Top 10 #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTop 10 #1 introduced a fully realized concept that no mainstream superhero comic had attempted with such structural commitment: a police procedural set entirely within Neopolis, a city whose every resident — civilian and criminal alike — possesses superhuman abilities. By grafting the grammar of ensemble TV cop dramas onto the superhero genre, writer Alan Moore and artists Gene Ha and Zander Cannon created a template for genre hybridization that critics and fellow creators still reference. The series went on to win the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2001, with Moore simultaneously taking Best Writer for his entire ABC output including this title. Its dense visual storytelling — every panel of Neopolis streetlife packed with in-jokes referencing comics history, film, and literature — established a new standard for the idea that background art could function as its own layered narrative.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Top 10 debuted as one of the four flagship titles of Alan Moore's America's Best Comics imprint, itself a line that Moore had agreed to create for WildStorm founder Jim Lee before DC Comics acquired WildStorm in August 1998 — a sale made without Moore's prior knowledge and which complicated matters considerably, given Moore's longstanding vow never to work for DC again stemming from the Watchmen copyright disputes. Moore ultimately pressed forward to honor commitments to his collaborators, and DC agreed to maintain an editorial firewall keeping the ABC line separate from its main publishing operations. Letterer and line designer Todd Klein, whose collaboration with Moore dated back to DC's Vertigo era, worked closely with Gene Ha on Top 10's distinctive visual identity, developing lettering and design choices from Moore's suggestions and his own concepts to give the book a coherent, unified look across the entire ABC imprint.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written by Alan Moore; interior art by Gene Ha (pencils/inks) and Zander Cannon (layouts); lettered and designed by Todd Klein.
- Published September 1999 by America's Best Comics (an imprint of WildStorm/DC); part of a twelve-issue limited series running through 2001.
- Primary cover is a painted Alex Ross piece; a variant cover by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon was distributed at a ratio of one in every four copies.
- First appearances of the entire core cast of Precinct 10 ('Top 10'), including rookie officer Robyn Slinger (Toybox), Smax, Girl One, Hyperdog, Dust Devil, Jack Phantom, Shock-Headed Peter, King Peacock, Irma Geddon, and Peregrine.
- The series won the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2001; Alan Moore won Best Writer and Todd Klein won Best Lettering that same year, with Top 10 among the cited titles for both.
- The prequel graphic novel Top 10: The Forty-Niners (Moore and Gene Ha) separately won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album–New in 2006.
- The complete twelve-issue run was later collected in an Absolute Top 10 slipcased edition alongside the Smax miniseries (#1–5), a story from America's Best Comics Special #1, and the Top 10: The Forty-Niners graphic novel.
- A sequel series, Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct, was written by Paul Di Filippo with art by Jerry Ordway after Moore's departure from the ABC line.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in America's Best Comics #1 (2000), ABC America's Best Comics #1 (2000), Top 10 #1 (2000), Top 10 #1 (2000), Top 10 #1 (2000), Top 10 #1 (2001), America's Best Comics Primer #[nn] (2008), Top 10 #1 (2012), Absolute Top 10 #[nn] (2013), Top 10 #[nn] (2015), Top 10 (L'intégrale) #[nn] (2015)
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