Night Shift

Comics

The first five are canon material from the Top 10 universe, and the next four are theme-related materials that can serve as inspiration.

• "Top Ten", by Alan Moore and Gene Ha, published by America's Best Comics.  The origin, the fountain, the source...
• "Deadfellas", a short story by Alan Moore and Zander Cannon, published in America's Best Comics Annual #1.
• "Smax the Barbarian", mini-series by Alan Moore and Zander Canon, published by America's Best Comics.  Good writing, bad art (sorry, but Zander Canon on his own just doesn't do it for me.)
• "The Forty-Niners", graphic novel by Alan Moore and Gene Ha, published by America's Best Comics.  Great art, great writing, and turned out to fit extremely well with our campaign!
• "ABC A-Z #1: Top 10 & Teams", written by Peter Hogan with art by Zander Cannon and Gene Ha.
• "Astro City", by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross.  A beautiful and wonderfully well written depiction of life alongside superheroes.
• "Powers", by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, published by Image Comics.  More noir than Top Ten, but using many similar themes.
• "Fell", by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith, published by Image Comics.  No supers, but a great police procedural.
• "Marshall Law", by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, published by Titan Books.  I try to be less lethal, though.
• NOT recommended: "Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct", mini-series by Paul DiFilipo and Jerry Ordway, published by America's Best Comics.  It's godawful.

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Books

There are many useful books out there, encyclopediae of comic books and so forth.  Nevertheless, the first one I want to recommend has nothing to do with superheroes or comics.

• The Works: Anatomy of a City, written by Kate Ascher and illustrated by Alexander Isley Studios, published by Penguin Press, is a great resource for city-building.

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Television

Although I don't actually have a television, I can rent DVDs and play them on my computer, so I've been catching up on the few shows I'm interested in...

• NYPD Blue
• Hill Street Blues
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
• 24

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Movies

• Training Day

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Role-Playing Games

Other RPGs or sourcebooks that mix well with this campaign.

• XCrawl  – Dungeon crawling as an "Extreme Sporting" event.  The North American Empire (NAE) is pretty good inspiration for Nova Roma.  From Pandahead Productions.
• Underground, from Mayfair Games, Inc.  A great classic.
• The Crime Scene sourcebooks – particularly Crime Scene: Forensics, Crime Scene: Police Procedure, and Crime Scene: Supernatural.  From Hogshead Publishing.
• Several M&M or superlink sourcebooks such as Freedom City and Lockdown make great resources to run Top 10.

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