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Sometimes you want art house, sometimes you want popcorn.

Once thought of as a trashy and pulpy pursuit, in recent years comic books have gone through a sort of cultural rehabilitation, with more literary and mature takes on sequential art proving that it isn’t all just multi-page action sequences and rippling muscle men in tight costumes punching each other. Which is all well and good – like any art form, we believe that the humble comic book should exist in multitudes – but you don’t always feel like reading a Maus, a Persepolis, or a Robert Crumb book. Sometimes you want multi-page action sequences and rippling muscle men in tight costumes punching each other.

There are occasions when you wanna see an intelligent art house flick, and others when you wanna pick up a tub of popcorn and leave your brain at the door. Right here, right now? We’re celebrating the latter. The film comparison only goes so far, obviously, because you can do a lot more on a page than you can in a movie. You aren’t hampered by budget, the laws of physics or (for the most part) good taste, and stories can unfold over the course of months or even years rather than a scant ninety minutes. Or four hours. Peter Jackson, you have a lot to answer for with the lengths of blockbusters these days.

All of which means that you can end up with some truly unparalleled examples of badassery in graphic novel form. With a good eighty or so years of material at this point, we’re certainly not short on instances of awesomeness to pick from. But pick we have, managing to whittle our choices down to single panels depicting pure, perfect moments of characters being total badasses. They don’t all necessary involve extreme violence, but we’d be lying if we said there was none – so maybe don’t peruse this one at work. Unless you have the best boss ever, in which case, please forward this link onto them. You can thank us for the promotion later.

Saga is a fairly recent addition to the comic book canon, but we’re confident enough that it’ll leave enough of a lasting impression for it to make an appearance on this list of the most badass moments in the medium’s history. The main problem is picking out a single panel from this burgeoning series, since writer Brian K Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples are so adept at creating some totally awesome action sequences.

Which is pretty impressive considering the series is mainly about a pair of star-crossed lovers trying to raise a baby. In space, though! We’re gonna have to go for this part from the first volume, which, really, is just too deliciously gory not to include. One of Saga’s many subplots involves one of the freelance mercenaries that have been hired to hunt down the aforementioned lovers.

After realising that an ex-flame of his own – a giant spider lady – is also on the case, The Will adjourns to a planet that offers every kind of sex money can buy…including with a child. When offered the services of a tween The Will does what even the most morally compromised bounty hunter would, and crushes her pimp’s head with his bare hands. Cosmic Taxi Driver, anyone?

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This article was first posted on July 28, 2014

Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He\'s heard all of the Doctor Who jokes, but not any about Randall and Hopkirk.