Hickman makes everything pretty interesting to me. I've been working my way through his Avengers run and it's great stuff, even when he's treading on familiar ground.
House of X/Powers of X is another classic.
What're your favorite runs, DeacHead? I feel like this thread has kinda turned into MCU/DCEU, but I'd welcome more discussion of the actual comics!
Favorite lists and rankings are tough for me in general. When listing N items I usually feel torn about leaving off whatever is (N+1)th. That said, here's an UNORDERED list...
Two from Grant Morrison:
Animal Man
Doom Patrol
Both were mind blowing to me at the time, deconstructing superhero tropes before that became an overused superhero trope of its own.
Sandman - the whole thing. If I had to get more granular I'd go with "Seasons of Mist". I'm anxiously awaiting the announcement of the release date for the Netflix show. I'm so so happy this was made a Netflix series and not a movie with Joseph Gordon Levitt like the rumor mill buzzed about a few years ago.
Justice League America and International - the Giffen/Dematteis years (when it was wacky in late 80s-early 90s). These not only made me laugh but were genuinely good superhero stories.
Watchmen - a cliched choice, like saying The Rolling Stones is your favorite band but it is what it is.
Hate - Peter Bagge. This series' dark humor matched my own sensibilities probably more than any comic I've read.
Maus - would I have included this a week ago? Maybe not, it may have been one of those (N+1)th comics that I hated to leave off but it's really that good.
Captain Marvel - the Jim Starlin era. These were the comics that reeled me in at a very impressionable age. This showed that comics could be something more than Spider-Man and the Lizard punching each other until someone couldn't punch any more (not a knock on Spidey punching folks, those are great too). Not too long ago I found out Starlin was tripping on acid when he did this series and that explains a lot of how far out it was.
Deconstructing my own list now that I see it typed out it's clearly motivated by time and place. Everything except for Captain Marvel is from my early 20s. It'd be interesting to see how all of these hold up now. If the Morrison series + Watchmen was so mind blowing because of deconstructing superhero tropes I'm certain that would be less impactful today after seeing it done dozens of other times since then.
There's a dearth of Marvel above but their comics occupy about 2/3 of the space in my long boxes. There's a lot of John Byrne that almost made the cut (X-Men and FF)
How 'bout you Strick? Or anyone else that wants to play along. My vow is to read a series from anyone that suggests one if I haven't read it before.