Comics and Books (you know, the kind without pictures)

Again, I'd like to point out that these are my favorites. Not necessarily what I consider the best, but what I enjoy the most.

Continuing from yesterday:

Top 5

Comic Runs (American)
1) Ostrander and Yale on Suicide Squad and Manhunter- A 90's comic before they were everywhere, Ostrander and Yale dealt with difficult questions about how supervillains should actually pay their debt to society, long before anyone else thought to look at the system. Manhunter took it a step further, showing a villain who had honestly rehabilitated and showing what his life was like.
2) Dark Horse Conan - Busiek does an amazing job of not only putting Howard's works into some semblence of order, but also manages to blend in his original stories with the Howard adaptations so seamlessly that you can't really tell which is which without knowing beforehand.
3) Claremont and Davis on Excalibur - A really fun vibe between the two, which was the X men comic that wasn't really much like an X Men comic, dealing more with Captain Britain and his plot points than the ones that were going on in the other X Men comics. Hilarious and touching with all of the angsty bits that Claremont loved to throw in.
4) DC's Forgotten Realms and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comics - Weird and punctuated with a number of silly things that can only happen in a comic based on the Dungeons and Dragons game, but I loved the way the two series weaved back and forth between each other, and through the novels TSR was publishing at the time.
5) Bendis' and Bagley's Ultimate Spider Man - Yes, it's a huge run. But it is punctuated with some of the most real dialogue in any comic book, ever. Yes, that means that sometimes they repeat things back and forth to each other. Every time that I think this team is starting to lose a little of their magic, they bring another story that is full of great bits.

Manga series
1) Negima! - It started off as a clone of Love Hina (which, for me, wasn't necessarily a bad thing), and has morphed into a completely different story about a boy's search for his father and what it means to be an adult. Always funny and cute, often touching or sad, if it can just manage to avoid the pitfall of shoe-horning Negi and Asuna into a romantic relationship, I will enjoy it far more than just about anything I've ever read.
2) School Rumble - Funny and absurd all at the same time. You might be noticing that I have kind of a love/love relationship with Kodansha, you would be correct. Other series that I love include Tsubasa Chronicles, XXXholic, and Suzuka. Shonen magazine is where it's at!
3) Love Hina - Already mentioned, but worth repeating, the one piece of entertainment that has transformed my ideas about what I enjoy more than anything else. I walked in fully prepared to hate it with preconceived notions about how bad harem series were, how bad most manga was, and how little I enjoyed comedy and romance. A few short years later and I now find harem series to be the funniest thing on the planet.
4) Kare Kano - A relaxed slow-paced story about the kind of person we all can identify with. Everyone has put on a public face to deal with whomever and dealt with when that public face starts to take over your life. I dread the last english volumes of this series, as it was the series that showed me that just because something is marketed for females, it doesn't mean that I can't enjoy it as well.
5) Ai Yori Aoshi/Tsubasa Chronicles/Fullmetal Alchemist (tie) - It's hard for me to pick one at this spot, but all three of these series manage to reserve fairly high spots in my reading stack whenever a new volume comes out.

Novels
1) The Wheel of Time series - Robert Jordan's maxi-series fills up pretty much an entire shelf. And I've still read them all at least three times, some of the earlier ones I've read more than a dozen times.
2) The Amber series - Roger Zelazny's foray into a series of novels comes split into two pieces, one five piece series about Corwin and his attempt to be king of the immortal city of Amber, and one about his son, Merlin, trying to find out about his father. This was the first book series that I read to pieces, literally. I had to replace them with the new omnibus edition because sections would fall out of my original copies.
3) The works of HP Lovecraft - My all time favorite horror writer. He manages the difficult feat of making everything seem connected and together (he wrote short stories) without making it all feel as if he has it written down in notes somewhere. It just seems conversational and behind the scenes you can piece together things that tie into other works.
4) The Bourne trilogy - I can respect that a lot of people enjoy Tom Clancy, but his writing has never done much for me. Generally real world thrillers aren't my thing, but these three stories about a man suffering from memory loss who tries to discover who he really is are definitely my favorites in the genre. Ludlum manages to capture the desparation of not knowing who you are and of being unable to reconcile all the pieces of your past.
5) A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin's fantasy epic is gut wrenching. Every time I think I've established who precisely the hero is, someone betrays them in gut wrenching fashion. I don't think any book has ever made me cry as much as the scene when Robb is betrayed and killed.