Listed below are the top 5 must read comic book issues that I consider mind-expanding, awesome and just plain eerie.

5) NEW X-MEN #114- This issue alone not only sets up a great run for Grant Morrison, but strange enough predicts 9-11 before it happens. Cassandra Nova, a mysterious but relevant character in the X-Universe, sets off a group of Sentinels to suicide bomb Genosha, destroying the island and the inhabitants along with them. This issue was published mere months before the tragic September 11 attacks. I was in the ARMY at the time this happened as I remembered returning to that issue to find the eerie similarity which brought it to a new level for me personally.

4) DEATH RATTLE #3 - In the movie Fight Club, the character Marla is on the phone with Brad Pitt/Edward Norton’s character and asks him on the phone,” Have you ever heard of Death Rattle?” I automatically think of this comic. Death Rattle was a horror/science fiction comic book with great humor that had a short run during the underground comics boom, but failed due to low sales. The series was revamped in the 9o’s. Death Rattle #3 not only has artwork from The Crow that never made it to final publication, but it also has material such as Straight Jacket Ninja, that would of been a shoe-in for MTVs Oddities or Liquid Television show in the mid 90′s.

3) EX MACHINA: MASQUERADE  SPECIAL – This series that would be a great HBO show due to its political views and adult content. New York City Mayor Mitchell Hundred is an ex super-hero turned politician with the power to comminucate with machines. With flashbacks surrounding his career as The Great Machine and as Mayor, the main character also struggles with the mystery of the cause of his abilities as well as his strange dreams through transcendental meditation. This issue takes place on Halloween shortly after the accident that spawned his powers. Recently released from the hospital with his face wrapped in bandages, he is introduced not only to his strange dreams, but uses his powers for the first time with a revealing glance at his damaged face before having surgery to look normal before becoming The Great Machine.

2) SWAMP THING #75- Swamp Thing is one of my favorite characters of all time. So much so that I plan on getting a tattoo of him, when I can raise the money. For those who aren’t familar, Swamp Thing is a monster created after an accident resulting in the death of Dr. Alec Holland and his wife due to an explosion and a restoration formula he was working on. By accepting that he is not Alec, but a result of death and his formula, the creature learned to accept that he was and no longer will be human, but an avatar of earth’s plant life.  In this specific issue, Swamp Thing decides to ‘grow himself smarter’ by evolving his mind into a bio-computer to decide the fate of his replacement that his elders, the Parliament of Trees, have created. As his awareness expands, he realizes that man threatens his own atrocity, and how super-humans have become self appointed guardians that are full of vanity and vengeance with the pursuit of violence to solve a means to an end. Throughout the issue, he ponders good and evil and the fate of life and evolution as he finds the fate of the Sprout to be the beginning of a ‘duality’ of man and earth. In other words, he decides to have a baby with his wife, Abbey. This issue alone is not only complex and underrated but it also made me realize there is more to life than the obvious and made me feel small in comparison to the whole picture.

1) BATMAN #682- In this issue titled “The Butler Did  it”, Alfred muses on Bruce’s career as Batman and asks himself what it would of been like if Bruce never saw a Bat the night he decided to dress up to fight crime. What if it was a moth or a snake? Showing what would of been is more than enough comedy relief to close out the Grant Morrison run on Batman. I tip my hat to not only one of the best storylines out there, but one of the best issues that makes you think “What if….?”

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