Since the trend around the comics blogosphere is to go with Top 10 lists, I’m doubling the usual Friday Five to offer up my top 10 Marvel Comics series of the year. Keep in mind as you read this that I didn’t read everything they put out, only about 60%, but I read them a lot more than anyone else, so I figured keeping it to only Marvel would be more fair than saying Top 10 Comics of the Year and then having them mostly be Marvel since that’s what I read. So with that, here’s what I liked this year:

10. Avengers Academy: One of the few “young” teams that Marvel has brought out in years that is interesting and the dynamics of the team keep changing, so it’s fun.

9. New Mutants: I was always a big fan of the original series and its good to see them back with a new batch of quirky stories.

8. X-Men Vol. 3: I liked the X-Men vs. vampires stuff and this series had the best of the bunch.

7. Taskmaster: This series, while mostly fun and funny, rewrote Taskmaster’s history to make him much more interesting and compelling.

6. Secret Warriors: The only Marvel series where the art stuns me every issue, add to that this is the best Nick Fury writing in years.

5. Uncanny X-Force: Not sure why they ended the old X-Force series and renamed it with the Uncanny name, but it has great art and a great concept that has been well executed.

4. Thunderbolts: The best group of characters and best dialog and interaction of anything in Marvel not written by Brian Michael Bendis.

3. Avengers: John Romita Jr. art is enough to make this high on my list, but a return to classic Avengers-style stories with Kang and other great characters makes this a winner.

2. New Avengers: This one gets a slight nod because Bendis has a particular knack for writing this group of characters better than the other group, particularly Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Dr. Strange. I don’t know if he just likes these characters better or he just gets them better, either way, I like what he does with them a whole lot.

1. The Thanos Imperative: This one is truly flawless for big epic event comics. It has a great cast that has a great diversity. It has a huge menace and amazing action sequences. It has great writing, dialog and art. And it has enough twists and turns to keep anyone interested, even if you don’t like cosmic stuff and don’t have a background with the characters. That would be me. I always hated Marvel’s cosmic stuff, but the recent work on these series, including this one most of all, has made me a believer.