Top five by five: comics edition

My five favorite non-cape series

1. Planetary
2. Sandman
3. Fables
4. DMZ
5. Ex-Machina
   Honorable mention: Starman (there aren't a lot of capes there)

My five favorite Superman stories

1. Secret Identity
2. All-Star Superman
3. Supreme: Story of the Year
4. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow
5. Action Comics #776 

My favorite Batman stories - as an aside, I am amazed that this list was hard for me to come up with. I would've sworn that coming up with five awesome Batman stories would've been far easier than five Superman stories, but that wasn't the case. And it's not because there were so many...nope, it was harder for me to come up with five great Batman stories.

1. Dark Knight Returns
2. Hush
3. The Long Halloween
4. JLA: Tower of Babel
5. Year OneHonestly, you could throw #2-5 into a hat and pick 'em at random. They're all very good, but I would probably put every Superman story in before #2-5 on this list.

My favorite Marvel trades

1. Eternals
2. Wolverine: Enemy of the State
3. Astonishing X-Men: Unstoppable (or anything in the Whedon/Cassaday run)
4. Ultimate Spider-Man & his Amazing Friends
5. Old Man LoganHonorable mention: Hulk: The End

My favorite stand-alone graphic novels not already mentioned

1. Watchmen
2. Pride of Baghdad
3. Kingdom Come (though it's kind of been brought into continuity)
4. Superman: Red Son
5. Marvels