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6. Four-Color Comics (1939-1962) This was to my mind the most mainstream of all mainstream North American comic books, from a time when comic books were very, very mainstream. Four-Color makes the list for the way it was set up to launch any number of titles, its success in doing so (including several Disney features) and its prodigious output. It is one hundred and eighty degrees removed from comic books as we understand and value them now: it published up to twice a week, it shifted features, it favored no particular kind of comic over another, and it went right after popular tastes like so many fast zombies loping behind a bus full of schoolchildren. It’s the only comic book where looking at the covers feels like flipping through the channels on your grandmother’s Philco, although its basic operation was so relatively inscrutable that a line in a wikipedia entry suggests that a crucial task of 1960s super-fans Don and Maggie Thompson was simply figuring out who did what in Four-Color and when, reverse-engineering a comic book TV guide. If it were around today I’m imagining a May 2009 where we might see comics on that singing woman, Somali Pirates, The Mentalist and LeBron James. But it isn’t around today. It couldn’t be. (via Tom Spurgeon’s fascinating piece on his picks for “the top ten all-time best long-running comics series” on The Comics Reporter)

6. Four-Color Comics (1939-1962)

This was to my mind the most mainstream of all mainstream North American comic books, from a time when comic books were very, very mainstream. Four-Color makes the list for the way it was set up to launch any number of titles, its success in doing so (including several Disney features) and its prodigious output. It is one hundred and eighty degrees removed from comic books as we understand and value them now: it published up to twice a week, it shifted features, it favored no particular kind of comic over another, and it went right after popular tastes like so many fast zombies loping behind a bus full of schoolchildren. It’s the only comic book where looking at the covers feels like flipping through the channels on your grandmother’s Philco, although its basic operation was so relatively inscrutable that a line in a wikipedia entry suggests that a crucial task of 1960s super-fans Don and Maggie Thompson was simply figuring out who did what in Four-Color and when, reverse-engineering a comic book TV guide. If it were around today I’m imagining a May 2009 where we might see comics on that singing woman, Somali Pirates, The Mentalist and LeBron James. But it isn’t around today. It couldn’t be. (via Tom Spurgeon’s fascinating piece on his picks for “the top ten all-time best long-running comics series” on The Comics Reporter)