The story
Founded by Alan Moore in 1999.1
America's Best Comics was a prominent Standard/Better/Nedor title during the 1940s Golden Age of Comic Books, starring such heroes as the Black Terror and the Fighting Yank. Those characters were integrated into the Moore version under the ABC imprint, where Moore wrote series including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a strip which merged several famous Victorian era fiction characters into one world; Tom Strong, an homage to pulp fiction heroes such as Tarzan and Doc Savage; Top 10, a police procedural set in a police precinct in a city where everyone has superpowers or is a costumed adventurer; and Promethea, one of Moore's most personal pieces which detailed his view on magic.
Peter Hogan and Rick Veitch had their own spin-off series, Terra Obscura and Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset respectively, and Steve Moore (no relation) co-wrote Tom Strong's Terrific Tales with Moore.
Regular contributing artists include Kevin O'Neill, Chris Sprouse, Rick Veitch, J. H. Williams III, Gene Ha, Zander Cannon, Kevin Nowlan, Hilary Barta, Melinda Gebbie, Jim Baikie, Yanick Paquette, and Arthur Adams.
All the lettering for the ABC line was done by Todd Klein, with the exception of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which was handled by Bill Oakley. The logo of ABC is mainly based on an idea from Alex Ross and was also done by Todd Klein.
In August 1998, Jim Lee sold WildStorm to DC Comics, unaware that due to past conflicts over the Watchmen copyright in the 1980s, Moore had vowed never to work for the publisher again.
According to the interview Moore gave George Khoury in the book The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, when Lee first saw Alan Moore after the takeover, the tall figure of Moore holding his snake-headed walking stick impressed Lee so, he was sure Moore – who was then still ignorant of the sale – was going to beat him senseless. Moore was reluctant at first, but ultimately decided to accept his new situation as he had promised work to a number of his artist friends from Rob Liefeld's defunct Awesome Comics line. In the same interview, he said that it was better to go back against a principle for the greater good, than to have no principles in life at all. He also expressed interest in eventually ending the line with a little apocalypse. Deliberately and permanently ending an entire comic line was something he felt had never been done before in comics.
Moore brought an end to the ABC Universe towards the conclusion of Promethea when she ushers in the apocalypse. Moore wrote the last issue of Tom Strong and two 64-page Tomorrow Stories specials offering a final farewell to most of ABC's characters.
Before those final stories, the ABC line continued a little while longer under other writers. Tom Strong, for example, had been written entirely by guest authors since November 2003. These authors have included Peter Hogan, Geoff Johns, Mark Schultz, Steve Aylett, Brian K. Vaughan, Ed Brubaker and Michael Moorcock. A sequel to Top 10 called Beyond The Farthest Precinct has been penned by novelist Paul Di Filippo and artist Jerry Ordway and another title, written by Peter Hogan and Steve Moore, was going to explore the remaining secrets of all of the major ABC characters. This mini-series America's Best Comics: A to Z, started in September 2005 but was canceled after four issues in July 2006.
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Moore announced his semiretirement in 2003, after which ABC's output decreased considerably. An exception was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was owned by Moore and O'Neill, whose subsequent original installments were published by Top Shelf Comics.
WildStorm was shut down in 2010. Its disestablishment spelled the end of ABC; subsequently, reprints of ABC titles were published under DC's Vertigo imprint.
From Wikipedia’s article on America's Best Comics, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4