OK Here's ILC's Big SUMMER POLL: SUGGEST NOMINEES please for the Best Characters Of All Time!

And that, likewise, things like "fuck that, there was the crappy clone saga/crappy stuff before the clone saga/whatever" not disqualify Spider-Man et al. I don't want to get into a digressive discussion about the quality of a character vs the quality of a story, because it's a boring discussion -- and I don't buy the "X came before Y, so if Y is good and derivative of X, X is better" nonsense, so I'm not proposing that -- but there's certainly good reason some of those decades-old characters are around.

Someone nominate THE THING please!

I'm really tempted by the Hulk, for various reasons.

should I bother bigging up one Leonard 'Stinky' Brown? "Hmmm... is it possible that I'm a total shithead and never realised it before?"

- he brought out the near-best in Stan Lee
- he brought out the best in Walt Simonson
- even 40+ years on the simple audacity of adding to your fledgling superhero line with a hairy Norse God dressed as a domino in tights cannot fail to make me a believer in the wonder of comics. He is a symbol of how even the most apparently stupid ideas can survive and prosper!

This is a very fine idea.

I have already nommed Charlie Brown. I think Snoopy probably deserves a nom, too. Likewise my nom for Krazy Kat and someone else's for Ignatz.

The wide-eyed child in me wants to squander my fourth nomination on Galactus.

- he brought out the best in Mike Oeming!

I think I'm sold on Thor, surprisingly. He's also a perfect example of what I think of as the fusion cuisine of the Marvel universe -- the Elizabethan English, the periodically reinterpreted Norse myths (how many versions of Ragnarok can an Angar rock, if an Angar ... uh ... whatever), the Kirby sci fi, BETA RAY BILL, Ego the Living Planet!, etc. Some of that is more about the comic than the character, granted, but the fact that Thor was as at home whomping on Surtur as he was chilling with the Rigellians ...

- The best versions -- Claremont at his best, Morrison, and in at least some senses the 80s Magneto in general -- are very good.

- More than any other character, his presence has enabled Marvel to preserve the idea of "the mutant issue" inviting a different sort of morality. Sometimes he's a good guy, sometimes he's a villain, but his aims and motives have never changed. Dr Doom gets a lot of ups for being "the villain with a code of honor," but his is Old World and stereotypical -- interesting in its own right, but pretty much taken from pulps and adventure fiction. Magneto doesn't have a code of honor so much as a very intense belief system, one more specific than the Red Skull's generic and poorly explored fanaticism, and sympathetic enough that Marvel could sell him as a hero even after a lengthy career as a supervillain.

- That core stuff is built in strongly enough that even bad or inattentive writers have generally gotten it right, the way even a bad artist will remember what color Captain America's costume is.

- Peter St John, in Zenith: getting a teenage Brit audience in the 80s and 90s rooting for a Tory MP!

- I have a Dr Blasphemy tattoo. I would look like a dork if I didn't nominate him.

- His supervillain chest symbol is the comic strip swearing code, @#*! (except the @ is an uzumaki looking spiral thing and the * is a full-fledged star). That's badass.

- He pretty much IS Brat Pack -- the whole story is sort of around and through him, and he's the voice of it. It's my favorite of the Maximortal arcs, and the one that works best on its own.

- I have a Dr Blasphemy tattoo.

Mark - I suggest Gorilla Grodd. You know it makes sense.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Ultra Magnus: unrelenting hard-on-himself, always outmatched by his supposed 'opposite number' who had the advantage of being a) from the future, b) rebuilt by an alien god, c) rebuilt by an alien god in the future from the remains of the greatest Deceptacon of all time.

- Grimlock: mindless swaggering brutish thug when anyone else was writing him; secretly-quite-clever swaggering brutish thug with hidden vulnerability when Furman was writing him. When I was 8, long before I'd heard of The Clash or the Wu-Tang Clan or seen The Warriors, I thought the Dinobots were the coolest last gang in town imaginable.

- Shockwave: "Logic dictates that pursuing the human Buster Witwicky is a waste of time and energon. EMOTION SAYS OTHERWISE."

- Scorponok: because in the end he proved that a Deceptacon could be a) a hero, and b) Optimus Prime's boyfriend.

- Galvatron: unbelievable badass from the future, always fun to watch him mow down dozens of Autobots, could only ever be beaten by time paradoxes.

I doubt anyone here has read the adventures of Valerian and Laureline, so I won't even try to suggest Laureline...

My favourite DP7 characters - Mastodon, Lenore, Jeff until he went emo (understandably emo but...)

My least favourite characters in DP7 - Captain Manhattan. Her out of Spitfire who turns into a metal woman.

So yeah, pick Randy.

(I think Gruenwald's writing benefited from the "a year in the New U is a year in the real world" rule -- he did most of the best character-oriented stuff in Captain America, but it still wasn't as good as DP7, despite having far more issues over which to develop things.)

Superman
Wolverine
Wonder Woman
the Hypno Hustler

Rogue Trooper (the first one)
Wulf Sternhammer
Mek-Quake
Archie the Robot (in his Acid Archie the Anarchist guise from Zenith Book 2)

God! Warlock, I'd forgotten him. No-one could draw him like Bill Sienkewicz.

CBR wishes they were cool.

I think we should all vote in this. And we should all vote for MARC HAZZARD: MERC.

Also remember that Judge Dredd is a DC character.

Bernard The Poet trumped Marc Hazzard in my voting. And since all the DC characters are so piss boring I was forced to make one up i.e. Reverse Aquaman.

Also remember that Judge Dredd is a DC character.

To counter this nomination, I think I'll vote for Justice Peace.

OVERMAN TO WIN

REVERSE AQUAMAN IS THE ONLY AQUAMAN

No Lockheed teh alien dragon, no credibility.