The ILC Favourite Characters Of All Time

If we have unfinished polls, then suck it.

If Superman has gone up, how far DOWN has Batman gone? Aside from the Morrison issues, he's like a giant turd sitting in my drink.

Yay for Andrew!

Hey, the vagina dentata thread is thattaway!

But please don't post there, Zillaman might come back.

(113 points)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/29/Magrex1.jpg/403px-Magrex1.jpg

"He's been good and he's been bad but common sense he never had. During the swinging marvel sixties, nobody was more maniacal than Magneto! But he could reform at the drop of a hat to become a sincere, deep, profound, achingly deep man of immense DEPTH. But we secretly like him better when he's a gibbering freak, as Grant Morrison proved." (Vic F)

Excellent example of a villain who's ethos rather than powers makes him a great foil to the hero(es), and the subject of a grebt essay by Tom on the perils of character growth.

Greatest moment: Answering a door – "Who am I? I am power! Men call me – MAGNETO! And now – come in!" (Vic F)

Did Morrison write this stuff, or it was Claremont meddling?

Yay! The legacy continues! Onward to #1! LET NO ONE STOP US!

I think the answer lies in less short-term factors: Batman's had a pretty great run in media visibility for almost two decades now (from the Burton and Schumacher flicks through the animated series up to "Batman Begins", and of course the 60's show got shown a lot on TV, too), and then there's the Miller stuff, which might not be too popular with ILCers *these days*, but I'm willing to bet most of us went through a phase of thinking "Dark Knight Returns" and "Year One" were pretty hot shit. So between those two factors it seems pretty difficult for a comic fan not to have at least a passing fondness for Batman, while Superman has just been a lto more...avoidable.

Did anybody else have absolutely no interest in Bat/Supes comics when a child? After all the movies, tv shows, cartoons, etc., the comics always felt superfluous.

Surely! Isn't half the point of these things that they're soap operas? You follow them because you've come to hold some sort of (irrational) attachment to the characters, and even if you realize there's no reason to assume you'll be interested in what Chuck Austen does with Kitty Pryde, you've built up an affinity for Kitty Pryde following all her previous misadventures, close scrapes, and milkshake dates, and so there you are, reading a Chuck Austen book against all your better instincts.

(118 points)

http://www.localarcade.com/arcade_art/data/thumbnails/2/popeye.jpg

I guess we could make some sort of claim for Popeye to be considered the first comic superhero, but I think that's an angle of little interest. Popeye was the toughest guy around (it was a couple of years before spinach got any credit for this, and it never played a crucial part until the animated shorts played it up), and an adventurer (ha, I'd much rather draw parallels with Corto than Superman), but he didn't seek out crime or evil to fight. He wasn't a character who would profess nobility, make speeches about good and evil or anything like that, but he had the right kind of heart, albeit along with a very short temper. He was about as far from an intellectual as you can imagine, but he was generally pretty smart, and remarkably secure in himself - "I yam what I yam" is a very firm statement of individuality, although it's probably more accurate to regard it as a sign of a total lack of interest in self-examination.

It's the Popeye in the Segar strips I love: Popeye in stories that are inventive adventures, with beautifully played broad comedy, satire, great characters all the time (I love the Jeep, the whiffle hen, the sea hag, Wimpy and lots more) and they even have the famous romantic elements with Olive, a relationship that was always complex and problematical and multi-faceted. For me, the nine years from Popeye's introduction until Segar's death is the best run of daily strips ever created, by some distance (and I think Segar is one of the most important influential figures in comic history too, something that's often rather neglected), and a strong contender for the best comics of any kind ever (I guess I'd maybe put Herriman's Krazy Kat sundays above them, but it's close); and I don't know that comics have ever produced a character I like better than Popeye. - Martin

The best not superhero superhero - Pete

Greatest moment: Thimble
Theatre had been starring Castor Oyl, Ham Gravy and of course Olive for nearly ten years before, in 1929, they took a sailing trip and met this gruff, tough seaman with an entirely unique appearance and way of speaking. No one before or since (aside from parodies and homages) had muscles like that, or one eye missing or screwed up enough so it might as well be, and the pipe, face and tattoos are equally distinctive. The speech patterns are established from the first moment - asked if he's a sailor, our first sight of him has him saying "Ja think I'm a cowboy?" - Martin

20. Crazy Jane (Doom Patrol)

(119 points)

http://yukihime.com/board/crazyjane.jpg

Quite hard to search for on ILX, this lady only seems to appear as the subject of a letter from Tom Ewing to DC Comics, explaining why she needed a spanking. Half of the love story at the center of Doom Patrol, one of Grant Morrison's initial pair of assaults on everything good and DC, Jane was a multiple personality sufferer whose every personality had a different superpower.