Top 100 Neglected / Misused Comic Characters

At the very least you get some one-liner like "I can see how Hal might have become ADDICTED to his power, I can see it BECAUSE I USED TO BE A JUNKIE." or "I know a little something about PROBLEMS myself on acount of I USED TO BE A JUNKIE." or "I hate pusher filth like you scum BECAUSE I USED TO BE A JUNKIE." or "I understand the concerns of the liberals, I was once a liberal myself in that I USED TO BE A JUNKIE." or "Pass the salt Speedy YOU JUNKIE."

Plus he's named Arsenal now, which doesn't work in this country for several reasons.

How I laughed in Birds of Prey when someone pointed out that the Huntress had slept with Arsenal

I didn't know what that horrible beard thing was called, but now I do. I think every hero has flirted with unreasonable hair at some point - even Batman hid some ungodly sideburns under his mask.

Perhaps a new thread outing the hair horror of our hyper-heroes is needed...

Moonstone was the Thunderbolt. Dani "Mirage" Moonstar was the valkyrie.

And yes, Karma kicked ass. Didn't Frank Miller draw her first appearance?

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/6198/X-Men/Maggott1.jpg

Impossibly ridiculous X-Men character whose mutant power is a detachable digestive system in the form of two robot slugs. He also has blue skin for no reason. Well, when the colorists remembered to make it blue, and not grey, or black. And he has a strangely wandering accent which is meant, I think, to be white South African.

Maggott has now seemingly become a byword in the x-fan community for shit characters. (I think the writers killed him off at some point). So much for 'tolerance', eh? I like him because i) his power is completely absurd; ii) I think the X-Men were built on the redemption of rubbish characters and you get the feeling the writers created Maggott for a bet along these lines.

Cecilia Reyes from the same time period also suffered but not nearly as badly because her initial premise ("let's combine Dazzler's attitude with Skids' power and Beast's vocation and make her Puerto Rican") wasn't nearly as absurd.

"Back off Magneto, or I'll bite you with my remote control mecha-colon!"

https://afburns.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/mento-fish.png

can't believe that the wondrous mento-fish never appeared again after its debut in Fantastic Four #14

one of the saddest of all info boxes of marvel.wikia.com imo

http://i.imgur.com/y91WJsr.png?1

I've been thinking some more about the mento-fish, and decided that my favourite thing is the aside in the second panel that it's "the only fish of its type in the world", I love the way that even though it's just a device to enable Namor to contact Sue, even though it only appears for three panels and then is never mentioned again, they really go all out to sell you on how amazing and awe-inspiring this thing is. this is one reason why 60s Marvel comic books are better then contemporary Marvel comic books imo, nowadays Namor would probably just phone her. would totally buy a plush mento-fish from etsy.

It is pretty cool.

His power is that he's dead, and that's a curse, not so much because he's dead and kept away from his loved ones, but (if I was writing him) because he was a circus performer, and now he gets no credit for his perfomances.

fucking dying at this rn

although "Citizenship: Fish" is something else altogether

I think Mento-Fish is one of those characters/concepts that would change everything so they basically get ignored. I heard there is something Reed Richards invents in Kirby's run that would have changed the Marvel world but it also gets ignored.

I don't think 9/11 would have happened the same in Marvel and DC world. Even if the building was hit before a superhero could stop it, a lot more people would have been saved.

9/11 totally happened in the marvel universe! i guess during the marvel universe heroes' lunch break or something?

lest we forget:

http://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/5/0/9/254509_v1.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR0GbTJqLNVBngEPEq4N8ThvQpCekgXpNup2WccODgZs-S3U2bf

Yeah, I doubt I'll ever read that comic, but I'll never forget the image of crying Doom!

spidey finishes his burrito, has a quick bathroom break, realises he's made a huge mistake

http://i.imgur.com/0tVc1Yn.jpg

god bless j michael straczynski, the mad bastard

I read that when it came out.

so did i! in fact i've still got it in a longbox at home. i can confirm that it did not read any better just a few months after the attacks than it does now; however, it does just keep getting funnier. wtf were the people involved thinking?

RAG, I think the thing you're referring to is that one time that Reed Richards created life and the Mad Thinker used his notes to create the Awesome Android. And then that one time that Reed Richards created life was never mentioned again, afaik, because why would it be.

Crying Doom is one of my favorite things ever. I kinda want to make a t-shirt.

i sometimes think about cryingdoom.jpg after small domestic disasters like spilling coffee or stubbing my toe. it's pretty comforting tbh

ME: *cuts finger while slicing onions*

CRYINGDOOM.JPG: because even the worst of us, however scarred, are still human. still feel.

ME: *feels better*

Oddly, Romita Jr claimed the appearance of those supervillains was not supposed to be taken literally.
I feel kinda bad because Romita watched the towers falling and was quite traumatised by it. Maybe a lot of people were but still thought the Doom crying was silly.

Hey, maybe all the superheroes were teleported off to some major "event" where they had to fight some cosmic threat.

Those things irk me a bit because whenever heroes are summoned, they always seem to pick the most popular superheroes rather than the most powerful and capable. Why would you pick weaklings like Spiderman, Batman or Captain America?

And when supervillains all get together lined up against superheroes. "Yep, I'm a bad guy and I put on my colorful bad guy costume to help all the other bad guys because we're mean like that, we even agreed to call ourselves the alliance of evil".

That's one of many reasons why I think making serious stories with all the continuity will never work.

<nerd> spider-man's not a weakling, he can lift fucking trucks over his head! </nerd>

I'm actually one of the Spiderman fans who got angry when writers clearly didn't know Spiderman can lift 10 tons. He's still not in the heavy weight league.

rag, the stuff you're picking at there is the foundations of how superheroes work, though - you do have to suspend your disbelief to some extent otherwise everything falls apart.

it's like asking why lucha libre wrestlers dress in weird outfights to fight instead of dressing in sober business attire and calmly talking through their differences before embracing in front of a cheering and emotional crowd

Yeah, I watch the DC shows with my gf (who is very much not a lifelong comics nerd) and she just cannot get onboard with the fact that, for instance, Kara Danvers's coworkers cannot figure out that she has the exact same face as Supergirl.

yeah, i think unless you're inoculated against the inherent ridiculousness of superheroes through early and repeated exposure, as we dorks on ilx clearly were, it's just not ever gonna sit right with you

In the 1970s, one suggestion was that the lenses of Clark Kent's glasses (made of Kryptonian materials) constantly amplified a low-level super-hypnosis power, thereby creating the illusion of others viewing Clark Kent as a weak and frailer being.[18] However, this reason was abandoned almost as quickly as it was introduced, since it had various flaws (such as stories where Batman, who is at the peak of human fitness, would disguise himself as Clark Kent, among others).

heh, i love the various tortured explanations of why people don't associate clark kent and superman. was it john byrne who suggested that superman vibrated his face at a frequency that meant it didn't show up on film, thus protecting his identity?

Flash at least does do that much on the TV show.

superman's powers: flight/super-strength/invulnerability/heat vision/vibroface

I hear the ladies love it.

I think there's incongruous levels of disbelief suspension required for different aspects of the stories though. Reading golden age superhero comics it's easier to overlook things but when it's a modern story with full continuity aspiring to serious drama, it can't attain any level of verisimilitude for me.
I was a proper superhero fan for a decade but there's just different types of ridiculousness and suspension of disbelief and they don't all necessarily work together. So when I'm reading a newer continuity heavy comic there's so many allowances you need to make that there can be no dramatic tension. There's no sense of consequences or gravity to anything that happens and yet so many of the stories aim for that sense of big important shit happening.

If there were more standalone stories with the tone of CC Beck, you could properly buy into them.

I had a long argument with my brother about Nolan's Batman films in that I just couldn't buy into the realistic presentation with a serious vigilante deciding to wear a costume like that (I need pointy ears on top of my head and an animal shape of my chest). I know there are real vigilantes who wear superhero costumes but I doubt they have a similar life and they are very much tributes to comic book heroes even if they do take fighting crime quite seriously.

I laughed out at the vibrating face thing.
I actually don't think Superman's secret identity is one of the worst things. If I saw an amazing superhuman who looked just like my co-worker I think it would be a while before I'd start thinking they were the same person. But it would be inevitable after a while and of course the Superman stories go on forever, so it's harder to believe after you'd seen so many close-up photos of Superman or been saved by him and he smells just the same as Clark Kent.

Also people often thought Scorpion was just a regular guy but he could lift 20 tons.

Whenever Spiderman couldn't hold his own against Kingpin, The Enforcers or some other regular human they said Spiderman wasn't feeling well that day. They retrospectively made Green Goblin stronger didn't they? Because they couldn't say that Spiderman is ill every time he fights Green Goblin.

it would have been great if they had, though - i'd love to see spidey fight the green goblin and crippling attacks of diarrhoea at the same time

Stan Lee used to talk about "the illusion of change" in Marvel Comics, rather than change itself, and I think there's an "illusion of realism" at work in comics too, rather than realism itself.

i get what you're saying about the balance of realism and suspension of disbelief, though, and i can sympathise with it - i think i'm just less troubled by it than you are, and i can write it off more easily as a genre trope

we are now officially way off topic but i'd agree in that nolan's batman movies it got increasingly hard to reconcile the superhero elements with nolan's desire to make things 'realistic'; in some ways schumacher's batman movies are more open to embracing the craziness of comics, although clearly the results were uh, mixed at best xxp

A few more things.

Wolverine fights a lot of characters who he could clearly never match.

I was a big fan of Savage Dragon for several years but one thing that never worked for me was how Dragon mistaken Glum for a toy. This was played as a joke, but the mistake has enormous consequences and when put in that light it's impossible for me to buy into him consistently mistaking Glum for a toy as he basically lived with him.

When Amanda Conner started drawing Powegirl there was a story that explained her cleavage window as "I was going to put a logo on my chest but I never decided on one then I just left it like this and I'm very sad about it". Superheroes cut out holes in their costume to sew a logo into? Maybe Superman went around with a cleavage window before he decided on his chest logo. Maybe Spiderman went around with bare feet before he decided that his socks should be like his gloves.

i guess so but you're outlining problems with the realism of a fast-healing, mass-murdering mutant with an adamantium skeleton, a giant green strongman with a fin on his head, and superman's cousin from an alternate dimension; if you can roll with those outlandish initial premises it seems a little myopic to start picking fault with details

Wolverine still doesn't stand a chance in a fight against Spiderman. There's no a reason a green (racist! hoho joking) superstrong finheaded guy would keep mistaking Glum for a toy. Powergirl has a very human brain, there's no reason she'd have such a silly thought process.

Fantastical and scientifically impossible concepts don't excuse this stuff.

Even in the golden and silver age there was stuff that just didn't make sense and ideally they would have respected their audiences more. Like the ending to Spiderman's first encounter with Spider Slayer.

Fantastical and scientifically impossible concepts don't excuse this stuff.

but bad writing does!

The vibrating face thing reminds me of the film Four Lions.

how about Storm vs Spiderman, who would win that fight

I guess enough wind and lightning could stop Spiderman before he gets in a polite punch? I thought it was silly when her lightning Storm beat Wonder Woman but I dunno.

paste pot pete vs the beyonder

aunt may vs willie lumpkin

Vibrating face idea is so wonderfully stupid. Thank God J. Jonah Jameson doesn't operate out of the DC Universe. "TERRIFYING BLUR-MAN STRIKES AGAIN! WHO IS THIS FACELESS MENACE?!"

You know what happens to a spider when it's hit by lightning?

Maybe Wolverine can fight Spiderman because Spiderman can't hit him too hard?

Fancy Dan "Spiderman, if you've got a cold again I'll fuck you up".

Another: I hate it when Dr Octopus has extending tentacles. Where does he and Omga Red keep all that metal?

Stratzynski again: Aunt May mysteriously becoming hipper and more sturdy than her earliest appearances.

Who would win in a fight between Nick Fury's remaining eye and a pile of Captain America's severed limbs?

Vibrating face idea is so wonderfully stupid. Thank God J. Jonah Jameson doesn't operate out of the DC Universe. "TERRIFYING BLUR-MAN STRIKES AGAIN! WHO IS THIS FACELESS MENACE?!"

let us remember that clark spent like three seasons of smallville being known in the media as 'the red-blue blur'

In the old Marvel Super-Heroes RPG, the "Amazing" Spider-Man only had Incredible strength, and the "Incredible" Hulk had Unearthly strength. What's the deal, people?

Mark Gruenwald through the Marvel Universe Handbooks filled in lots of those strength details along with some other in incongruous details.

The only proper way to decide these conflicts is with a poll.

Can't believe how long Smallville went on. I can't believe I watched it for 2 or 3 seasons. Must've been Kristin Kreuk. I remember an apologetic article in SFX trying to convince people to watch the last season. "B-b-but... he's so iconic".

If there were more standalone stories with the tone of CC Beck, you could properly buy into them.

Dude, there's no part of Superman Turns Into A Lion this doesn't apply to.

Did he recently turn into a lion?

it was just his head tbf, not all of him

xp

Despite saying all that about Nolan's Batman films I actually enjoy them a lot more than the cartoonier Marvel films.

ok I guess he got paws too

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcomicsalliance.com%2Ffiles%2F2011%2F10%2Flionheadsuperman.jpg&f=1

xp

i guess so but you're outlining problems with the realism of a fast-healing, mass-murdering mutant with an adamantium skeleton, a giant green strongman with a fin on his head, and superman's cousin from an alternate dimension; if you can roll with those outlandish initial premises it seems a little myopic to start picking fault with details

― hunk of poo, big fart, girlfriend, and Dove soap (bizarro gazzara)

don't buy this line of reasoning, sorry. suspension of disbelief based on premises is not analogous to suspension of disbelief based on coherence. it's perfectly possible to buy whatever absurd premises superhero comics are based on and reject them due to in-universe lack of coherence. which is why crying doom is such a mimesis-breaker - his behaviour isn't coherent within his fictional context.

Didn't Morrison reintroduce Super-Lion in his Superman run?

idk I couldn't make it through his whole run... in the Silver Age issue it's just a one-off story thing where Superman gets cursed by Circe iirc

apparently Superboy is why we have the Sphinx.

http://www.superman.nu/nightwing/nightwing/superboy/3ages/3ages-3.jpg

what the hell

just a little time-travelling transmogrification no big deal

red kryptonite is the best.

is "red kryptonite" a type of acid

No, iirc they are an all-republican 3 Doors Down cover band. Or the actual band 3 Doors Down masquerading as same, I'm not sure.

ok lol

whole lot of people looking to win a no-prize in here