Batman is my fave!

:wub:

Hawkman (only because I think MES likes him)
Plastic Man (see above).

I know some of these aren't strictly "superheroes"...

No!

Batman
Spider-Man
Plastic Man. -_-

Spider-man, Iron-man and Dare Devil. I'm a Marvel fanatic and collect volumes of their comics. Spoiled for choice in this poll!

Buffy.

Have you seen the Iron Man film? Any good?

Why does Spider-Man have a hyphen when Batman doesn't? What's going on?

Can't choose three. The only superhero that is remotely interesting on any level is Superman; I do think it's interesting to consider what a person could/would do when they are impervious to harm, and the various plots that can come about. Otherwise, I have to go with the too-pat-sounding opinion that no adult should care about this stuff.

Yep seen it and own it. It's one of the better Marvel films. I recommend you see it if you love the Marvel film genre BK. Robert Downey pulls it off pretty well and the plot works well in it's far fetched way.

Doc Strange - Plastic Man - Silver Surfer
[I confess for liking The Mighy Thor too]

Off the list...Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, Doc Strange. Also was a big fan of Thor and The Vision.

If we can include those not technically superheroes Strontium Dog would, obviously, time bomb all of their asses.

I lost interest in fictional superheroes once the Fantastic Four burst into my world:


Although I was rather taken with Reed Richards' greying temples.

Robin.

Yes, it's very good.

Voted Spider-Man and Batman. Currently Batman is written by Grant Morrison (the UK editions at least) and it's frankly impenetrable. I sent them a letter about it but they didn't print it.

Here it is, so you can enjoy it.

Dear Sir,

I've been reading Batman Legends for the last three years or so but lately I find myself flummoxed by the continuity. It just doesn't seem to flow from one issue to the next. For example, perhaps I'm being dense, but I simply don't understand what's going on with these 'three Batmen' that appear at random moments, taking the story off in an entirely new and incomprehensible directions. Then there were the 'Batmen of All Nations' who suddenly appeared and were being murdered in a house. Huh?

I appreciate there's not much you guys can do about Grant Morrison's writing, but perhaps some kind of re-orientating 'story so far' panel is in order? Or at the very least a link to somewhere online that will explain it for those of limited intellect such as myself. Currently the comic makes The Fountain look linear by comparison.

While I'm having a moan, you couldn't find it in your hearts to ban Superman from the comic, could you? If I wanted Superman then I'd buy a Superman comic, but I don't because I hate him; he's virtually invulnerable, where's the fun in that?

I really enjoyed the Frank Miller stuff, though: 'I'm the Goddam Batman,' has to be my favourite line of Batman of all time.

So, until... oh, sorry, that's the other lot, isn't it?

Yours,

Mrs Audrey Wetherpsoon

If you've got crimes going on underwater, then I vote for Submariner

Rorshach out of " The Watchmen " would get all of my votes.

No Havoc! :rant:

No Spider-Woman!! :rant: :rant:

No vote from the mighty unseen!!!

batman, elektra and wonder woman

elektra assassin:

Other than that, is Morrison a good writer? I read about him all the time, but I've never read anything of his.
I did once see a thing on channel 4 about him years ago, where he was talking about a system of changing reality by writing down what you want to happen and thereby willing it into action... or something. :wacko:

I think he probably is, yes.

My problem with comics is that although I'm a grown-up, I still read comics the same way I did when I was a kid. As in I don't really give a stuff about about who's writing or drawing them, I just want to see bad guys get their asses kicked. I like the simplicity of them. I don't want to be into comics the same way I'm into films or music or books. I don't want to be analysing them.

The first girl I ever kissed, I said to her, "I want to kiss you like Peter Parker kisses Mary Jane Watson."

And if I'm honest, I'm not sure I've ever moved on from that.

Wot? No Mr Incredible?

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I'm trying to vote for three and it's coming back at me as "Error." I tried to select Superman, Wonder Woman and Another.

The Another I would choose is AQUAMAN! He's the best of all.

Help is at hand should you require it.

There are councellors locally who can amend your warped attitude to personal relationships. Don't give up or think you are a freak. 0.89% of the population are proven to feel just like you, friend.

She looked at me as though I was a compete weirdo.

I said to her, "Did you hear that Pizza Hut has folded?"

She said, "No."

I said, "It's called Calzone Hut now."

She said, "Get away."

I said, "Why did Hitler kill himself?"

She said, "I dunno."

I said, "Because he got his gas bill."

She said, "You're sick, you are."

I said, "That's sick? Listen to this right, there's this wee Irish boy crying by the side of the road. A man asks "What's wrong?" The boy says "Me Ma is dead". "Oh bejaysus", the man says, "Do you want me to get Father O'Riley?" The wee boy replies, "No thanks Mister, sex is the last ting on me moind roight now."

She said, "You're sick, you are. A fuckin' wrong un"

She's now my wife.

She still beats you though

;)

I said to her, "Why do Marxists only drink herbal tea?"

She goes, "I dunno..."

I said, "Cos all proper tea is theft."

She was mugged

I said to her, "What does Dr Who eat with his pizza?"

She said, "I dunno."

I said, "Dalek bread."

I'm partial to Power Girl...

Me and a friend had a good ten minutes one night giggling at the word "Ward," in relation to Bruce and Dick's relationship.

Ah, you couldn't be more wrong. Superheroes are defined by their flaws and their enemies. The really good superheroes have great villains. Superman is one of the most boring character in comics as 1 - he doesn't have any flaws and 2 - as he's so superpowered he has no real villains.

The interesting characters are people like Batman and Spider-Man, terrific villains in both and interesting personal lives. What does superman do in his spare time? Fly to the fortress of solitude and wank off (as if he ever had sex with any earth woman his sperm would kill her)?

Stan Lee created the best superheroes in conjunction with Ditko, Kirby, Romita and so on. DC heroes tend to be too powerful, where as the Marvel ones are not invulnerable, or have all-powerful power rings, etc.

I'm with Duckpin on Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer - two brilliant characters.

I REALLY REALLY love Black Bolt as well. Cool guy.

Spider-man would be my fav though.

A lot depends on the wroter of course, boring heroes can come to live sometimes. A good example would be Frank Miller's run on Daredevil.

I'm trying to think of some modern heroes who could make this list. The Authority was great, and the Apollo/Midnighter relationship was a good twist on the Superman/Batman thing. And Planetary was brilliant as well.

I think pointing that out was what got my letter spiked. :(

Brian Bendis is great with "Ultimate Spider-Man" the art and storylines are brilliant for the modern age. Mary-Jane even wore a "Shins" t-shirt in one of the panels. Gets my vote!

Right, but I was just being the contrarian arsehole in the thread :devil:

But what I said really is my view about superheroes. If I want to read something interesting about a flawed character, I'm more inclined to go for a book without pictures. I can't fathom interest in superheroes *except* in the hypothetical intellectual puzzle about what kind of challenges could be presented to someone who is essentially invulnerable.

Edit: 1. I think that view is somehow related to the fact that the "invisible man" is an evergreen plot. 2. My view might just be an elaborate rationalizatin for the fact that the only superhero stories I ever went for (not counting the campy Batman TV series) were the Superman shows from 1950s American TV.

Captain America

How can you say DC characters are "too powerful" and at the same time praise a Marvel character like Silver Surfer, who's so powerful he can destroy whole galaxies?

Superman is less powerful than Silver Surfer! Superman can't destroy galaxies, and is in fact is rendered totally useless by merely throwing a green rock in his face (kryptonite.) Any villian who wants to hurt him doesn't even need a special power to do that. I disagree with you, I think Superman is really great...not as great as Aquaman who's the best hero of all time but he's still great and really interesting. A space alien from a destoyed planet raised by humans? Wow! As for him having no cool villians, I think Bizzarro is one of the most interesting villians of all time, his weird cracked look (stolen for by Marvel for "the Thing" btw) and his crazy "Me am Bizzarro" way of speaking. And what about Mr. Mxyzptlk? (What a great name) Mxyzptlk is easily JUST as interesting as any Spider-Man villian like Green Goblin, whom I regard as Spider-Man's most exciting villian. The only villian of Superman that I think is boring is Lex Luthor, who, unfortunatley in the most frequently used villian.

Marvel's Dr. Strange is pretty powerful too, certainly more powerful than DC's Batman, who has no superpower at all. No, I really don't think DC heros are too powerful. They do have more interesting powers though! Many of the early Marvel heroes just copied the powers of DC and other comic book company's heroes, or else they were just rip offs from other, non-comic book sources like Thor and Medusa were lifted from ancient myth, and Dracula was um, just Dracula.

For example did you ever notice the elastic body of the Fantastic 4's Captain Fantastic was just a rip off of Plastic Man's power? Marvel's The Sub-Mariner was a direct rip off of DC's way better hero Aquaman (the best superheor ever). Ant-Man was a rip off of the Atom. Man-thing was a rip off of Swamp-Thing. The Angel was a rip-off of Hawkman. Captain America is just a male rip-off of Wonder Woman, at least in his looks. (And another thing, Marvel has few interesting women heroes compared to DC's, with the exceptions of the female X-Men like Phoenix, Storm, etc.) But come on, don't ya think Black Canary is way more awesome than almost any Marvel heroine? Just look at her!



In a lot of ways, the only really original heroes Marvel came up with were probably Spider-Man, Hulk, Ghost Rider, and The X-Men, maybe Son-of-Satan, and most of the others were copies of pre-existing DC heroes. Not that they weren't good imitations and interesting in their own right.

But no super hero is better than Aquaman.

I like the Captain America because he was like Batman, an ordanary human only better but not possessing super powers.
I picked Plastic Man because I used to buy his comics when I was little and there was a lot of humor in the stories...more than the rest anyway.
There had been nothing I am aware of remotely like The Silver Surfer.

In the papers, the Phantom was another human whose guile and persona fooled people into thinking he had super powers when in fact he did not.

An artist from the UK, Barry Smith, was by far my favorite artist for Conan. He did the first 18 or so comics and didn't have Conan as some steroid freak - he was more of a sociopath who relied on guile, quickness, strength and utter lack of fear. Also, Barry Smith was lucky in that most of his comics were adaptations from the Robert E Howard stories.

batman

I've got a friend who loved comics. He was in a car crash, and I'm not sure how much he really comprehends these days, but if you ask him who would win in a fight between Captain America and The Silver Surfer, he knows. :applaud: :applaud:

I liked Silver Surfer because - at least in the comics I saw - he was always really mysterious. You could never rely on him either, so he wasn't much use. (A bit like Doc Manhattan?)

Morrisson can be a great writer and also a bit ropey (impenetrable) and sometimes as with "Invisibles" he gets the impenetrable/great writing combo balanced exactly right. I find him to be on the whole better on pre-existing and popular heroes/villains than when he is making his own up or rescuing obscure villains from the obscurity in which they languish. There have been exceptions though.

Check out his run on "Doom Patrol", that really was quite something. He is writing "Batman And Robin" at the moment and has managed to make the character of Robin somewhat interesting - a feat I would have deemed impossible- by giving him an eversoslightly psychotic edge.

As for the system of changing reality by writing stuff down, he once invited the readership of Invisibles to participate in a chaos magic ritual experiment whereby they (ok we) would all masturbate at a certain time on a certain day and therefore prevent the mag being cancelled. I couldn't figure out how this worked apropos time zones. Whacko- in several senses- but Invisibles it wasn't cancelled.

Perhaps we can do our own such experiment?

In aid of what? (I mean, perfectly willing and all that, but I've just read S King's "Everything's Eventual" and I don't want to get caught up in causing something bad to happen).