Comic Book Resources

ha ha, Xavier sucks

Magik? Really? When was she popular?

Halfway through, Magik was in the TOP FIFTY!!!

Then she got, like, three more votes the rest of the way.

That’s why I was so pleased at the strong voter turnout.

Man, if the Siege Perilous never existed, Psylocke might have been in my top 10.

Magik beat Captain Britain?!?! Come ON now!!!

Seriously. Where are the Captain Britain Fans??? Alan Davis! Jamie Delano! ALAN freakin’ MOORE! What more do you need?

Ah, there’s my #1 Marvel choice. Good to see that two of my fellow readers rank Longshot as highly. I’ve always found him to be a really fun character with a great set of abilities. It’s a pity he’s been so underutilized.

Also cool to see Cannonball on here. Another one of my favorites.

Wow, it’s funny how these lists have sometimes broken down into thematic blocks of five. This is a mutant block, I guess. Cheers for Longshot finally showing up. He was #2 on my list behind Spider-Woman, who herself showed up awfully low. I guess I my favorite Marvels are a little too niche.

Magik? Really? When was she popular?

The 80s, I suppose.

That Longshot cover is hot.

Am I the only one who hasn’t seen people clamoring for the return of magic for the past 10 years or so? She has a huge following… which I never understood either.

Welcome to the X-Ghetto friends.

I can’t believe I thought Professor Xavier was going to be in the top 5.

Claremont really knocked himself out with that Buscema-drawn Magik mini. It’s a beautiful piece of writing. Simonson took the ball and ran with it, too. Looking back, I guess she was the New Mutants’ version of Phoenix and so she, too, had a built in shelf life.

I can’t believe it. No Rick Jones? He’s behind Speedball? And Squirrel Girl? Wow.

Longshot rules. Glad to see there’s others out there that like him. And glad to see that even though he tied Prof. X, he got one more #1 vote. So that’s the tie-breaker, in my mind.

“Man, if the Siege Perilous never existed, Psylocke might have been in my top 10.”

Mine as well. Surprised that Xavier came so low though. He was interesting at one point. Maybe pre-Onslaught?

There has to be a word for a story that wrecks a character so completely that every attempt to salvage him or her has to involve a futile attempt to re-interpret it. Just about any story that can plausibly be referred to as a “Dark X” story automatically qualifies.

The weird thing is, I don’t think it was the Siege Perilous that destroyed Psylocke as a character. It was that after that storyline, nobody quite knew what to do with her. She went from being prime telepath to random ninja babe, but traces of her personality hung on for a year or two. I’d say that despite the dumb cheesecake she was still a fairly viable character up until Sabretooth gutted her.

After that, instead of giving her motivations they just gave her new powers. Which sucks. The Psylocke of the 1980s is one of my favourite characters ever. The Psylocke who Chris Claremont is writing now just sucks.

I still voted for her anyway. But then, I gave Jubilee ten points, and she still hasn’t appeared.

“The weird thing is, I don’t think it was the Siege Perilous that destroyed Psylocke as a character. It was that after that storyline, nobody quite knew what to do with her.”

This is exactly what I mean by “destroyed”. )

I had a cool looking Magik toy once, if I made my list based on coolness of individual toys she would have made my top ten.

Other than Longshot I don’t think any of these choices would have even been considered for my top ten list.

A favorite Longshot scene is in the Atlantis Attacks crossover the X-Men have to find mystic doodads and the team Longshot is on has to find a rock in a field of rocks. While the rest of the team is bitching he just starts picking up the rocks one by one. Ever since then I’ve had a soft spot for Longshot.

holy x-list batman. I’d wondered if the sheer number of x-characters had split there vote and I think this is certainly indicative of that. There were 24 x-characters on the Marvel list (almost a third of the list). The only portion of this list that comes close is Avengers with over 20 characters, and many of those are not primarily known as Avengers (such as Spiderman, Invisible Woman, etc).

It is also interesting that after several entries in the 60′s where the two lists were within a point or two, Marvel is again falling behind.

It is also worth noting again that the list is really tight. Everything lower than #38 has had less than 10 points above the next position.

The Marvel hate of villains continues with only 11 in the top 75. There were only 3 villains between 50 and 75. Also, an argument could be made that many of those (like Venom, Thanos, Punisher, Deadpool, and Magneto) were actually heroes at some point. (Some of those arguments would be really stupid.)

Magik is one of the greatest characters within Marvel. Like a lot of us, part of my love of her comes from the fact that she was one of the first characters I encountered (I started reading comics with the New Mutants). However, there were several times in the first few years when I was ready to drop New Mutants in favor of other things and it was my love of Magik that kept me coming back every time. She was a flawed character with only limited control of an incredibly cool power. Who wouldn’t want to be able to teleport through time and space? She possessed incredible magic, but couldn’t use it for much in the real world. She ruled her own world, but it was a horrible twisted and evil place. Her conflicts with teammates not for her actions but because they knew that she was capable of true evil, only seemed stronger since she never did actively act against them. Her internal struggle to act heroically when she already knew she was damned strongly resonated with me as a teenager and still do. She had an amulet that showed 3/5ths of her soul was corrupted and I waited expectedly for the day when she opened it up to discover that the good in her soul was strong enough that the percentage had dropped to 1/2. The culmination of Inferno for me had a lot more to do with Ilyana’s redemption than (yet another) giant x-popsicle. Still, with her reduced to a child, there was plenty of room to bring her back. Then they killed her off (in a classic “refrigerator” scene) with the Legacy virus and it really worked to drive home the depth of danger that posed.

I’ve been waiting for her return patiently. I’ve picked up several mini-series over the years, but always been disappointed that it was time travel tricks or imposters instead of Ilyana Rasputin’s triumphant return. Sadly, she’s returned in Exiles and New X-Men, two titles in which I don’t really have any other interest. Still, I’ll be picking some of it up in trades to see if the Ilyana I love is back.

I encountered Longshot in the FF/X-Men mimi of the ’80s, and became a big fan. His solo mini remains a favorite, and the 1997 one-shot, by DeMatteis & Zulli, should have led to an ongoing book.

I’m surprised Cannonball wasn’t higher. There’s a certain generation of fan that he really, really appeals to.

I wholeheartedely agree with the silliness of Psylocke after the Seige. I was disgusted that she was turned into a bony asian ninja. Broken character indeed. “Elf With A Gun” her and ger it over with.

I don’ tknow how Cannonball’s powers developed, but I’m going to go out on a limb here: Gladiator smeared him.

I always thought Longshot was great. He oughta break free of the X-titles and get some crediblity. Because Art Adams, that’s why.

Prof X being so low doesn’t surprise me too much. He’s been a self rightous, idealistic, arrogant, pompus, butt-wipe since he’s existed. Why the kids followed him after they grew up is beyond me. He’s thoroughly unlikeable as a person.

“I don’ tknow how Cannonball’s powers developed, but I’m going to go out on a limb here: Gladiator smeared him.”

I think that was back when Cannonball was still an X-ternal, so I think it was a brief fight ending in a standstill.

Actually,

Cannonball won that fight, if I remember right, and not because he was an X-Ternal.

He just refused to quit and refused to quit and eventually Gladiator’s confidence level snapped at the fact that this little whelp wasn’t going down and his powers started to turn off.

Magik’s story was wonderful in New Mutants. The only character Simonson didn’t completely botch.

This page seems somewhat X-Men heavy.

And help- I’m having trouble finding where Dane Whitman has shown up. Because he’s one of Marvel’s 10 best characters, so I’m sure he’s in the top 75 somewhere. Where?

I guess I never really thought about it, but is Psylocke the only character to go through the Seige and actually be reborn completely different, the way they were warned would happen to them?

I know that Storm came out the other side as a child. But, that didn’t last.

I’d go dig out my back issues, but I’m too afraid that re-reading them will only reveal to me how they weren’t really as good as I remember them.

Theno

Storm never went through the Siege Perilous. She was turned into a child after an attack by Nanny and the Orphan Maker. I’m not sure how she ended up in New Orleans.

Similarly, it wasn’t the Siege Perilous that transformed Psylocke. It just deleted her memory. It was Matsu’o (Japanese ninja boss who killed Mariko. Wolverine used to cut another piece off him every year or so, in a spirit of ‘revenge is a dish best kept lightly simmering while the anticipation builds up’ way), Spiral (Longshot’s evil ex) and the Mandarin (yeah, the Iron Man villain. This was the Acts of Vengeance crossover) who actually body-swapped/merged/whatever her.

Really? Prof. X tied with Longshot for freakin 73rd place? WTF

Cannonball did win that fight. He was invulnerable while blasting, though Gladiator did kick him around a little.

But Gladiator’s powers are partly confidence based, and Sam took one of his punches without batting an eye, and this rattle Gladiator enough for his powers to falter for a second. Sam then hit him with a “rocket-punch” and sent Gladiator sprawling.

The rest of the X-Men then showed up and the fight was over.