Stunning visual design (though newsprint still looks pretty ugly), HUGE ideas, a meticulously sculpted alternate reality and a beautifully observed cast of characters. Moore is the Orwell of comics.

Powerful retelling of an idividual's life during the holocaust. Artwork is deceptively crude but incredibly expressive.

Sandman Series: Lots of cool ideas and it's fair share of stunning, revelatory moments but rarely manages complete, satisying, long-form storylines. Still generally amazing though.

Perhaps not as inventive as DKR but more enjoyable and better written. Filled with action-movie bombast, fantastic dialogue and the slickest illustration I've yet seen.

The first ever graphic novel. Beautiful artwork and solid writing filled with pathos and wisdom. Somehow fails to engage though.

A touching, meticulous retrospective of the marvel canon written from the perspective of ordinary citizens who have to suffer through the turmoil that heroes carelessly cause. Ross' artwork is superb.

A few brief fairy-tale styled stories about the residents of a jewish neighbourhood in new york. Insubstantial but moving, mature and nicely illustrated.

Moore drops his usual idea driven stories for an exercise in postmodern genre re-imaginings. All very impressive but Moore's own ideas are much more compelling. Excellent artwork.

Millar deserves a slap for dialogue and characterisation but an award for the most ambitious ideas outside of Gaiman/Moore etc. Artwork is good though a little bland.

Ware's ambition and attention to detail are impressive, but don't let that cloud your judgement. Badly structured and deeply cynical.

Trippy and imaginative premise which really shows in the artwork but the story and characters are completely insubstantial.

Red Son had a better ideas to action ratio. This largely ends up as a series of action sequences that are reminiscent of (though not as good as) frank miller. Artwork is fine but bland.