My favorite is definitely Spiderman. He’s strong, but not that strong. His main ability is his super-agility, just dodges his opponents until something clever occurs to him. He’s also one of the few superheroes who consistently has a sense of humor. That was my big problem with Daredevil. When I was reading comics regularly, the 80s, DD never cracked wise, just ran around being tortured and noble.

Gotta go with invisibility. I don’t think this is because I’m a sneaky person, or that I want to watch women shower… hmmm… NO, it’s just that invisibility is so much more useful than flight. Especially for fighting crime: “Oh, look, there’s a guy flying up to catch me and take me to the police. Allow me to blow him away.” With invisibility, there’s no “Oh look…” moment at all, it’s just WHAM!- crook knocked unconscious with a frying pan they never saw coming.

No question about it. The best superhero of all times was Ralph Hinkley, aka The Greatest American Hero.

A small side note about JD’s real world super powers. Like Superman, JD doesn’t use his super powers at work, lest we should discover his true identity.

Perhaps Jd could apply his superpower to his closet? Shazam~

Are super heroes a guy thing? If forced to choose, I’d have to pick Nancy Drew. She can disarm crooks with her wits and bravery, charm thugs into confessing their crimes, and stake-out secret bandit gatherings. Even better, Nancy also is skilled at ballet, voice, sailing, tennis, and is always up for a little charity work or doing a favor for someone in need. She drives a cool car, has an adoring, yet seemingly platonic, boyfriend and always knows the right thing to say in any situation. Go, Nancy!

I think we can all agree that for most men Wonder Women was there favorite super hero, at least for a little while when they where kids. I can remember JD running around the house in his costume with his golden lasso. He was just so cute.

My favorite super hero is the MASKED AVENGER for he has the power to make snotty little comments about JD and then vanish off the face of the internet.

Wait a minute, I guess everybody has that power.
Maybe I am the only one who likes to use it?

Joel – you would have to make sure your frying pan was also invisible, although a floating frying pan would be pretty mesmerizing…so it still might work.

Ah, nothing tells the truth like a brother and a wife, eh? That is too funny.

Ok – I’m going to get blasted for this, as I did in my own blog many moons ago, but my favorite super hero is Aquaman. I know, he is a lamo, and has no ‘real’ power…but he can breathe underwater and talk with aquatic creatures. I for one, with my huge fear of drowning, would love to be able to breath under water, much less be able to make whales, sharks, jellyfish, dolphins, etc. do what I wanted them to do. Plus his hair NEVER gets messed up, ever, even in the water. That is definitely a super power. What can I say – I always go for the underdog.

My super power? Super Clutter Gal – I can make a clean room cluttery faster than Wonder Woman can lasso the bad guy.

what about the Wonder Twins?

I agree the power of invisibility is more useful at fighting crime then flight. However, I would still pick flight. Especially if I could fly really fast, I couple come home every night from my meetings, no more hotels!!
Jd, I will take on you ability to organize any day.
See you in a few hours.

The Masked Avenger is pretty cool. He forgot to tell his origin story, though:

Once a mild-mannered box salesman, he mocked his older brother for publishing his thoughts for the world to see. “Dumb!” he cried. And then one day he fell under the sway of the evil Weblog, was sucked into Foldedspace. Now he lurks in the shadows, clad as the Masked Avenger, occasionally springing forth with a pithy comment or a clever lie!

The Masked Avenger eats a lot of Ding Dongs, likes to wear perfume, and is addicted to the Oregon Lottery scratch games. He can frequently be found skulking around beauty pageants. He likes to listen to Britney Spears.

The Masked Avenger’s greatest power is the ability to Tell Funny Stories. In this, he is only matched by one Mr. Miron (who is also a “cunning fellow”, as Tammy pointed out yesterday).

Wonder twin powers — ACTIVATE! In form of — a great white shark! Heads up Aquaman.

Lynn, if you turn yourself into a great white shark, you would only be enabling Aquaman to control you.

Which power would you prefer?

Flight, for many of the reasons you’ve stated — commuting is the biggy, plus just the ability to be so unencumbered when moving about, free from the tyranny of urban planning and architecture…

I probably wouldn’t fight crime, as the power of flight alone doesn’t really make crimefighting any easier. I would probably talk to the fire department, though, and offer my services at ‘airlifting’ people who might be otherwise inaccessably trapped on upper floors.

…if you could choose a single superpower, what would it be?

This seems to have devolved into “which superhero do you like the best” instead of “what power do you like the best”, but I’ll play both =)

Power: If I could have a single power, it would be one of telekinesis, telepathy, or the ability to change shape (both Plastic Man and The Martian Manhunter can do this, interestingly enough). Changing Shape is probably an obvious one, if you think about it and my situation. Telepathy not so much because I want to spy on people’s thoughts, but because I think it would make it easier to make people understand one another.

Telekinesis is just pure utility, really. It’s just really handy — I complain about needing more arms all the time, and with TK that problem is basically solved =)

Hero: As for superheroes, well… It depends on the criteria. Who do I think is the neatest? Or who do I think is the most heroic? Or perhaps even who do I think is the most entertaining?

Zot! (a.k.a. Zachary T. Paleozogt) is definitely high on my list. The 2000 online “Hearts & Minds” wasn’t as good as the old ’80s series, but a lot of the charm is still apparent. Zot! left a big imprint on my psyche when I read it. If JD had a crush on Kitty Pryde (who is now called Shadowcat, by the way, having dropped Ariel some time ago), I had a crush on Zot. And Woody. Kind of like Jenny did, come to think of it.

I always found Ambush Bug to be pretty amusing, if less surreal than The Flaming Carrot. Unfortunately, a lot of it’s humor is entirely dependent on knowledge of obscure bits of comic book industry trivia, so that kind of limits it right there.

Ambush Bug started out, technically, as a supervillain, whose primary ‘job’ was annoying Superman. Most of his early appearances can best be thought of as a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with Superman in the role of Elmer Fudd and ‘Bug in the role of Bugs.

As a kid I quite liked both of the Sid & Marty Croft live action hero shows, the made-up-for-TV Isis and the Fawcett Captain Marvel based Shazam!. Sadly, the TV show never included any of the more esoteric members of the Marvel family, such as Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, nor did it really include any of the rogue’s gallery, such as Mr. Mind and the Monster Society of Evil. Amusing Trivia: Captain Marvel’s face was purposely modeled after a popular actor of the time — Fred Macmurry. Most people don’t realize that in the late fifties and early sixties, Captain Marvel was actually the most popular comic book character in print.

The Linda Carter Wonder Woman TV show (plus Wonder Woman’s membership in the Superfriends) indicated she was a major heroine, but she was kind of, well, dopey. The Invisible Jet was pretty cool, but her various abilities just didn’t hang together. I mean, Batman had ‘bat-stuff’. Aquaman had water-related powers. Wonder Woman was descended from greek amazons, was super strong, could deflect bullets with her magic bracers, had an invisible jet that responded to her telepathic commands (I suppose it was magic, although I don’t recall the Amazons being famous for having invisible transportation), and a magic rope. Riiiight. I mean, even for a superhero that doesn’t really hang together very well.

I appreciate her more now that I know a bit more of her publishing history, and because more modern authors have worked to give her a bit more depth. But still, I have trouble feeling that she’s very relevant nowadays.

I did, however, rather like the Yvonne Craig Batgirl from the Adam West-era Batman TV show. Go figure.

I quite liked the Watchmen cast, particularly Night Owl II, Rorshach, Dr. Manhattan, and Ozymandius, although after you’ve read the series it’s kind of hard to really think of any of them as all that heroic. And aside from this one work, they don’t really have a continuing presence in the Superheroic Landscape. The inspiration for Rorshach, however, The Question, did have a brief late ’80s/early ’90s resurgance, and the series was pretty good for the first 20 issues or so.

The golden age Sandman, particularly as presented in The Sandman Mystery Theater series, was also full of Pulpy-goodness.

In the Flaming Carrot-esque surreal vein, there’s the uber-obscure Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, who appeared in a couple issues of the ’90s ‘Existential’ Doom Patrol, and then spun off into a four-issue limited series that has never been collected or reprinted. It’s still pretty keen, but like Ambush Bug it relies a lot on a certain amount of meta-awareness of comic book superhero history. I still laugh at the varieties of Mentallium — Black, Shocking Pink, Ultraviolet, and Lamb-and-Turkey.

Unlike Ambush Bug, however, Flex Mentallo is very definitely not a parody.

The ‘mainstream’ superheroes I have a soft nostalgiac spot for, though, are probably The Fantastic Four on the Marvel side, and Superman on the DC side.

Whatever Alan Moore is writing tends to be pretty high on my list, too, though. I quite like the America’s Best Comics line he created in the ’90s — Promethea (keen Alex Ross picture) with her nifty supporting cast, like The Five Swell Guys, and the Ultra-Archetypical Tom Strong and his family are particular favorites.

Is it obvious to anyone else besides Dana when I’m baiting her?

Grrrr.

Alan Moore once described Superman as, “A man who came from the sky and did nothing but good.” Sounds kind of like God to me, eh?

Kris: Are super heroes a guy thing?

Mostly, but not as much as most people think. To wit, see Action Girl online.

Darnit! I didn’t read that part about Aquaman’s abilities. My plot was foiled.

I liked the Invisible Girl and how you could see her because of the dashes that outlined her form. So, when I think of invisibility, that’s what I think of. Of course, I would prefer flying to being outlined in dashes.

The Masked Avenger is pretty cool. He forgot to tell his origin story, though:

Are you sure he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive mask?

The Masked Avenger eats a lot of Ding Dongs…

Which, as we all know, have inferior crime-fighting capabilities when compared to the far more widely-deployed Hostess Fruit Pie.

The raspberry-filled, powdered donuts have much more crime-fighting ability…they suck the crook in with their sugary, sweet taste and then immobilize them as they turn into a rock in the bad-guy’s stomach.

I can see some drawbacks with invisibility – especially in a sprawling metropolis. Let’s face it: people would bump into all the time. Shape-changing is definitely the better option. I think it would also come in much handier in day-to-day scenarios. Between flying and invisibility I’d go for flying from a laziness point of view. I also think I’d find the spying aspect of invisibility a bit embarrassing.

My boyfriend often extolls the virtues of Spiderman over most other super heroes on the basis that he is just a regular Joe and nothing ever goes right for him in his human incarnation, but I’m not sure that’s something I look for in a super hero. I’m not sure who my current favourite is, but as a child I had a long-standing thing for The Man From Atlantis. As appealing as the more unconventional super powers are, I think I would chose some sort of super strength that does not manifest itself in my appearance. I would use this power to fight petty crimes and vandalism and would have to invent some sort of catchphrase like the Hulk’s – just to give my adversaries fair warning (which they would, of course, simply scoff at – allowing me free reign). In fact, can I pick Beatrix Kiddo?

Hah, I’m living this out right now thanks to City of Heroes. It’s been fun to create and play my own superhero concepts.

My no. 1 fave is Spider-Man, for most of the reasons already mentioned here. I’m also a big fan of The Shadow (and, I have to admit, the campy Alec Baldwin movie adaptation), thanks to his cool, Jedi-like mind powers. The Hellboy movie turned me on to the comics, which are great and wonderfully drawn by Mike Mignola. A very interesting canon there.

By leaps and bounds (heh), my favoritie supergroup is the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (no, I didn’t like that movie, too). Mix my favorite literary genre (late 19th century) with Alan Moore and a steam-punk universe, and you have pure geek heaven for me. I own the first volume of the series in paperback form, and will get the second volume once it too comes out in paperback. Every panel is so packed with references to period literature and crime fighters, they actually released an annotated guide to the first volume. It’s great.

I tend to avoid Superman and Batman, though the recent developments of the latter are good (Gotham City is reduced to ruins after a devastating earthquake and subsequent reign of terror by villains escaped from prison). Supe is just too boring, by and large, and as far as Batman goes: being rich isn’t a superpower! Take away the Batmobile, Batboat, Batcopter, Batbelt and Alfred, and Bruce Wayne’s got jack.

I’ve often thought that “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” would be a great lit course to take/teach. Of course, it would take several terms to delve into the books/heroes/authors that inspired the comic book series.

Volume II of TLoEG is out, I read it while waiting for Aimee at the mall. I give it a Meh-plus.
Nate, I slavered over City of Heroes for several weeks buy could never pull the trigger to buy it. I guess I’m still recovering from Star Wars Galaxies.

Volume II of League benefits greatly if you’ve previously read H. G. Wells War of the Worlds, not to mention The Island of Dr. Moreau. I actually really enjoyed the prologue section from the first issue, which takes place actually on Mars, mixing John Carter, HG Wells, and even C.S. Lewis’ visions, among others.

Great stuff!

If you really want to break your brain with obscure references, though, you can’t beat Top Ten, also leaping from the mind of Alan Moore. I think you’ll all agree that I’m pretty geeky, but I’ve got nothing on the combined might of Alan Moore, Zander Cannon, and Gene Ha. Every single panel has, generally, five or six references to comic books, television shows, books, or movies. Just a random example — in issue 10 or so, King Peacock goes to Grand Central, the interdimensional transport hub (think an airport).

I started to write from memory, but when I checked the online annotations (done by the same guy who annotated League) and found out I was mixing two or three panels. Still, go look at the annotations for issue #8, specifically the first panel on pages 20 and 21. Good grief.

I’m guessing City of Heroes is an MMORPG — if you’re looking for something self contained, hunt up a copy of Freedom Force. Lots of Silver Age inspired goodness.

Oh, and Nate — Yeah, The Shadow is almost always cool. Even Alec Baldwin couldn’t ruin him =) I actually liked The Phantom movie, too, which was even cheesier, if that’s possible.

Dana: Oh, and Nate — Yeah, The Shadow is almost always cool. Even Alec Baldwin couldn’t ruin him =)

Ruin? Hell, Baldwin has that Shadow laugh down so good it gives me chills. Totally perfect, exactly how I imagined it (I never liked the laugh from the old radio dramas — too Vincent Price).

I’m reading a bunch of old anthologies right now, especially early Daredevil. It seems to me that Stan Lee’s writing on Daredevil is much different than his writing on the Fantastic Four of the same era. This, to me, lends credence to the theory that Kirby was actually doing a lot of the writing when they partnered. (Kirby only had a hand in a couple of Daredevil issues — he did layouts for a young John Romita; it’s strange to see Kirby compositions with somebody else’s art: big arm in the foreground but no Kirby lines!)

I must say that reading early Daredevil, and flipping through my Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 2, has made me appreciate Gene Colan’s art. I never would have liked it when I was a kid (I liked Byrne and Bill Sienkiewicz and Paul Smith — I hated Steve Ditko (still do), Don Heck, and, yes, Jack Kirby (I still don’t like Kirby), but most of all I hated generic DC art as typified by Curt Swan (and this isn’t meant as bait, Dana — I really hated it)). I don’t know much about Colan. Was he still drawing in the late seventies and early eighties. Which books? I’m anxious to get the first volume of Essential Tomb of Dracula back from Joel. (I loaned it to him on the day I bought it!) Had I known I liked Colan’s art so much, and that I’d be curious about the Dracula mythos (about which I know nothing), I would have waited to loan the book out! :)

I wonder: if I were 35 in 1980, which books would I buy? Would I still think X-Men was all that? Would I be more in tune with Tony Stark’s alcoholism problem? Would I like DC better than I did as a kid? Less?

I’ve considered choosing a few comics to buy each month, but I think I’ve decided against it. I’ll pick up a few here and there, and if something strikes my fancy, maybe I’ll buy it. I recently bought an issue of Justice League Adventures (cool story, lame cartoony art), The Flash (lame all the way around), and Green Lantern (lame naked chick and bulging muscle art, but cool story).

For now, though, I should probably stick to compilations like Marvel’s Essentials and Masterworks, or the DC Archives, or the various trade paperbacks. I’m ready to dive into Love and Rockets, too, I think. Have any of you ever read it?

Enough geeky comic book talk. It’s time to actually go read some comics (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume one, issue three)!

JD — Colan’s been around since the 50s. He’s one of the “Old Guard”, like Swan, John Romita (not JR Jr. — his dad), Carmine Infanto, and those guys.

I think he did some Flash back in the 60s, but I don’t know why I think that. Shrug. Or, then again, Google could prove me wrong… Lots of war comics, some Captain America, couple of Firestorm issues. Looks like he’s done a bit of everything.

if I were 35 in 1980, which books would I buy?

Hmmm.

I dunno. I didn’t really start collecting comics until 84 or so. I suspect you still wouldn’t like DC (you don’t now, for example — except for Kamandi, apparently). You’d probably be reading Marvel’s Epic, though.

Justice League Adventures (cool story, lame cartoony art), The Flash (lame all the way around), and Green Lantern (lame naked chick and bulging muscle art, but cool story)

JLA — That’s a kids book, you know, specifically a comic book version of the Justice League cartoon on the Cartoon Network. All of the DC “Adventure” books are comic books tied to the tv-show “Dini-verse” (The animated Batman, Superman, and, now, Justice League all share a self-contained continuity) and use that distinctive Bruce Timm art style.

The Flash — The Flash has had periods of being “cool”, but overall Wally West just isn’t the Flash that either Barry Allen or Jay Garrick were. I’ve never really liked him. Bah.

GL — Oh, you mean “Crab Face Guy”? I gather they modified his mask, finally. The current incarnation of GL is the least flavorful that GL has ever been. For some reason the writers of GL have slowly dismantled all of the interesting elements of the GL canon — only one guardian left, only one GL left, Hal Jordan first a super-villain, then ‘resurrected’ as The Spectre. Blah.

Now if you want real GL goodness, either watch one of the GL-centric episodes of the aforementioned JL cartoon (Hey, look! Kilowog! Tomar-Re! Kanjar Ro! Katma Tui!), or go hunt up the absolute classic “Morgo doesn’t socialize”, written by Alan Moore. That Tomar Re — such a kidder!

JLA — That’s a kids book

I’m not sure how one makes this distinction. And, yes, it’s quite obvious that all of the “Adventures” books are based on the cartoons.

Justice League Adventures doesn’t have a story exploring sexuual orientation like the issue of Green Lantern I bought, but the story was of a similar level to both the Flash and Green Lantern issues. Its quality was better than either of the other two. It’s just he artwork I didn’t like, but I could become used to it with time.

Leafing through the comics racks, I have no interest in anything X-Men anymore. It used to be one of my favorites, but now there’s just too much. It’s overwhelming. And, from what I can tell, it’s all soap opera-esque.

I should point out that I hate the Marvel tendency toward what looks like computer-assisted art. I hate the glossy paper they print on. The books themselves are unappealing, so I’m less likely to purchase them.

Some of the DC titles have the same problems, but others — including the ones I bought recently — are printed on a standard papery-feeling paper and have traditional pencil and ink artwork. I’m always going to prefer this format. And, what’s more, these books are cheaper than the others.

All this having been said, I still prefer anthologies and compilations. More bang for my buck in a longer-lasting format. And if I’m going to buy single issues, they’re usually going to be from smaller companies or independents: Action Girl, Powers, Alan Moore stuff (yes, I know it’s technically DC0, etc.

I’d love to see Marvel compile some of their old Western comics. I’d buy that compilation in an instant. It amazes me that some of my favorite compilations recently have been non-superhero: Sgt. Rock, Conan, Tomb of Dracula, Howard the Duck, etc. I want to see more of this stuff. It’s what I think helps stretch what comics are…

I read a relatively large number of comic books, primarily because a) I borrow them from JD, and b) the Multnomah county library does a pretty good job of stocking them on the shelves. Usually they’re the anthology type of books. One the I read just recently really typified the objection that I have to most recent comic books. “Ultimate Spiderman”, of which I’ve read vol 4 and vol 6, encompasses early Spiderman. It looks to me like it’s much more closely based upon the movie than on the past books. The stories are good, the art is decent and it does a good job of capturing the “essence” of Peter Parker.

So why does reading it make me feel uncomfortable? Mary Jane Watson gets thrown from the Brooklyn Bridge by the Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. She’s rescued by Spiderman and lives (not dies like Gwen Stacy). Spiderman’s secret identity is known by Mary Jane and by SHIELD. Nick Fury is a 35 year old black (Asian Indian?) guy (but still with an eye patch) who’s pressuring Peter to become a SHIELD agent when he graduates from highschool, etc.

The same thing, from what I’ve seen, is happening in the X-Men titles. Since when was Wolverine the key to the X-Men, the founding operative? Answer- never. But in the newer books, just like in the movies, he’s very much the key to the group. So much for Cyclops and Beast, much less people like Colossus.

It seems like a lot of the historical aspects of the heros are simply being re-written. Granted, this will need to occur just simply because the characters are pretty static but the world is changing around them. Things need to change. I recognize that it’s not particularly plausible to have Nick Fury still hanging around after having served in WWII. On the other hand, there are a lot of good stories and history that seem like they’re being left behind. I feel guilty about supporting that by reading the newer books. On the positive side of things, at least the newer stuff is fairly good, generally speaking.

As for choosing my power, I think I’d choose telepathy. In my line of work it would be very useful.

How did the cartoon character Underdog,get his super powers ?