Detective Comics (Barr/Davis/McFarlane)- In 1986, after the Legends miniseries that spawned books like JLI and Suicide Squad, the Bat-books received an overhaul. Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis took over Detective Comics and created a short but classic run that climaxed with the "Batman: Year Two" storyline, which was partially illustrated by Todd McFarlane. Barr and Davis later reunited for a followup graphic novel entitled Full Circle, a sequel to Year Two. Only a year's worth of stories, but what a year it was.



JLA (Morrison and Porter)- In 1997, sales on the Justice League books had dwindled, and DC editorial decided to scrap them all and start fresh. The resulting book returned the original seven members (or their successors) to the forefront, with Grant Morrison writing high-concept stories that were full of world-threatening action. Young artist Howard Porter brought a powerful and unique vision of the prime heroes of the DCU to the book, and this combo equaled staggering sales and critical success for over three years.

Hm. On Detective, the stories were only OK, but the art was fantastic... on JLA the Stories were fantastic, but the art was yucky. The fantastics cancel each other out so I am left with OK vs yucky... so Detective gets my vote.

Porter's art drags down JLA. Mike W. Barr wrote a mean Batman, and the art was terrific. I'll go with Bats again.

I go JLA.

Jeff is correct.

I'll take story over art any day. The Prometheus story and the Tomorrow Woman story alone put JLA on top for me.

I usually take art over story, but Morrison's JLA was just too strong and I think Porter gets a bad rap anyway. It ain't like the guy's Liefeld or anything.

I voted JLA. It's got plenty of Morrison's usual clusterfricky messiness but on that book it worked. And while Porter was never really a favorite, I thought he was okay.

I'm going JLA.

It's official. My vote is guaranteed to sink a book.

Detective was awesome. JLA was ok.

Morrison's JLA run had a lot of great moments, but it also has some flaws, imo.

I've never read the Barr/Davis DETECTIVE run. Based on the talent involved, I suspect that it deserves to win. Since I haven't read it, though, I'm not going to vote.

The fact that a mostly forgotten Batman run is beating the book that put the JLA back on the map shows you we're voting in the Bizarro world.

Fact.

Not at all. It only shows that having less than 20 people voting can lead to unexpected results. It's just not a statistically significant sample.

Well, apparently, enough people remember that Batman run, because it's winning.

Fact.

I know, I'm just playing around.

Still, that Barr run hasn't even been collected yet, except for Batman Year Two-- which I love, actually. I bought many other issues of that run (well, a few at least) but have yet to read 'em.

That Alan Davis, man... yes.

Wow...two runs of Detective Comics have knocked off Morisson's JLA and Gaiman's Sandman. Who'd have thunk it?