It took a lot longer than I thought, but I’ve tabulated all the suggested lists of Avengers from my last post, and tallied them up.  I should point out the following qualifications:

• Not everybody made it easy.  If you said something like “I would sub in Martinex” and didn’t say who you’re subbing him for or in what list, then guess what, you just nominated a one-man Avengers team consisting of Martinex.  If you didn’t make any sense, I ignored you.  If you rambled on about “My 16th slot would either be Hogun the Grim or Sharon Carter, but later I’d replace them with Overmind,” then I just marked down Hogun the Grim and disregarded the others, because it’s DECISION TIME and I ain’t got time for you to quibble.  If you posted two lists, I used the first one.   You guys must have been real fun taking the SATs.
• A lot of characters have used multiple aliases and a lot of aliases have been used by multiple characters.  I did my best to infer the intent of each voter.  I assumed “Captain Marvel” meant Carol Danvers and “Wasp” meant Janet Van Dyne unless otherwise stated.  I assumed anyone picking Monica Rambeau would know they need to be as specific as possible, but if they picked “Photon” they probably meant Monica and not Genis-Vell.  A lot of people nominated “Spider-Woman” without specifying Jessica Drew or Julia Carpenter; I’d bet half meant one and half meant the other, but for the sake of clarity I’m assuming Jessica except where I was told otherwise.  Nobody who picked “Quasar” said which one (I think they meant Wendell Vaughn), so we’ll all have to live with the mystery.
• As you might imagine from the above, I did not do a particularly thorough statistical analysis of the data, because the data I had to work with was fuzzy and this is not important enough for me to go back and ask fifty-something people (I didn’t count) to do it over and clarify if they meant Jacques Duquesne or Phillip Javert as the Swordsman.  I just wanted a general consensus on who should be in the Avengers, and I got it.  If someone cares enough to triple-check my work, go ahead on.

OK, enough jaw-jacking, here are the top 18 picks, and therefore logically the IDEAL AVENGERS ROSTER:

1. Captain America (45)
2. Iron Man (43)
3. Hawkeye (43)
4. Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (42)
5. Thor (39)
6. The Wasp/Janet Van Dyne (33)
7. The Black Panther (33)
8. The Vision (33)
9. The Scarlet Witch (32)
10. Hank Pym (28)1
11. The Black Widow (26)
12. She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters (22)
13. Luke Cage (19)
14. Quicksilver (18)
15. Beast (18)
16. Monica Rambeau (17)
17. Hercules (17)
18. The Hulk (16)

Runners-up and analysis after the cut.

continue reading "Some Assembly Required"

1. I’m counting 3 votes for “Ant-Man” and one for “Giant-Man” that didn’t clearly specify any particular person under the mask. [↩]

I’m not actually reading DC Comics any more – the combination of moral ickiness re: Alan Moore and the new comics just mostly being shit is enough for them not to get my comics dollars any more, beyond a few collections. The final Hitman trade paperback is due out in August and I believe that will be the last DC comic I purchase for the foreseeable future, because I pretty much own all the stuff I will ever want from DC ever, because they were good enough to have produced pretty much all of it years and years ago. Maybe they will do some deluxe Legion reprints of the Giffbaum era at some point and I will buy those.1

But someone handed me the first three issues of Earth 2 last week, and – well, they’re shitty comics, of course. I mean, it’s great that they’re setting up Alan Scott as basically Earth-2’s Superman equivalent, except he’s gay. But all this means, in practice, is that they replace a woman in a refrigerator with a gay lover on an exploding train; that the comic is slightly more progressive doesn’t make it not-shitty. It’s just a non-shitty note in a shitty comic. But the Nu52 version of Solomon Grundy shows up at the end of the third issue, and it is basically a microcosm of everything I now hate about DC Comics.

The new Solomon Grundy appears to be some sort of avatar of death – he bears an irritating resemblance to the revamped design of Necron that showed up in Blackest Night, with leather bondage straps and skirt-trousers and things like that (and has it really been over two years since that awful, no-good crossover finally ended? It seems like it was just yesterday that its unflagging shittiness was new to us). He is an avatar of death because Earth-2’s Green Lantern is, sort of, an avatar of life.

This is stupid. This is bad everything-is-connected comics writing. It’s all the more startling coming from James Robinson, who wrote a damn good Solomon Grundy when he used Grundy in Starman, but what every comics writer seems to be saying these days is that DC comics are basically written by the editorial staff now, because god forbid they trust some hack like George Perez or John Rozum to write a damn superhero comic book. But regardless of who is actually writing this, it is bad, because Solomon Grundy is not an avatar of death. Nobody wants to read about Solomon Grundy being an avatar of death. What people want out of Solomon Grundy being in a comic is for him to be, when you get right down to it, a off-brand version of the Hulk who is usually a bad guy.

Seriously, this shit isn’t hard. Solomon Grundy is a copy of the Hulk that lets DC Comics write the Hulk into stories without having to negotiate anything with Marvel. That’s the entire fucking point of the character. He can be a vicious cunning Hulk (like in the Golden Age stories where he first showed up) or he can be a dumb savage Hulk (like he was in The Long Halloween), or he can be a gentle cute and cuddly Hulk (like in Starman). But that’s who he is. That’s who the fans expect him to be. There’s no reason to try and tie him into the rest of your superhero universe’s pre-determined theory; really, if you’re writing a superhero universe and everything ties back to one central origin element for everybody, you’re probably doing something wrong.2 If you try to write Grundy as being anything else, you just wasting paper and ink on your own lousy concept.

I mean, it’s not like anybody was going to think Mr. Avatar of Death was an awesome idea if you called him “Death-O” or something.3 That’s how you know it’s a shitty idea: whenever DC knows an idea is shitty, they grab one of their existing intellectual properties from the Not Bein’ Used Trunk4 and awkwardly slap it onto the shitty idea in the hopes that fanboys will say “oh, it’s the new version of [NAME], I loved the old version, let’s give this a try.” Granted, they do this whenever they think they have a good idea too, because, well, DC Comics. But it’s more egregious when it’s something like this – when not two years ago DC put out a nigh-unreadable Solomon Grundy miniseries that tried to incorporate Grundy into the larger DC comics mythos and which was a horrible creative misfire, and now they’re doing it again but even moreso.

The bottom line is this: Grundy works best when you keep him simple. He’s a sorta-undead sorta-plantman Hulk. You don’t have to explain it any more than that. You don’t buy a comic with Solomon Grundy in it because you want a deep plot about Grundy’s origin or motivations. You buy a comic with Solomon Grundy in it because you want to see him punch the good guy in the face and then get punched in the face by the good guy (or something along those lines). The fact that DC no longer seems to understand this is a large part of why I – a DC fan since I was six – no longer buy their comics.

STRICTLY FOR CLASSIC GRUNDY.

1. V4 LSH is something I keep meaning to discuss, mostly because of Giffen’s use of the ninepanel grid – now that I’ve experimented personally with ninepanel storytelling, I find the format fascinating and keep meaning to return to it for a dedicated long-form story. But I digress. [↩]
2. Or you are Garth Ennis writing The Boys, which is, by the way, probably his fourth long-form comics masterpiece. More on this in another post sometime. [↩]
3. Actually, given the 90s ethos currently pervading DC, I guess he would be something like “Grymm.” TO THE EXTREEEEEEME. [↩]
4. Which I believe is in Paul Levitz’ old publisher’s office. [↩]

When I say, “I really love Godzilla”, I feel like the first thing I need to do is be more specific. After all, even if we narrow it down specifically to comics, Godzilla is one of those iconic characters that will pretty much always have a chance at a comic book, because there’s just something in all of us that sees a giant dinosaur on the cover, smashing up a city, and says “WANT.” But in this case, I’m talking specifically about the 1977-1979 run that Marvel did, the one they later collected in ‘Essential Godzilla’. Because not only does this one feature the giant lizard we all know and love, it’s actually set in the Marvel Universe.

Why is this important? Because I love superheroes even more than I love giant monsters, and a comic that combines both of them is just sheer, undiluted joy from beginning to end. The premise involves Godzilla heading to America, so you get SHIELD hunting the beast in their helicarrier (I’ve described the series in the past as “like ‘The Fugitive’, with Godzilla as Richard Kimble and Dum-Dum Dugan in the Inspector Gerard role.” If you don’t see this as instantly awesome, I feel a little bit sad for you.) Doctor Demonicus, in his first appearance, takes on the role of primary villain…and frankly, Doctor Demonicus is the world’s best at being the world’s worst evil super-genius. How can you not love a mad scientist who exposed himself to exotic radiation, only to get a painful skin disease instead of super-powers?

The first half of the book (and this, more than most series of the time, really reads like one 24-chapter story, albeit slightly shaggy-dog in form) involves Godzilla stumbling across various other monsters, usually ones created by Doctor Demonicus, and fighting them while SHIELD tries to figure out which monster is the bigger threat. SHIELD, in turn, creates a giant robot to fight Godzilla called Red Ronin…like you do…only to have it stolen from them and used for other purposes. This is the merely entertaining chunk of the book…

But it’s the last half where things really get nuts, as creators Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe really go all-out in showing the war against Godzilla. The Fantastic Four and Hank Pym get enlisted, using Pym particles to shrink Godzilla down to a size where he can be managed easily. But a rat-sized Godzilla escapes into the sewers of New York…and Pym’s research reveals that he’s already developing a tolerance to the gas. With time running out, the FF go on a desperate lizard hunt…which leads to a fight between the Thing and a human-sized Godzilla…which leads to the team banishing Godzilla into prehistory using Doom’s time machine…which leads to the inevitable Godzilla/Devil Dinosaur team-up…which finally leads back to the present and an all-out gigantic battle between the Avengers and Godzilla that absolutely has to be seen to be believed. The last issues move at a ferocious pace, each time upping the stakes and presenting Godzilla’s rampage as something that really is a crisis-level threat to the Marvel Universe, and while some might call the ending a cop-out, really, I feel like it’s the only way the series could end. (No spoilers, of course, but does anyone really think it ends with Godzilla dying?)

On the whole, this is the kind of series that could only be made in a big, sprawling shared universe like Marvel and DC, and it’s genuinely thrilling to see such an iconic monster being let loose into that universe…and then treated with considerable respect, albeit in a goofy sort of way. You will finish this book smiling, and there’s nothing wrong with that in my book.

It’s way too early to figure out what Marvel’s going to be doing with it’s “Marvel Now!” relaunch, but one thing that seems clear is that Jonathan Hickman is going to be writing a bimonthly Avengers series that will feature a roster of 18 (or more!) heroes.  Eighteen sounds like a lot, but I suppose it’s understandable.  Historically there were something like 70 different members of the Avengers before Bendis took over in 2004, and then he promptly added about a hillion jillion more guys.  (Red Hulk?  Seriously?)  At this point the Avengers are like the Legion of Super-Heroes; it’s pretty difficult to pick just seven or eight people that’d please everybody.

Right now I can only guess which heroes Hickman will pick for his team–the only confirmed selection is Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.  But seeing as I’m pretty picky with who ought and ought not to be an Avenger, I figured I could pass the time by making my own list of people.  And I thought we could make a game of it, oh boy!

I have a fairly limited sense of who should be an Avenger.  I’ve never been thrilled with Spider-Man, Daredevil, or Wolverine being on the team, simply because those characters function best as loners or outcasts or reluctant allies.  As soon as those guys are on the five o’clock news attending a press conference with Captain America and Iron Man, everything that makes them unique ceases to make any sense.  An Avenger can be a misfit, but only about as far as Hawkeye or Moondragon, so that they still make some sense being on a team of professional, public superheroes.   (I give a pass to the Hulk, seeing as he’s a founding member.  But I think that backs up my position–who needs Wolverine or Sentry or Ares to be the “badder bad boy” of the team when you have the Incredible  Hulk?)  In general I’ve never been a big fan of “improving” the Avengers by replacing them with something else–either by dumping the casts of other comics directly into the roster, or by insisting that they have to resemble the Justice League.

To me the best Avengers are the ones which feel like the best at what they do, who can gel well with the team, and that have or could easily serve with on the team for years.  They should be professionals willing to endure public exposure–reclusive vigilantes and overly angsty trainwrecks need not apply.  I also prefer characters who don’t make me feel like I picked up the wrong comic book by mistake–one of the Eternals hanging around is fine, but half of the Defenders is pushing it.

With all that in mind, here are the 18 characters I’d use if I was writing Avengers in 2012:

1. Captain America
2. Thor
3. Iron Man
4. Hawkeye
5. The Black Widow
6. The Hulk
7. The Vision
8. The Scarlet Witch
9. The Black Panther
10. Storm
11. The Wasp
12. The Black Knight
13. Excalibur (Faiza Hussain)
14. Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)
15. Tigra
16. Shang-Chi
17. Living Lightning
18. Amadeus Cho

Wow, that was harder than I thought–several of my favorites got left out.  But I think it’s a good mix of icons, underutilized mainstays, and a couple of newer faces.

Anyway, I know you think you can do better, so post your dream team of Avengers in the comments.  Pick anybody you want (as long as Marvel owns them) and as many as you want, up to 18.  In about a week or so I’ll do a follow-up post listing the 18 characters who got the most votes.  Obviously that list will be THE UNIDSPUTED RIGHT ANSWER, and we can send it in to Marvel and get paid for figuring it out for them.

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And that is four issues in the can.

(Yes, I know we should get a proper dedicated site for this. It is on my to-do list. There is a whole other ongoing comic I want to do as well, but… there are only so many hours in the day, you see. If I ever win the lotto, though, I expect my productivity to go through the roof with respect to everything that is fun.)

There’s always something fun about the quirky, organic partnerships that grow up between two characters in comics. Sometimes they’re done for mercenary reasons, like the need to combine two low-selling books into one moderate-selling title (like, say, slapping together a martial artist from the lost realm of K’un L’un and a street-smart super-strong hero for hire.) Sometimes they’re the result of a writer that decides the two characters fit together, and who does such a good job of selling it that the two become inextricably linked (like, say, an impossibly erudite blue-furred mutant and a self-doubting titan of strength and invulnerability.) Whether you love Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, Green Arrow and Green Lantern, or Black Canary and Oracle, those unplanned pairings are part of the fun of comics. And since there are a few characters floating around in the wake of recent cancellations, I thought I’d suggest some places for DC and Marvel to put them before they get around to killing them off.

1) Blue Beetle and Static. Both of these characters have a lot in common. They’re both fairly well-known to non-comics fans through other media (the ‘Brave and the Bold’ cartoon, the ‘Static Shock’ cartoon), but have never quite found enough of an audience in comics to sustain them long term. They’re both young men trying to learn how to be heroes. They’re both ethnically diverse in a comics universe that still has problems with that. The two of them could very well make a team that makes people forget Ted and Booster.

2) X-23 and the Winter Soldier. Two former killers, each trying to redeem their troubled pasts. Both of them are at the same time worldly-wise and strangers to real life. Both of them are the kind of badasses that comics fans gravitate to. It’d be interesting to see the original Bucky trying to take on a mentor role, especially when he doesn’t feel like he necessarily knows himself enough to strike out on his own.

3) Mister Terrific and Grifter. One of them has a plan for everything, the other can barely figure out where his next paycheck is coming from. One of them is a super-genius, the other is a killing machine. One of them needs the other’s help…but which one?

4) Daken and Deadpool. Let’s face it, if there is one creation that has completely and totally flopped, it’s “Dark Wolverine”. The concept of an emo teenage Wolverine with daddy issues practically screams, “Hate me!” and none of the stories he’s appeared in have ever shaken that notion. So why not make him the butt of Deadpool’s jokes? A Looney Toons-style romp between two characters whose healing factors make them unkillable, one of whom is utterly insane and the other of whom makes the perfect straight man could be the first Daken comic actually worth reading.

5) Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange. Actually, how has this not happened already? I mean, you’ve got the Sorcerer Supreme and a guy struggling to keep a demon contained within his body. Doc Strange has a habit of gathering together misfits and outcasts and making teams out of them, and Johnny Blaze clearly needs a mystic mentor. This just feels like something that should have been done ages ago.

Any partnerships you’d like to see becoming the next World’s Finest? Share ’em in the comments!

(First. And then.)