8 Greatest Superhero Comic Runs, Ranked: Where to Start

A run is the stretch of issues a writer or artist spends on a series. Most are forgettable. A few change a character so completely that every later creator works in their shadow, and a handful change the whole medium. This is a ranking of eight of them, and I will say up front how it was made.

Three tests, scored in order of weight: did the run change its character for good; did it change what superhero comics could be; and can you still read it today as a book, from the first issue, without a guide. Sales broke ties. Each entry says which issues it covers and which collected edition to buy first, taken from the publishers' own pages.

1. Chris Claremont, Uncanny X-Men (1975–1991)

Sixteen years on one title, from a cancelled book to the best-selling comic in the world. Claremont, first with Dave Cockrum and then with John Byrne, gave the X-Men the soap-opera depth that every team book has copied since: characters who fall in love, lose, leave and come back changed. The Dark Phoenix Saga, Uncanny X-Men #129–137 by Claremont and Byrne, is still Marvel's model for a story in which the team must decide whether a friend's life is worth the universe, in the publisher's own words.

The run ends on the biggest single comic ever sold. X-Men #1, cover-dated October 1991, by Claremont and Jim Lee, holds the Guinness World Record at 8.1 million copies, across four covers that fit together plus a gatefold edition sold only through comic shops. Comichron, which keeps the sales archives, puts the total at 8,186,500 and notes it shipped across the whole of August 1991 to make the release a month-long event. Start with Marvel's Dark Phoenix reading list, which also carries the Phoenix Saga that leads into it, #101–108.

2. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Fantastic Four (1961–1970)

The run that invented Marvel. The Galactus Trilogy, Fantastic Four #48–50, cover-dated March to May 1966, introduced a being who eats planets and the herald who betrays him, in three issues of a monthly comic. Kirby's layouts became the house style that new artists learned by drawing over them, and his energy effects and photo collages are still called Kirby Krackle and still imitated.

It ranks second rather than first because Claremont's run is one continuous story and Kirby's is a long series of inventions. Both tests of change, Kirby passes outright. Start with the Galactus issues in any current collection; the Eisner judges gave his later New Gods an Eisner for best archival collection in the late 1990s, which tells you how his work is now read.

3. Alan Moore, Saga of the Swamp Thing (1984–1987)

Moore's first American work, taking over a failing horror book at issue #20 and, with The Anatomy Lesson in #21, rewriting what the monster was. Penguin Random House's own description says the series became commentary on environmental, political and social issues, and that is the change it made: superhero-adjacent comics for adults, written with literary ambition, published by DC. Book One collects #20–27, 208 pages, and is the right place to start; everything the Vertigo line later did begins here. Moore went on to win the Eisner for best writer three years running in the mid-1990s for From Hell.

4. Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986)

Four issues, February to June 1986, with inks by Klaus Janson and colour by Lynn Varley: a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement into a Gotham near collapse. It is the shortest run on this list and the one with the longest shadow on film; our ranking of the best and worst comic adaptations traces it from Tim Burton to Batman v Superman. The collected book has been in print since 1986; DC's 1996 edition runs 197 pages. It ranks below Swamp Thing because it changed Batman more than it changed comics, and below Claremont because it is a story, not a run.

5. Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, Daredevil (1979–1983)

Miller's earlier and, for some readers, better run: Daredevil #158–161 and #163–191, collected in one omnibus with What If? #28. Marvel's page lists what it introduced: Elektra, Stick, the Hand, and the reporter Ben Urich. It turned a second-string hero into crime fiction and gave the Kingpin and Bullseye their modern shapes. If you liked the Netflix series, this is its source.

6. Walt Simonson, Thor (1983–1987)

Thor #337–355, #357–369 and #371–382, plus the Balder the Brave miniseries, all by one writer-artist. Marvel's own blurb calls it the run considered by many to be the greatest on Thor ever, and lists the reasons: Beta Ray Bill, the death of Odin, Thor as a frog, the Casket of Ancient Winters. It ranks here because it is the purest example of a run that only its creator could have made.

7. Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, The New Teen Titans (1980–1985)

DC's most popular title of the early 1980s, by the publisher's own account, and the answer to Claremont's X-Men. The Judas Contract, The New Teen Titans #39–40, Tales of the Teen Titans #41–44 and Annual #3, is where Robin becomes Nightwing and a teammate betrays the team. The 192-page collection is the one to buy. It ranks below Simonson because its influence runs through the animated series and films more than through comics.

8. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, All-Star Superman (2005–2008)

Twelve issues, out of continuity, about a dying Superman doing twelve labours. It won Eisner Awards and is the one modern run on this list, because it passes the third test better than anything else here: you can hand the Absolute edition (320 pages) to someone who has never read a comic. It is last only because it changed nothing about Superman that stuck; it is a perfect summary, not a turning point. Readers who want a current starting point will find one in our guide to Marvel's Midnight imprint.

The ranking at a glance

Issue numbers and editions come from the publishers' pages listed below. Prices change; the first book named is the cheapest way into each run.

What the list leaves out, and why

No Watchmen, because it is not a run on a character. No Lee and Ditko Spider-Man, because Kirby's Fantastic Four already stands for that decade and the list wanted eight, not ten. Ed Brubaker's Captain America and Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four would be ninth and tenth. Disagree? That is what rankings are for. If the panels and gutters of these books are new to you, start with our guide to how to read a comic, then go back to #129.