her wherever she goes.

The buildup, however long and sometimes confusing it can be, has a grand payoff in Book One, and I haven't laughed so loud all month as when Toybox, Smax and Jackson have to investigate the "Mythdemanor" case, at a local bar where the Norse gods hang out and at which the god of beauty, Baldur, lies slain with a magic piece of mistletoe. "Hector said you had a homicide here." "Yeah, well it's more of a deicide. Some god got whacked in a... I dunno, an ascend-by shooting I guess."

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Cop Stories for Nerds
Comment: Moore/Cannon/Ha's Top Ten series is one of my top three favorites of all time. The writing is fantastic; I cared about the characters from the beginning and when I finished the series, I wanted more (sequel Smax is awesome, though radically different in style, prequel The Forty-Niners is a masterpiece in itself though there's only one Top Ten character in it, Beyond the Farthest Precinct is an inferior work, though it was so good to revisit this world again).

What makes Top Ten such a great comic is how every issue, no matter how fantastically treated, is a human issue that most of us can relate to, whether it's Smax' despair and inability to reach out to his friends, Kemlo's forbidden (or not) love, or Duane's annoyance at his partner's racism.

Moore especially is at the top of his game with Top Ten, mixing dead-on humor, comic references that span all genres, action, and drama into what would be an insufferable mess in anyone else's hands.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: an Alan Moore smorgasbord
Comment: The top Ten is set in a slightly futuristic world where everyone is a super-hero . . . . everyone has a particular power that makes the story almost too rich . . . . but the layered story-lines can be understood, in my case by re-reading the book. The prequel to this series (The Forty-niners) is better than the series itself. I recommend this title.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Just Great Writing... Hugely Enjoyable
Comment: While Top Ten doesn't have the brilliance of 'From Hell', or the curiosity (I don't mean that in a bad way) of 'Promethea', it is just plain cracking good writing. I can understand why Moore prefers to stretch himself on other works, but he is so brilliant in 'Top Ten' - he doesn't make a step wrong. Every joke works, the stories are fantastic, but even greater is the way that Moore, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon plunge you into this engrossing and fascinating world. The characters are wonderful. In every little touch Alan Moore doesn't hold back, but gives from the heart liberally... which unfortunately is becoming a rarer thing for him these days. I can't say enough good things about it - it's easily the most fun reading experience I've ever had of any comic book ever.

At my local comics store just the other day, I purchased 'Promethea' book 5 and 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' Vol. 2... and part of me wishes I had purchased this instead! The stories are easily as fun as 'League', and certainly more emotionally gripping. I have been spoiled and read both books through twice (borrowed from the Library), and I thought I was going for something more intellectually stimulating... so I hesitated. Stupid. Get this now.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A good Read
Comment: BOOK ONE Review :

It took me a while to get into this book. For the first two chapters I was less than impressed by what seemed a genereric superhero story but from chapter 3 onwards the interesting story lines and subplots really began to grab my attention. The characters are pretty strange but Moore develops them nicely as the book goes on and this really is a satisfying read.
The artwork within the book is good although the quality of the paper could be better. There is a lot of things going on in the frames and it is worth a second read to pick out some of the funny things going on in the background.
This book is definitely recommended for Moore fans. A lighter read than "The Watchmen" but none the worse for that.

BOOK TWO Review:

I really enjoyed book one and this book contined to impress. Moore does an excellent job of developing the characters from the first book and adds a few new ones to the mix. The most enjoyable of the new characters is officer Joe PI who is a robot with a sense of humor. Joe PI integrates very nicely with the old team and generates some good story lines and one liners. The plots in book two are as good if not better than the first collection.
There are tons of things going on on every page (many of them you will miss on the first read) but the book never becomes a chore to read. Highly recommended but you must read book one first.

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