And I'm sure Rene isn't trying to be misleading or push an agenda or anything. I'd say it's just a difference of opinion in what the word "protagonist" means. I'd say that the Fantastic Four has four protagonists; someone else might say it has no protagonists, because it doesn't have a single main character; some might even say Reed Richards is the protagonist, because every story must have one and only one protagonist, so in a team book it's the leader or the character who gets the most screen time.

My first encounter with the X-Men was due to their animated show and my first American comics were X-Men and Spider-Man in the mid-late 90's ("the shitty era", if you want), and I still became comic book lover and read X-Men and Spider-Man books to this day. So at least I give that era the benefit for hooking me with the medium (I did read comics back then, but not in English or superheroes) and Marvel.

Still, I won't remember any of the stories as the ones on top of my favorites list, perhaps with the exception of Dezago and Wieringo's Spider-Man.

I’m betting that there will only be 4 female protagonists in the top 100.

"- 2 run have female protagonists (Strangers in Paradise, Alias - 197 pts)"

While only two have exclusively female protagonists, plenty of the other books on the list do have female protagonists. All the team books do, and a few (NextWave, New Mutants, Excalibur, and some incarnations of the X-Men that I know of; I don't know about some of the others) have more female than male protagonists. And Toy Box, Dizzy Cordova, Mina Murray, and Rene Montoya are clearly central characters in their books most of the time (Dizzy tends to fade in and out and I honestly have never read Gotham Central so I can't say how much time Montoya gets compared to the other characters, but I'd argue Mina was the main protagonist of LotG and Toy Box was the POV character for Top 10).

Which isn't to say that the list isn't dominated by male characters; it clearly is (and I know Rene just pointed it out and didn't decry it as sexist or anything). I just think it's overstating the matter to say that only two books have female protagonists. Like counting the number of books with child protagonists and discounting Lone Wolf and Cub because one of them is an adult.

The thing that is so great about thier run is they are able to include things that, when used lazily are horrendus. In the aforementioned 471 we get an appereance of Ace the Bathound and your left thinking Batman having a dog is the coolest idea ever.

Also, I know I had that Fantastic 4 run on my list at some point, I just can't remember if it ended up there.

The thing was Marvel came out with semi-serious characterization , and took the whole thing seriously when Batman et el were still behaving like the Adam West TV show.

Marvel was better at attracting and/or keeping the artists whose styles appealed to the adolescent male mindset (see: Jim Lee) in the '80s and '90s. Even though Suicide Squad, Green Arrow, and the Levitz & Giffen Legion were better written and technically better drawn than X-Men, the heavily-detailed, violent world of Marvel's mutant titles caught the attention of pre-teen and teenage boys in the '80s. That's my take on the possible Marvel bias, anyway.

I didn't submit anything to the list, but 100 Bullets would have been my number one pick.

To me it reads more like a Noir version of the Wire (the acclaimed HBO series). Not so much in the story or plot, but the format. Watching one episode of the Wire doesn't make you love the show. Its much slower paced and detailed than a typical "drama" on TV. But the story and the connections build and unfold over time and the more you watch it, the more you're drawn in. And when things are revealed you can piece together what happened in the past and see it as a logical progression.

Now, some of 100 Bullets confused me. But it's a build to reveals. Some of the things that were confusing, now make sense given what's happened over time. Some of the other things remain confusing but we're seeing the pieces fall into place and I'm pretty confident over the next 12 issues they will be resolved.

100 Bullets has an ending point, remember. Azz isn't going to give away too much as he builds to it. I get the single issues but it does read better in trade (or by re-reading the arcs when they are done). I think the great thing that I love about 100 Bullets is that I can re-read it and learn new things or pick up new things each time.