Randle-El called it first: Bendis' Daredevil is outstanding. Maleev's art is in large part responsible for it; it gives the series a very indy-like quality.

Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye is a riot. The book is a lot of fun, and in many instances does things that could only be done in a comic-book. I love it.

Abnett and Lanning's Guardians of the galaxy is a flawed diamond: it was caught in the wake of too many "events" and it sort of ended before it could really say everything it had to, but while it lasted it was filled with cool ideas. And I still think that Cosmo is the coolest character crated by. Marvel in the first decade of our millenium!

The Ultimates and Ultimates 2 are amazingly good comics, even if I was fully prepared to hate them. They were the Avengers movie before there was an Avengers movie. The way Thor was handled for the greater part of the series was remarkably innovative and clever, and I regret that the ambiguity regarding his origin was settled by the end of the series. But still, it was a great run while it lasted. (And as is often the case, from that pinnacle it went straight into the crapper with the third series).

To each their own, to be sure, and the first echoes I heard of the Ultimates (and the Ultimate line in general) was clearly not to my taste either: Hank Pym being a serious spouse abuser, Nick Fury being modelled after a Hollywood actor, the team being very violent in an action-movie way rather than a comic-booky way... it all seemed to scream "this comic wants to be kewwwwwwl!" (And having read "Ultimate X-men #1 before, which I thoroughly loathed, I really didn't have high hopes). 

But it surprised me. The characters that seemed so one-dimensional at first showed unsuspected depth. The writer's political point was much more maturely presented than I thought it would be: I expected something close to an anti-American (or at least anti-republican) rant, but what I got was a pretty fair view of what the world is really like, warts and all (but with super beings in it). Tony Stark the highly eccentric, boylike genius that we all like nowadays? That's from the Ultimates, not from the real Marvel Universe (where Tony was usually much more responsible and dignified before the 2000s, and was more of a clever engineer than a party-loving Da Vinci. He did invent neat machines but no way would he have been presented as smarter than Reed Richards, as has been the case since). 

The great fun with the Ultimates, also, was that it was treated as an Avengers movie, the kind of thing that is not supposed to last for decades but where the story can actually find a resolution. So the comic gave us things that couldn't be done in the real Avengers book: real betrayals, real deaths, real political upheaval. (I mean, someone could certainly write a world war III story in the regular Avengers book, but because the status quo has to be brought back at the end we know the repercussions won't be permanent). In the Ultimates, big bad things felt more real... not because we haven't seen New York be invaded by hostile forces before, but because there was a feeling that there was no editorial need for everything to go back to normal by the end. 

And no matter how good the action is, how cruel the betrayals, how gorgeous the art, nothing can be as important as who the characters are and what they do. Ultimate Hawkeye, ripping off a page from Bullseye's book, was as badass as they come (even with his cute little glasses). Thor being either an Asgardian god (as he says) or an escaped mental patient who stole some secret technology (as his brother says) was a fascinating puzzle, especially since he kept seeing things that no one else could see. The small moments between Bruce Banner and Betty Ross; the unlikely friendship between "save the whales" Thor and capitalist mogul Tony Stark; young Cap and old Bucky; Tony and Jarvis the obnoxious butler; were all touching or amusing...especially since every card was played pretty quickly, little being saved for later.

Anyhoo. I'm not saying everybody should like this series, but it did manage to change this reader's initially bad opinion (and that's something very few franchises can claim to have done). 

That's certainly a wise attitude! I wish I'd had it in the late 80s when I kept following many bad series out of a sense of misplaced loyalty.

Punisher MAX by Garth Ennis
Secret Six by Gail Simone
Catwoman by Ed Brubaker (lessens in the last year, though)
New X-Men/All-Star Superman/Batman by Grant Morrison
Detective Comics by Greg Rucka (also a shorter one by Brubaker in #777-786)
Hawkeye by Fraction/Aja
Conan by Kurt Busiek
WildC.A.T.s by Joe Casey
Moon Knight by Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey



The best Spidey I've read in this time frame is Ennis & John McCrea's "The Thousand," from the aforementioned Tangled Web.

That series had a certain "anything can happen" vibe. I enjoyed them back then, but I'd hesitate to re-read the series and destroy the memory. 

I remember liking the art better when Kevin West took over, but his stuff was quite generic. Might have been the inker, too, as the fill-in issues by Dale Eaglesham looked little like his other work and a lot like Kevin West's.