Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

[Vigil]

Hi All,

In the past I've posted all kinds of polls on all kinds of things, all comics related. we've covered the best, the strongest, etc. in all of their myriad forms. This, on the other hand, isn't reallly a poll in any organized sense. What it is, is just a question. Of all the charcters you've read and enjoyed, which one is it that you thought was underutilized or underrated? Which character did you feel never got their due? And why? Just curious.


Vigil

[Enforcer84]

Bill Foster, Giant Man II. His white and blue costume is one of my favorites and he's a guy who could easily cut it in the Avengers as a fill in for Hank Pym when the latter is on one of his mental vacations...

[Vigil]

I loved Bill foster, also. I thought his original Black Goliath costume was one of the best ever in comics. For me, though, there's one character who I think has been more mailgned and mistreated and mauled than any other in comics ever....Wonder Man. For 30 years, I've watched every writer but Steve Englehart maul him, and for no readily explained reason. Here's a character who is , literally, the total package and he gets short shrift every time. I just don't get it. In his origin, he's almsot as smart as Tony Stark and when powered up, is as strong as Giant Man, hits as hard as Thor's hammer and is as good a figher and as dextrous as Cap! Say what! He rules! So why isn't he treated that way?

[Mutant for Hire]

Some characters are just born to be whipping boys. Wonder Man is one of them. Everyone craps on him because everyone else craps on him. He's the Rodney Dangerfield of the Avengers, he gets no respect.

[CrosshairCollie]

Yeah, Wondy got crapped on, except for his own book (well, the first few issues he got crapped on, but he very quickly righted himself).

For my money, though, Speedball was Da Man. His power could be SO MUCH ... if only writers would work with the power; instead, all he did was bounce around and plow into things. Then, along came Fabian Nicieza and New Warriors, where Speedy started figuring out how to use his powers, at one point punching Terrax across the East River.

[Vigil]

I never read the New Warriors but that sounds cool.

Beyond poor ol' Wondy, my other favorite charity case is none other than Mon-El. I men how can a guy so powerful get no notice. I could never understand how it was that every one fawned over Superboy and ignored Mon, who was easily as powerful. I mean here's a guy who has no true weaknesses (once cured of the lead and red sun thing) and yet he gets one punched by Darkseid and his servitors. About the only time Mon-El lived up to his potential was his last true appearance, Giffen's LOSH #4 wwhere he kills off the Time Trapper. But talk about a waste of potential. Yeesh!

[megaplayboy]

Well, Dr. Strange seems to have been rediscovered recently, but for about the last decade he's been pretty underused.
The Silver Surfer probably deserves to be back on a major team title, assuming they could work out the power balance issue.
Is Shang-Chi busing tables somewhere?

[Vigil]

The Surfer's great, too. I liked his first and second series. The last 2 i'm not crazy about. he was always at his best with the other original Defenders. Talk about a tough team. Yikes!


Speaking of power balance, just how powerful Champs wise do you think old Surfy is? I've seen write ups and they're all over the map. I'm thinking 90 STR base and probably 200 -300 active points in his powers...which are hard enough to figure out.

[megaplayboy]

The Surfer's great, too. I liked his first and second series. The last 2 i'm not crazy about. he was always at his best with the other original Defenders. Talk about a tough team. Yikes!


Speaking of power balance, just how powerful Champs wise do you think old Surfy is? I've seen write ups and they're all over the map. I'm thinking 90 STR base and probably 200 -300 active points in his powers...which are hard enough to figure out.

In combat he's probably mostly operating at 120-180 AP, and out of combat, or with extra prep time, he might be capable of twice that(i.e., he's supposed to be able to destroy a city or even a planet--and he's constructed elaborate buildings before using nothing but the power cosmic).
It's a rare occurence in the comics for him to be seriously injured--he's pretty much invulnerable to almost all conventional weapons. Plus he can dodge autofire lightspeed weapons.

[Batman]

Although technically not a comic, the Justice League animated series likes to undercut Superman a LOT, imho. Especially in the first season, the Big Blue Boy Scout is every major villian's punching bag...although a twisted, sadistic side of me doesn't mind seeing the Super-God pounded about by a bunch of galactic lowlifes...you would think that he's called Super man for a reason, would you not?

And Doomsday...ugh. The being who supposedly kills Superman ends up being lobotomized by him...er...a transdimensional parallel version of him...in the span of about five minutes.

Don't get me wrong; I love Justice League. Its just that their treatment of some people don't completely jive with mine.

[Hugh Neilson]

I recall an old com,ment on the golden age Immortal Man noting that the fact a guy with a power level equivalent to Superman getting killed every adventure leaves one with the impression that super-intelligence isn't exactly part of his powers repertoire.

On that theme, I liked the Ressurection Man concept. "kill me and I come back with different powers". A bit too easy to slide into deus ex machina, though.

[Doug McCrae]

I really liked Raven from the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans. One of my favourite characters in comics. Is she still around? She had very poorly defined powers though, even by comic book standards.

[OddHat]

I think Zatana gets less credit than she's due, or at leats she did until the early 90s when I stopped reading comics. A legacy character (her father Zatara showed up in Action Comics #1) with power equal to or greater than any JLAer, and she's mostly been "the girl". I think they downpowered her in continuity as well. Powergirl got similarly gimped, and her origin turned into an absurd mess.

Doctor Occult was a great, weird character, his power going up and down the scales and that whole "Mystic Hermaphrodite Private Eye" thing. He was the prototype for a certain type of street-supermage, but he rarely got used to anything close to his full potential.

I always liked the original Atom. He was modled on Joeseph Greenstein, one of the great stongmen. If the character had been written to be as strange and quirky as the strongman he was based on ... well, probably he still wouldn't have been a hit, but he'd have been a much more interesting background character.

[Lightray]

I really liked Raven from the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans. One of my favourite characters in comics. Is she still around? She had very poorly defined powers though, even by comic book standards.

Yes, she's in the Teen Titans. She and Cyborg are the "old" ones (although Gar is probably pretty old -- but who knows what his origin story is these days...).

Powergirl got similarly gimped, and her origin turned into an absurd mess.

...

I always liked the original Atom. He was modled on Joeseph Greenstein, one of the great stongmen. If the character had been written to be as strange and quirky as the strongman he was based on ... well, probably he still wouldn't have been a hit, but he'd have been a much more interesting background character.

Read JSA! (and now Strange Tales). No character in the JSA is underrated or underused.


I'm going to vote for Alpha Flight. The real Alpha Flight. Snowbird, Box, Shaman, Dimond Lil, etc. are an interesting group of established characters, being totally ignored in favor of the goofy new characters in the current book.

[Yogzilla]

E-Man and Nova

If you know WHO I mean, you know WHAT I mean... :-D