Top Ten: The Forty-Niners By Alan Moore and Gene Ha Discussed July 2007 Buy Top Ten: The Forty-Niners from Amazon.com Buy Top Ten: The Forty-Niners from Lambda Rising

Questions

1. Did you like the book? Why or why not?
2. The Forty-Niners is a prequel to the regular Top 10 series (which was set in the present day). If you haven't read Top 10 before, do you think The Forty-Niners stands on its own well enough?
3. The world of The Forty-Niners is one that clearly had its own World War II, with admittedly different special weapons being used. Did this piece of our own history inserted into a super-powered world work for you, or should Moore have created his own war?
4. Neopolis is for all intentions a ghetto created for "science-heroes," albeit a very fancy ghetto. Do you think this is a good or a bad thing? Does your impression of Neopolis change at all knowing that in the regular Top 10 series (set in the present day) it continues to flourish?
5. Did you find Jetlad and Wulf's relationship believable, or merely there to surprise? Did the age difference between the two bother you at all?
6. One of the main themes of The Forty-Niners was prejudice, applied not only to gay characters, but also vampires, robots, and Germans. In some cases, however, the prejudice may have seemed to be well-founded. How well do you think the book tackled this theme?
7. A common complaint about super-hero comics is that women are often secondary or marginalized. How do you feel about the role of women in The Forty-Niners?
8. While initially published as a complete entity, The Forty-Niners was originally intended to be published as a four-issue mini-series. Do you think the story would have worked the same published in a serial format with a month between each chapter?
9. Would you like to read another comic book/graphic novel selection at the book club down the line?