Now that we’re a few decades out from the often terrible but always fun musical landscape of the 1980s, it’s easier to get some perspective on some of the era’s biggest bands and biggest releases.

One of the Vertigo Crime original hardcovers, A Sickness in the Family sets a compellingly creepy mood. The focus is on the Usher family, who may look normal and even enviable on the surface, but cracks in the family facade offer a view at selfishness, philandering, corruption, and disappointment.

Modern music is just as guilty of setting the stage for a mega ’80s comeback as are the artists who defined the era. The synthesizer has pushed its way back to the top of the mix and so it makes—musical—sense for the instrument’s masters to give things another go.

The hook of Superman: Earth One is that although both Clark Kent’s teenage adventures in his hometown of Smallville and his early years as Superman in Metropolis have been well chronicled, the time period between those two has been left largely unexplored.

This has been a banner year for San Francisco’s Fresh and Onlys: a U.K. tour with Deerhunter, an invitation (via Matt Groening) to play All Tomorrow’s Parties, festivals in New York and Big Sur, and a rapid succession of 7” records that have been selling out as fast as labels can release them. Ending the year with Play it Strange and a November tour with Clinic puts a fine feather on their 2010 hat.

Much like their synth guru forefathers, Hot Chip write and arrange music that was meant to be remixed by people who were born to make us dance. Although they’ve released three consecutive critically acclaimed records, Hot Chip albums as beginning-to-end complete musical statements are—frankly—overrated.

This volume collects the first couple of miniseries in which the Perhapanauts appeared, originally published by Dark Horse. The characters—which include a smart and spiritual bigfoot, a psychic, and a ghost—are agents of BEDLAM, an organization dedicated to keeping the world safe from weird creatures.

Swedish-born singer Robin Miriam Carisson, better known as Robyn, has a proven track record of making effortless, forward-thinking, and sophisticated pop music. She’s never made a bad album and since her 1995 debut Robyn has consistently kept critics and listeners on the edge of their seats always wanting more.

Revolution can spring from the least likely places. As detailed in the 1995 documentary Crumb, which covers the life and times of artist Robert Crumb, sometimes it begins at home.