Review: Top 10: Season Two by Zander Cannon, Gene Ha, et al.

After reading all the collected editions of Top 10, the Alan Moore-created superhero cop drama, I sought out the one uncollected Top 10 story, Season Two, which reunites the original Top 10 artistic team of Zander Cannon and Gene Ha, with Cannon taking over for Alan Moore as writer. (I also tracked down the other uncollected Top 10 stories, in America's Best Comics 64 Page Giant #1 and the confusingly titled ABC A-Z: Top 10 and Teams #1, but neither of those was interesting enough to write about.)

Before reading it, I was a little surprised by the title "Season Two," which seemed like a disavowal of the Top 10 follow-up by Paul Di Fillipo and Jerry Ordway, Beyond the Farthest Precinct, as if they were saying the Alan Moore run was "season one" and now there was this, nothing else. However, once I started reading it, I realized that the title is actual a signal of its chronological placement-- Beyond the Farthest Precinct took place five years after the original run, whereas this starts right after it, simultaneous to the events chronicled in Smax. (Which is somewhat a weak point, because Toybox was very much the heart of Top 10, and Jeff Smax one of its funner characters, and they're both off in a fantasy world.)

Season Two seems promising at first. Cannon is a better writer of these characters than Ordway was, weaving together some fun superhero concepts into a crime framework; I really liked the idea of a dealer who's not selling kids drug, but magic words along the lines of "Shazam!" This subplot was complete with a burnt out magic user trying to go straight by informing the cops, but he keeps backsliding. Another character's husband has been assuming a new superhero identity on the side-- she cries that he's not the man she married, and ends up enrolling him in a seminar to get in touch with his real alter ego. Meanwhile, a new commissioner has been installed, and he's not very happy with what he sees at Top 10. Plus he's making them all wear uniforms!

Also: Girl One, the bio-engineered cop who died in the original run, is replaced by Girl Two. I was curious where this was going to go, because in Beyond the Farthest Precinct, a new "Girl 54" was introduced, which everyone was weirdly blasé about, one of the major defects of that series. Was Cannon overwriting that, or laying the groundwork to explain it better? It's one of many things we'll never know because the story of Top 10 isn't complete, it just suddenly stops at the end of issue #4.

It is followed by Season Two Special #1, which I had thought would wrap everything up (even if abruptly), but was actually a standalone done-in-one Top 10 story tying into the events of Season Two. Confusingly, Girl Two is no longer a cop in it, but a public defender, and she's dating one of the members of the force, Pete, something the main series was moving towards. The issue begins with a "TWO WEEKS FROM NOW" caption that must refer to the special's placement with respect to the rest of Season Two; I guess these changes were where Cannon's story was headed. This story's okay-- I do like Girl Two, though the conspiracy she unravels was a bit abstruse for me.

It's all a bit disappointing. I mean, I'm sure there were good sales-related reasons for the cancellation, but to not even get through a whole limited series is kind of pathetic. Moore's original Top 10 seemed like the kind of thing that could run and run; for it to just get twelve issues, a prequel, a disappointing sequel, and a cancelled sequel is sad. Still, it was nice while it lasted. Gene Ha is always good value for money as an artist, and Daxiong shows promise with his art on the special, too. Top 10 had a great, inventive premise-- colliding the anarchic genre of the superhero with the regimented one of the police procedural-- and it's a shame that more couldn't have been done with it. If you really liked Top 10, this is worth seeking out, but be forewarned that you'll get exactly no closure on everything set up within it.

Top 10: Season Two originally appeared in Top 10: Season Two #1-4 (Dec. 2008–Mar. 2009) and Top 10: Season Two Special #1 (May 2009). The story was scripted and laid out by Zander Cannon with Kevin Cannon; penciled and inked by Gene Ha (#1-4) and Daxiong (Special #1); colored by Alex Sinclair (#1-4) and Tony Avina (#3); lettered by Todd Klein (#1-4) and Rob Leigh (Special #1); and edited by Scott Dunbier (#1-4), Scott Peterson (#1-4/Special #1), and Kristy Quinn (Special #1).