I hate Top Ten lists—well, at least, compiling a Top Ten list. Especially when it’s for a medium where its market is so constrictive, that the truly great works half the time start out with press runs of 30,000. Despite the slight abound, I then thought, Look at the top three—all of those could qualify as some of the best of the decade. Now let’s hope the next nine years follow suite.

1. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth: Is there a book that Gary Groth and the rest of the world can equally like? Apparently Jimmy Corrigan, because all of its non-comics-press accolades have elevated to the echelon status of Maus and From Hell. Why? Because beneath its brilliantly complex and flashy lay-outs, is a poignant, personal character study, that may very well be the first time a Fanatagraphics’ press agent was able to use the words “emotionally resonant”  for one of its titles. What makes Chris Ware’s work the milestone of the medium its been heralded as, though, is that it uses the vocabulary of the comics to create something isolated, funny, lonely and sad in a way only comics could.

2. Reinventing Comics and scottmccloud.com: Granted, Reinventing Comics was a tad more pragmatic than its idealistic predecessor Understanding Comics, but Scott McCloud’s McLuhlan-esque mind knows no bounds. Insight after insight, McCloud parades you through the semantic capabilities of not only the comics art-form, but all art, in this almost perfect non-fiction sequel. And how did he follow up the book’s idealistic preaching? By making the most prominent foray into the online comics field, “Zot! Online” at comicbookresources.com and “I Can’t Stop Thinking!” at thecomicreader.com.

3. Safe Area Gorazde: A brilliant work of Comic New Journalism, Gorazde never devolves into preaching or even any type of opinion. Instead, it maintains this penetrating, endless level of helpless empathy, and tears all these emotions with startling clarity and truth.

4. Preacher: It’s a rare thing for a serial to end satisfyingly. Now take a redneck-ish paean to John Wayne and John Woo that ends satisfyingly—and you've got something worth remembering. Usually most epic tales peter down to a disappointment, but Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon did nothing less than kill God to make sure Preacher had nothing but a blow-out, oh-that’s-how-it-ends ending.

5. Tomorrow Stories: Year two of Alan Moore’s sadistic, irreverent and subversive  MAD-inspired ABC title is just as inspired as the first, even despite dropping its funniest component, “Jack B. Quick.”

6. Transmetropolitan: Maybe Warren Ellis doesn’t know exactly what he’s angry about, but he and his alter-ego Spider Jerusalem know they are angry, society is in shambles, and the only thing he does know is the a healthy combination of muckraking and bitching is the only way to solve it. This year, though, as Spider was knocked against a wall, his activist antics became more enraged and venomous, and therefore, funnier.

7. David Boring: I’m not necessarily apart of the cult that worships Dan Clowes’ idiosyncrasy and ability to rip-off to the point of originality (Like a Velvet Glove Trapped in Iron = David Lynch and Ghost World = J.D. Salinger—but hey, Clowes is open about this). But David Boring’s hybrid of post-apocalyptic nightmare and b-movie melodrama has a cinematic aesthetic and storytelling style that's so clean, it’s the most accessible Clowes’ may have ever popular.

8. Daredevil: David Mack followed Kevin Smith’s run by incorporating his word-association, color-book style into a story that in many ways, topped Smith’s storytelling abilities.

9. Top Ten: Actually, all of the ABC titles did the impossible this year: they improved. Top Ten not only was a big part of that, but #8’s “The Overview” had the first bits of emotion Moore’s been able to show in a mainstream comic since 1987.

10. Shazam!: Power of Hope: Paul Dini and Alex Ross’ annual collaboration is beginning to take shape as comic’s pop version of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Decalouge: Dini takes simple themes, and sees if he can run ’em by you without making you feel stupid. Shazam! is possibly the most lacking of the three (Superman: Peace on Earth, Batman: War on Crime), but any problem is made up for with the sheer grace and realism Alex Ross paints with.