Top 10

By Alan Moore, Gene Ha, Xander Cannon & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5493-3

Let’s start the New Year with a fresh look at a much-neglected gem of mature-reader Fights ‘n’ Tights fun courtesy of the grandmaster of the sub-genre. These tales first appeared at the turn of the century under the America’s Best Comics banner – and are still available in those editions should you be so minded to seek them out – but this hefty paperback (or eBook) gathers the first dozen award-winning issues in one nifty pack, so that’s convenient, if nothing elseâ€¦

Following his usual avuncular introduction in ‘Powers of Arrest: Precinct Ten and Social Super-Vision’ Alan Moore effortlessly welds superteam dynamics to the modern world’s fascination with police procedural dramas in this series based on the premise of everyday life in a universe where Super-Nature is accepted and common place.

Neopolis is a city entirely populated by super-beings. Heroes, villains, gods, robots and monsters, the city is a vast dumping ground for copyright-confounding analogues of everything that ever appeared in a comicbook, cartoon or movie since the genre and industry began.

Such a city needs really special policing and the beat cops are based at Precinct Ten – or Top 10 to you and me. In the mid-1980s this city joined a pan-dimensional league of worlds and came under the jurisdiction of the security organisation based on â€œGrand Centralâ€. That morsel of data will play a large part in the overarching storyline, but the nature of this fascinating ensemble piece is to build a longer narrative by seeming disconnected snippets and increments of daily drudgery.

Robyn Slinger is the new rookie at Top 10 and we start on her first day as a â€œreal Policeâ€. Her dad was a respected officer, but her own talent – controlling tiny robotic toys (like General Jumbo if you’re a doddery old Beano reader like me) – doesn’t instil her with any great confidence as she is gently ushered into the routine by the affable desk-sergeant Kemlo Caesar. Nor, really, does the realisation that he’s an actual talking dog in a mecha suit.

Adapting to the banter, routine and teasing of her fellow officers is daunting, but not as much as being partnered with the surly, invulnerable blue giant Smax.

In short order, whilst going about their regular duties, which include sorting out super-powered â€œdomesticsâ€ (no, not housekeepers – spousal confrontations), crowd control at robotic murder scenes, rousting hookers and generally keeping the peace, they become embroiled in an unsolved – now potentially ongoing – serial killer case and a drug investigation that will eventually reach to the highest levels of their own organisation (‘Blind Justice’ and ‘Internal Affairs’).

By adopting the â€œday-in-the-lifeâ€ approach, Moore and Gene Ha cover a lot of character ground and fill in back-story history whilst showing us â€œThe Jobâ€. As the method is used so effectively in TV Cop shows, readers not only get the same benefits of tone, texture and information value, but the added bonus of making the super-heroic elements more â€œrealâ€ and authentic seeming: a huge advantage when your protagonists deal every day with the most outlandish concepts comics have devised in the last 80 years.

For example: When – in ‘Eight Miles High’ – a reptilian gangbanger is arrested his dad wants to bust him out, and even the cops have to think twice when a foul-mouthed, 300-foot drunken lizard comes callingâ€¦ Or how do you bust up a rave-party when all the revellers are dancing so fast they can’t be seen? Perhaps your apartment has been invaded by hyper-intelligent UltraMice? Check out ‘Great Infestations’ for a truly bizarre sit-repâ€¦

When the serial killer case finally breaks it exposes an alien monster whose real identity will bring nothing but troubleâ€¦

Before that though, the guys have to deal with the usual Seasonal problems brought on by the Yule Holidays as ‘You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry…’ leads to murder and other ‘Mythdemeanors’ in a bar frequented by the gods of Asgard and other pantheonsâ€¦

Like any good cop story, cases run in parallel, at different rates and often in opposition, and the large cast all have their own lives which are impossible to completely divorce from â€œThe Jobâ€. That’s epitomised by more â€œone-day-at-a-timeâ€ storytelling and ‘The Overview’, as a major traffic accident draws most of the day-shift’s resources.

A couple of teleporting extra-dimensional travellers have catastrophically intersected, but by the end of the clear-up it’s clear the tragedy wasn’t a simple accident. Meanwhile, influential friends are trying to quash the case against the monstrous serial killer known as Libra, and Voodoo-powered officer King Peacock is sent to Grand Central, the head office of the police forceâ€¦

‘Rules of Engagement’ finds him being given a particularly deadly form of the old run-around whilst the war between the UltraMice and the AtomCats in the apartment Duane shares with his ghastly mother has escalated to cosmic levels, in a brilliant swipe at comicbook mega-crossovers. Moreover, a long-running investigation is starting to look like a case for Internal Affairsâ€¦

‘Music for the Dead’ then sees the death of one of the key cast members as those corruption suspicions are horribly confirmed in a brutal incident that also closes the Libra killer case for good.

‘His First Day on the New Job’ introduces Joe Pi, the new (robotic) rookie experiencing some rather unsettling prejudice from his fellow officers as well as the funeral of the beloved colleague he’s replacing. The volume – in fact, the original series – concludes with ‘Court on the Street’, with an atypical clear win for the Good Guys when they go after the influential cronies of the deceased Libra Killerâ€¦

Superbly sardonic, this blend of low-key action and horror coupled with dark, ironic and occasionally surreal humour, is drawn in a super-realistic style by Gene Ha, leavened by the solid inks of Zander Cannon, and the drama is supplemented by a Top 10 Gallery (artists’ designs and commentary by Moore) of the huge cast of characters, plus a Precinct Layout and floor plans.

This cross-genre mix is immensely entertaining reading and the subtle shades of the writing are matched in full by Gene Ha’s beautiful, complex, detail-studded art, but in truth this seductive blend of police procedural drama and the whacky world of full-on superhero universes isn’t really about the narrative: its joys are to be found in the incidentals, the sidebars and the shared in-jokes.

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