Favorite Superhero?

[Lord Liaden]

41 minutes ago, Pariah said:

3. Seriously, who doesn't love Spidey?

 

✋

 

But I'm also not fond of Batman, Captain America, Superman, Wolverine, or the Joker, so my heresy clearly runs deep.

[archer]

16 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

✋

 

But I'm also not fond of Batman, Captain America, Superman, Wolverine, or the Joker, so my heresy clearly runs deep.

 

Out of curiosity, do you like Vindicator, the guy/gal who wears the Canadian flag?

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Captain America

 

[Matt the Bruins]

13 hours ago, archer said:

Dr. Strange: love the character but they've screwed around with his powers and power levels so much that I don't have confidence in how he'll be treated in any particular story

 

Fortunately Dr. Strange's series has been perennially on the verge of cancellation whenever it's been published at least since the mid 70s, so if you dislike a particular team's slant  you can just wait until the current run is over and the next team to take a shot at him will like as not return most elements back to the default from the 60s. That got me through the Geoff Isherwood and Dave Quinn years, and Mark Waid's first attempt at sucking all the mystery and atmosphere out of the character.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

Out of curiosity, do you like Vindicator, the guy/gal who wears the Canadian flag?

 

Eh, largely indifferent. They each had their moments, but I didn't find either Hudson a very compelling character. James did wear a nice-looking variant of a Canadian flag suit, but I didn't think it worked as well with Heather's curves.

 

(Canadians don't do flag-rah-rah to the degree Americans do.)

[death tribble]

Did you know that the most popular Batman villain is the one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger ?

The proof is the chant

'Freeze a jolly good fellow,

Freeze a jolly good fellow

Freeze a jolly good fellow

and so say all of us !'

[Hermit]

At one point another, editorial or some writer who doesn't get what makes a character great utterly mutilates said character (Looking at you, Mark Millar and Joe Q) to the point it can actually sour me on them.

 

BUT.. if I get to pick them at their best and allowed to jettison the dork ages etc?

 

Well, it would still rotate.

 

Captain America is my usual number one. Captain America's idealism, courage, and conviction are what we should strive for. 

 

others that sometimes take the top spot? 

Spider-Man (though OMD STILL pisses me off to this day) , Peter Parker is insecure at times, takes far too much on his shoulders, but he's funny, kind, and was a nerd turned hero back when Nerd was NOT seen as a positive thing.

 

Dr. Strange. I love the visuals, I love the alliterations, but mostly I love the fall, redemption, and ascension story of him. Some really good stories have come out of the Doctor side as well as the Strange, as it's interesting to see how a medical man sees reality at times.. 

 

Green Lantern .. Hal Jordan, though to be fair I just love the GL Corps period. Hal gets rough treatment by some fans and writers alike, but as his core concept he's always been a man on the frontier... be it breaking flight records (And created when breaking the sound barrier really meant something) or on the edge of the galaxy at some remote planet like a sheriff mixed with a knight marshal. 

 

She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters... the sexy, brilliant, upbeat version PLEASE. She's emancipated, liberated, and bad ass. She actually ENJOYS being a superhero (Apparently a dire crime) and is dedicated to justice from more than one angle. Unfortunately, Marvel seems almost embarrassed by her and I worry the Disney Plus show is going hem her in in an effort to make her modern and acceptable to the degree it kills the character. We'll see. 

 

 

Nightwing, Dick Grayson. I didn't like Robin much, but his Teen Titans (ala Wolfman and Perez) run and transformation soon had him as one of my favorites. Batjerk gets the movies, but Nightwing actually has social skills and iMO is 10 times the leader his mentor is. I've read him gritty, I've read him upbeat. He slips into both worlds smoothly. 

 

Special Shout out to Blue Beetle/Ted Kord and Booster Gold ... my BWHHAHAHAHA Buds who might be seen as  C list but their friendship shined as a super power all it's own.

 

On top of that, there are at least five others that come to mind as I write.. Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Blue Devil, Wonder Woman, Wally West... oh heck.

 

Captain America...yeah, let's say Cap . Cap's my favorite period...

except sometimes I really like... *is dragged off stage*

[Lucius]

Doctor Strange

 

Lucius Alexander

and a strange palindromedary

 

[drunkonduty]

Spidey has been a fave since I  first watched the old animated series (the one from the sixties, although I watched in the seventies.) I always liked his sense of humour and never-say-die attitude.

 

Special mentions to Thor, Submariner, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Rachel Summers/Phoenix.

 

As to what I like about them... so much of it depends on a given writer. I've come to the decision to treat different writers' takes on a given character to actually be different characters.

 

Sure, somewhere back in the wealth of published material there is the ur-character, the platonic ideal, the baseline on which all the other versions are based. But that ur-character is different for each writer (and each reader.)

 

So when I hear there's a new writer on a character I like, I give this new version of the character a chance. If like them, that is if it fits with my concept of the ur-character, I'll keep going. If I don't, I drop it. For example, I've enjoyed Dan Slott's Spiderman. There's no hint of clones or One More Day. It's Peter all grown up; a father and husband as well as super hero.

 

Anyways, just some ruminations. 

[King Red]

Doctor Zero is my favorite superhero. It was published by Epic, an imprint of Marvel comics, in 1988. Okay, he is more of an anti-hero, or an outright supervillain in his actions. He is an ancient, egotistical psychic vampire who despises the human race. He wears a cape to prevent the stupid humans from destroying the world. I was fascinated by his story for some reason. Perhaps I was in such in an angry, cynical mood.

[Iuz the Evil]

Always has been the Man of Steel. 

 

So many reasons. Sense of morality, great adoption story, iconic. Love his power set, and honestly he's got some great stories. Inspirational hero. 

[Lord Liaden]

On 9/3/2020 at 7:07 PM, Hermit said:

Nightwing, Dick Grayson. I didn't like Robin much, but his Teen Titans (ala Wolfman and Perez) run and transformation soon had him as one of my favorites. Batjerk gets the movies, but Nightwing actually has social skills and iMO is 10 times the leader his mentor is. I've read him gritty, I've read him upbeat. He slips into both worlds smoothly.

 

I remember when the Teen Titans title crossed with Batman and the Outsiders, joining up to fight the Fearsome Five. There was friction between Bats and Robin (Dick Grayson) throughout, but Batman still assumed overall leadership. But in the ultimate issue Batman started issuing orders that Robin strongly disagreed with. Bats told him, "Robin, you're out of line..." to which Robin retorted, "The hell I am! I know the Titans better than you, and I know more about running a team than you do! I won't let you endanger us all just because you like being in charge!" It was the moment Dick Grayson finally stepped out of Batman's shadow, and he never looked back.

[Hermit]

5 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I remember when the Teen Titans title crossed with Batman and the Outsiders, joining up to fight the Fearsome Five. There was friction between Bats and Robin (Dick Grayson) throughout, but Batman still assumed overall leadership. But in the ultimate issue Batman started issuing orders that Robin strongly disagreed with. Bats told him, "Robin, you're out of line..." to which Robin retorted, "The hell I am! I know the Titans better than you, and I know more about running a team than you do! I won't let you endanger us all just because you like being in charge!" It was the moment Dick Grayson finally stepped out of Batman's shadow, and he never looked back.

 

I read the same moment. You're right. It was Glorious!

 

And years later, Batman would admit that Dick was the right guy to coordinate the superhero world, not him.

[Haven Walkur]

Brainiac 5, of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

 

I've had many, many passionate loves for and breathless fascinations with many and varied members of the comicbook pantheon, which is not, perhaps, that surprising, as I'm in my 50s now and I've been a fan ever since I first read a comicbook -- in Western Australia, sometime in 1971 or 1972.  They or it (I might have had a digest issue, or I might have got my hands on several issues) were illustrated in glorious black and white, and though I recognised the names "Batman" and "Superman", the comic(s) also featured "Rose and Thorn", "The Metal Men", and a huge team of heroes from the future who were somehow connected to "Kal-El"; the Legion of Superheroes! 

 

Looking back, I think this was the Composite Superman issue, where a lightning strike triggered the release of the duplicated powers of the Legion from their miniaturised duplicates; this was a complete roster of the Legionnaires that Brainiac 5 had modelled in miniature as a "you'll always be one of us" gift to Superboy, and Superman had installed in his "Super-Museum", where a resentful former criminal was working as a custodian....  The tradition in Legion of Super-Heroes comics of including frequent "roll calls" -- to list the members appearing and offer squibs about them -- and footnote-style asides explaining that, for example, Garth Ranzz was Lighting Lad's real name, were all invaluable to a wide-eyed naif having her first superhero experience with a team she'd never heard of before!

 

And I never forgot.

 

Superhero comics and cartoons were only ever available sporadically in New Zealand (where we moved from Australia) in the 1970s, and what I encountered was extremely disjointed, random issues of titles-nobody-remembers-these-days that hinted at a bigger picture; one where the iconic Superman and Batman (and the Fantastic Four) were just two of many, many superheroes, all with fascinating and novel abilities, all capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Clark and Bruce (and Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny)....  And then in 1982, we moved to America; I went to high school and then to college, and I discovered -- the X-Men!  Alpha Flight!  The New Mutants!  Swamp Thing!  Teen Titans!  (with all but the latter two being Marvel titles).  Looking back, I realise that the mid-80s generated a disproportionately large number of comics now regarded as classics, both from Marvel, and, to a lesser extent, DC, and I read many of them at the time (courtesy of a college friend who was a Marvel maniac, and another who was obsessed with Swamp Thing; both would share their comics in order to be assured of an "informed audience" for their ravings).

 

I got older, I graduated, I went to law school, and my comic book tastes "matured" into a preference for DC heroes, especially the more esoteric heroes of the Vertigo line (all things Gaiman).  I'd become a rabid gamer back in my undergrad days and remain so to this day, and by associating with gamers, I picked up a lot of comic-book background... even though I never felt financially secure enough to buy my own comics.  And in the late 1990s, I met and quickly became fast friends with the Hero Board's own Dr. Anomaly, whom Hermit, Death Tribble and others of the Old Guard may well remember.  He was an immense Hero nerd, a voracious reader of fiction, science fiction, science and an incredible GM of damn near every system then popular (and many that weren't).  And he loved old classic comics... particularly a bright and shiny Silver Age title that had begun in the 1950s and sputtered on through to present day:  The Legion of Super-Heroes.  And yes, he had a copy of that issue, the Composite Superman, only his was in colour -- but otherwise it was just as I'd remembered.

 

We started a Legion of Super-Heroes Champions campaign, of course, and I did a lot of background reading in the old Legion issues, and what I discovered only confirmed what I'd realised back in 1972 and never forgotten:  The impossibly brilliant, aggressively intelligent, arrogant and unlucky ultra-genius Brainiac 5 is my favourite super-hero -- even if his skin is green (something I only learned in 1996).

[Sundog]

I have a lot of love for many heroes, including classics like Batman and Superman and relatively newer characters like the Cassandra Cain Batgirl and Ms Marvel. But Green Arrow holds a place in my heart, due to both the fantastic Denny O'Neil Green Lantern/Green Arrow run and the criminally underrated Mike Grell Green Arrow. Ollie is arrogant, occasionally dumb as box of rocks, and a seriously flawed human being - but he's still a good man, and he's still a hero. I think that's a good thing.

[URFO78]

I love Captain America I think he's the best