To take a page from the posts of Fantastic Fan Girls, I am finishing off my series this month on favorites–though next week I may do something crazy–I want to discuss my favorite ongoing comic book series.

Before I reveal the great mystery that is my favorite, I really have to say this was a toughie. I think what I gauge my choice on is obvious: writing style, ability to keep interest, comedic effect (for me, this is always a plus), and art styling. In this case, it’s a series I’ve been reading since issue #1, and wouldn’t you guess it, it’s not even a Marvel title.

For me, my favorite ongoing series is: Invincible.

**spoilers of Invincible #1-55 will most likely be abound**

I’m not gooing to lie, I got into the Invincible game about 4 years into it. But let me give you my tale as to how I came onto this series completely. I was a baby in comics and just starting with my first Marvel trades of Uncanny X-Men at Barnes and Noble when I happened to glance over and see a few trade for The Walking Dead. There were zombies on the cover and I was completely overwhelmed at how amazing the comic looked that I bought volume 1 and went from there. Back in those days (November of ’05) Image was throwing mini-pamphlets into their Walking Dead trades to promote Robert Kirkman’s other works, specifically Battle Pope and Invincible. Intrigued by how amazing The Walking Dead was, within a month or so I was on Amazon.com trying to get as many comics of Invincible I could, assuming they were going to be just as incredible as The Walking Dead. All on writer. I took my leap of faith and I couldn’t be happier to have done so.

So here I am, almost 3 years later and I’m still buying Invincible comics. Mind you, up until issue #47, I was buying trades of Invincible (I own 2 monster hardcovers that hold volumes 1-4, then 5-9 in single trades), but now I buy it monthly…

Now that you have my little history with this series, let’s get down to things: Invincible is my favorite ongoing series.

From the mind of the what I call genius Robert Kirkman, we are given the character Invincible. Your typical teenager who’s dad happens to be the mightiest hero on planet Earth… Oh and he happens to be a 100% out-of-this-world alien. Of course, Mark Grayson–aka Invincible–gets the same powers as his dad being half Viltrumite–the name of Mark’s dad’s people.

So the story goes, bad guys need to be defeated by good guys and Mark becomes Invincible to help his dad do just that. But there are quite a few other good guys out there and we do get to meet them all. Characters like Robot, Allen (another alien), and Atom Eve all make their way into the story and boy does it all get good. Bad guys like Angstrom Levy, the Mauler Twins, and tons of others add onto the plot of Invincible making it absolutely fantastic.

What sells this comic so much, is Kirkman’s way of sub-plotting the fuck out of the story. His massive amounts of “hydra-fying” the story — you know cut off one head, two more grow in its place — won’t allow you to stop reading. After the first six issues so much happens you just have to find a copy of issue seven just to keep your sanity.

Story-wise, as I said, Kirkman really sets the standard for what a story should be. Not to say that this is actually the case, but his constant opening of doors in the story seems to be rubbing off on the Marvel stock–particularly the Amazing Spider-Man crew–as of late and I honestly have no problem with that. Kirkman’s ability to develop a story is fucking uncanny. It feels as if he spends countless hours developing story lines and character plot lines that all end up coming together and imploding your brain leaving you in a brain-dead coma… but only for a moment. Kirkman is most definitely one of the best writers of this decade and most likely of the next decade as well. Invincible is great because of this man’s mind-power and love for this character and series.

Character-wise, you can see aspects of Superman and Spider-Man in Invincible, but as a whole Invincible is a comic that has created characters that will/should be definitive for future generations of comic book readers. Robert Kirkman is a madman with his characters at times and you really have to read an arc of this series to grasp exactly what I mean. The intimate and severely well thought out relationships between different characters are incomparable.

Art-wise, this comic is just gorgeous. The first seven issues were drawn by Cory Walker who’s sketchy yet very accurate art depicted the entire comic in a very minimalistic way, which totally worked for the comic. Following Cory Walker’s small run, Ryan Ottley has taken over as penciller and he has been doing a fantastic job. His unbelieveable talent at drawing this comic makes it so visually appealing that Kirkman’s writing is rivaled as half of the story is told just by this art styling and coloring (coloring by Bill Crabtree). You really need to just look at one issue of this comic to find it visually stunning.

Just to finish things off here, this series just has everything for me: unbelievably well thought out and complex plot, gorgeous art and just a well rounded, well put together story. I’ll buy this comic until the day I die (or until Robert Kirkman dies/gives up on the comic/Image comics implodes from greatness…whichever comes first haha).

So the question now is, what is your favorite ongoing series?