Comic Info
Comic Name: Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct
Publisher: America’s Best Comics
Writer: Paul Di Filippo
Artist: Jerry Ordway
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2006
Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct #2
Reprints Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct #1-5 (October 2005-February 2006). The 10th Precinct is rocked to its core when Traynor finds himself fired and a new hardline chief is put in charge of the department. With an entity called the Hell Ditch Pilgrim seemingly infiltrating Neopolis, the public is demanding answers and the officers are in a race to get them.
Written by Paul Di Filippo, Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct is an America’s Best Comics limited series published under Wildstorm. Following Smax, the series features art by Jerry Ordway.
Top 10 was my favorite series of the America’s Best Comics. It took the best aspects of Powers and combined it with NYPD Blues and all the problems of police officers. When America’s Best Comics kind of shuttered and Alan Moore left the project, Top 10 was the series I was most sad about losing…but at least this volume feels like a mini-wrap-up.
The series still has edge, but it feels like it has lost some of the “dirty factor” that Alan Moore brought to it. Alan Moore never shied away from pushing the boundaries of comic books and what could be told in them, and this feels below his level of push and grit. The story isn’t as big as the stories presented in the first run of Top 10 and I just wanted a bit more from it (or a longer series).
Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct #4
Part of the joy of Top 10 is the art. It isn’t because the characters are amazingly designed (they are good), but it is the fun of tearing apart each page to see what references you can find on it. Be it an appearance by Machine Man (called Rikby-2001), the Scooby-Doo gang, Dick Tracy, and Tintin, the series dives deep into cartoon and comic book history for its background references. It is the type of series that is primarily enjoyed by a well-read comic book or pop culture fan (I mean, Joe is turned into a robot from Silent Running and receives drugs from Tik-Tok of the Oz books…that’s funny).
Top 10 is a book that I hope will still pop up on occasion when people look at fun and thought out comic books. It isn’t top tier Alan Moore and this isn’t a top tier aping of Alan Moore…but it is still in the spirit of Alan Moore. The story is left with a bit of a cliffhanger in the questions of what some of the character’s futures hold, and I wish that there had been a direct sequel. Top 10 did return in a 2008 mini-series Top 10: Season 2.
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