Top 100 Neglected / Misused Comic Characters

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