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. [↩]

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.

(previously, slightly less previously)

supergp: What game would you use to introduce a young kid to boardgames, and at what age?

Start them early (and this isn’t just me espousing the hobby, incidentally – any childhood dev expert can tell you that the problem-solving and analytical skills kids can pick up by playing boardgames will go a long way in their lives). You can start playing boardgames with kids as early as two thanks to games like Go Away Monster! (among others). Animal Upon Animal is a dexterity game first and foremost but there’s strategy to be found there (enough that I have played it with adults and had fun, albeit using variant rules); Geistesblitz never, ever stops being fun either, whether you are four or sixty-four. As kids get older you can introduce them to slightly harder stuff: Liar’s Dice, Blockers! or Zooloretto or even Ticket To Ride. And then you can get them into the big-name stuff like Settlers or Carcassonne.

Evil Midnight Lurker: Have you ever killed a man in Reno just to watch him die?

Seems like a waste of a perfectly good murder to do such a thing.

A2H: Will there ever be any more Who’s Who columns? And if not, would going over the Official Guide to the Marvel Universe be a possibility?

Yes to both. I was actually working on a fairly lengthy Who’s Who entry (one of the more think-piecey ones, although I do especially want to do another Crime Tailor segment at some point and have a couple of villains in mind for that) last week and didn’t have time to finish it for that Thursday. Maybe this Thursday if everything goes smoothly. Or not. It depends.

As for the OHOTMU, probably, yes. Rex the Wonder Dog’s awesomeness is not constrained to one universe.

Mitchell Hundred: Does Armond White actually believe all the crazy shit he writes, or is he just trying to garner publicity? I’m really not sure about this.

I think Armond White is a born contrarian, and contrarians are extremely skilled at making themselves believe that the contrary opinions they hold for the sake of being contrary are also correct. Seriously, if Armond White is trying to get publicity, there are much easier ways to do it than by arguing that latter-day Michael Bay films are unrecognized works of genius.

Nicodemus: If you were a flavor of soup, what flavor would it be?

Presumably “mangled flesh” flavour.

Jonathan: Do you have any opinions/insights into the current Alberta election? Does it even have any meaning to you as an Ontarian?

Yes. I said on MetaFilter a couple weeks ago that I thought Danielle Smith – not Wildrose, Smith – represented the future of Canadian small-c conservatism because she was what it needed to be to survive (or at least pretending to be so): fiscally radical-conservative and socially liberal/libertarian. Youth polling in Canada – even in Alberta – makes it quite clear that social conservative positions are wildly unpopular with young voters and that is only trending downwards. Libertarian-conservatism is really the only way for conservatism to truly survive in Canada over the next fifty years, and Danielle Smith was trying to sell Wildrose as being that.

The problem, of course, is that Wildrose was actually chock-full of the usual old white Reform Party psychotics who have always been the backbone of Canada’s far right and once it became obvious that this was the case, the moderates and youth that might have considered voting Wildrose suddenly found they weren’t so interested in voting for Canada’s religious right and went for the Progressive Conservatives, who have moved to a decidely centrist position over the past few years. So generally, I’m quite happy with the results, as Alberta politics seem to have shifted from all-right-wing-all-the-time to a centrist/conservative fight, and that’s a leftward shift in the most conservative province in Canada.

KD: Nearly a year in, what are your thoughts on the DcNU?

I’m reading I, Vampire and that is pretty much it (and I don’t know how long I’ll hang on to reading it). The Nu52 basically killed DC for me – the emotional attachment that I always had to the DCU is still there, but it’s strictly to the old DCU and not this shitty new EXTREEEEEEME version. Really, most of the Nu52 comics are just appallingly bad, and the ones that aren’t are crossing over with the bad ones far too often. But at the end of the day, it’s not about quality but about the fact that my DC comics, the ones I grew up with, have been mostly discarded for something else. Even if they were good comics, I still wouldn’t want to read them, because without the emotional tie they lose all resonance for me. I mean, I’m not even reading Legion of Super-Heroes! This is the first time basically ever that I am not bothering to read Legion. It just feels weird for me to type that, but it’s true.

And look – DC has greatly increased their sales, so good for them, I suppose. But it’s not for me any more. I used to dream of writing for DC; I don’t any more, because it’s quite clear that even if I could get past their abominable treatment of creators (and I don’t think I could), it’s just not a place I’d want to work now.