Posted in: Comics, Indie Comics | Tagged: angel, army of darkness, buffy, doctor who, licensed comics, star trek

Looking Back: The Top Five Licensed Comics of the 2000s

Licensed media tie-in comics are some of the most overlooked stories in the industry. They're seen as cash-ins by comics purists and often, sometimes correctly, criticized for being unable to pave new ground while the shows they're adding to are still on the air. However, there are some true standout licensed comics that deserve their shine, as discussed in our recent In Defense of Licensed Comics and Novels series. Now, it's time to look back on an era of comics where media tie-ins were some publisher's biggest hits and give our take on which were the best-licensed comics of that sweet, sweet era… the 2000s.

5. Army of Darkness

Before Steve Niles rebooted the comics, before Cullen Bull and Larry Watts took Ash to space, before Ash vs. the Evil Dead gave the franchise new life, Dynamite ran their Army of Darkness license with the same zany energy as the movie itself had. Anything could happen, no matter how epic and no matter how grounded, including a crossover with Wildstorm's Freddy vs. Jason. A lot of this "do anything" energy continued into the 2010s when Ash would cross over with other properties, notably Tim Seeley's Hack/Slash, but the 2000s marked a time when Army of Darkness fans had lost hope for seeing more on-screen Ash but got their fix from comics.

4. Doctor Who

IDW's Doctor Who may have soared in the 2010s with the Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who — Assimilation² crossover and the huge, sprawling 50th-anniversary series Prisoners of Time, but the seeds for what the series would become were planted in the 2000s. IDW appealed to fans of the new and old by releasing new content as well as a reprint series, helping to foster the comics-reading Doctor Who fanbase, which still actively reads Titan's series now.

3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Joss Whedon changed the game when he, as a major television creator, teamed up with Dark Horse to run an entire eighth season of Buffy through their company. It was unprecedented and led to a run that included collaborations with major comics writers such as Brian K. Vaughan and Brad Meltzer. The series would continue for multiple shorter seasons, but it was the messy, epic, and ambitious Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight that changed the idea of what a licensed comic could be. Joss came on board and essentially treated his property like a creator-owned comic, making big changes and taking the series in a bold new direction that left fans on the edge of their seat every month. Some loved it, some hated it, but it inarguably created a shift in the perception of licensed comics.

2. Star Trek

IDW earns another entry for their Star Trek comics, written in large part by Scott and David Tipton, which before the launch of the new movie series and this modern round of shows, explored the characters of the various Trek titles by creating comics that felt exactly like episodes of the show. From the structure to the characterization, there were no bells and whistles added to make this sell to comics fans who didn't care about Trek. Star Trek at IDW was tailor-made for Trek fans, and expertly so, expertly capturing the essence of the show and its iconic character while also creating new and compelling stories.

1. Angel

IDW earns another entry on this list for their various Angel series. They had some winners with John Byrne's Blood and Trenches and various one-shots, and some major losses with novelist Kelly Armstrong's poorly conceived but short-lived run on the title… but Angel takes the number one spot because of the landmark, 17-issue series Angel: After the Fall. Screenwriter Brian Lynch and artist Franco Urru did the impossible by taking Angel's perfect series finale and continuing it with an epic, post-apocalyptic story that sent the city of Los Angeles, in its entirety, to Hell. Incredibly, the energy that the TV show created in its finale, which still makes Best Of lists today, continued in Lynch's. The cherry on top of IDW's Angel franchise is the spinoffs, notably Spike: Asylum and Illyria: Haunted, that allowed true post-TV show character development.

Honorable Mentions: This is opinion-based, but roses must be given to Dark Horse's Star Wars, Devil Due's GI Joe, Zenescope's Se7en, Dark Horse's Serenity, and IDW's Ghostbusters, the latter of which started in the 2000s but took off in the early 2010s.

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