Drunken Comics Rage

Let's yet again recap our story to this point. In Part 1 of my "An Exercise in Hero-ity" saga, I laid out our ground rules.  Each DCR contributor would ponder their favoritestest heroes, then list them out in tiers.  Each tier needed to have a small max number…say 3 or 5…to force us to make some hard decisions and really focus our ponder-age.  The exercise was sufficiently fun and time-wasting that we decided to post our tiers so you too could have fun (umm, maybe) and waste time (definitely) reading them.Although the other fellows in DCR struggle with rules, reading comprehension, and general laziness (and hence their posts may adhere to the rules, or not, and may actually ever get posted, or not), this particular Monkey does not.  Usually.  Or at least in this case.  Part 1 also included by Tier Four heroes; Part 2 revealed the surprisingly mighty Tier Three; Part 3 today will shock and awe you with Tier Two.  Without further ado… 

Nova
Havok
Sasquatch
Moon Knight 

This took some thinking. What guys did I follow, or buy a ton of, or really have resonate with me, but would get a bullet if I had to pick between them and one of tier one? Its these guys. Moon Knight likely a step down from the others; he feels like a bit more of a nostalgic pick for me.

(I seem to recall thinking about a super team for some ol' superhero PC game…Freedom Force?…with DD, Colossus, Havoc, Nova,and maybe Iron Man. Had I any artistic ability at all, I could draw that group standing around in various poses over and over. They have all the classic stuff, right?  Scrappy dude who is basically human with no real powers, blaster guy, strong guy, guy that flies, etc.  Good stuff. )

I had no clue about Nova until New Warriors.  He was strong, a real scrapper, and kinda flawed. I dug that he went back to his crappy little messy apartment between episodes of saving the world.  I also dug that he didn't shave.  I bought into him just being a dude who ended up with a cool suit that gave him powers.  He seemed somewhat like a 'real person'. I also am a sucker for the Nova Corps/Green Lantern Corps universal guardian force thing.  The recent run of Annihilation books caught my eye for a coupla reasons, one of which was that it prominently featured Nova.  I love how that played out, with Nova leading the combined forces against the Annihilation Wave bugs, and would love it if Marvel continued making him a centerpiece.  I should also note that yet another of the Marvel Essentials that I picked up at last year's con was Nova's…it was really enjoyable, if a bit obscure.  I mean, its a pretty big drop off in the 'common comics knowledge and lore' category from the Avengers and X-men to Nova, ya know?  Still, he's a cool dude, and at this point I feel like I have been exposed to a pretty significant portion of the character's 'life'.  Nova is the one Tier 2 guy who could (and still might) make the leap to Tier 1.

My exposure and enjoyment of Havok centered mostly on his portrayal in X-Factor.  Awesome power.  A leader, although always facing up to comparisons to his brother, Cyclops.  I also loved Meltdown…I'd have never guessed a Wolverine-Havoc team up would  be interesting.  Man the goofy ass black suit with the white circles on it was bad.  But, I always dug the graphical depiction of his power: the circles around him or around his hands, the implication of massive force being unleashed.  Awesome.  He's enough of a B-list hero that I'd have to hit Wikipedia to have any idea what has been going on with him since I walked away from the monthly collection of comics lo these many years ago.  Although I have gotten a ton of the hardback annual collections for a variety of titles, I haven't managed to get around to any that actually included Havoc.  I'd really like to see him play a significant and compelling role in something, but being largely uncreative I can't fathom what it would be.  He seems an obvious candidate for one of these great event hero wipes…everybody knows him but nobody really cares, and his death would be a several month storyline for Cyclops.  Gah.

Sasquatch: I'm one of three people in the world with practically all the issues of Alpha Flight, and I'm proud of it.  Sorta.  My favorite Alpha Flight member was Sasquatch (again with the strong guy…see?).  If I couldn't turn into organic steel on demand (*ahem*) then turning into a giant sasquatch was a pretty good second choice.  Sasquatch is a character that got overly messed with in my opinion…dead, not dead, human mind, then crazy animal mind, man then woman, gah.  Just let him punch stuff and be the team's smart guy.  Hey, lookie there, it turns out I'm still bitter about all that.  I should have thought about that as another selection criteria for the tiers: an unreasonable and borderline irrational bitterness invoked and desperately clung to when dramatic changes are made to that character.  Moving on…I have a very vague old memory of a comic book somewhere/somewhen in which US Agent (heh) went out to the Forbidden Hinterlands somewhere to check out a disturbance, or a life form on the scanner, whatever.  He gets out there, and here's this doctor/professor looking dude Poking at Things and Scanning Stuff and Getting Into Shit that apparently was supposed to be None Of His Business.  US Agent tells him he's in big trouble; Doctor Walter Langowski sorta chuckles, takes off his glasses, and starts explaining to US Agent that he may have just bit off a bit more than he could chew.  I always wanted to see how that fight went, and never did.  This was obviously before they turned him into a chick.  *bitter*

Moon Knight…I feel like I bought a bunch of Moon Knight issues, but in looking at the Wikipedia entry for him there just weren't that many issues to actually buy.  I'm sure I was drawn to him initially as the obvious Batman-ripoff that he is (what? *gasp*).  I recall finding the mystical stuff to be pretty cool and feeling very different from the usual hero fare I consumed.  Plus, his costume was pretty sweet, with the big billowy cloak thing going on…although I always wondered how the white suit worked out while creeping around at night.  Oh, and hey, dude was an Avenger.  Fine, a West Coast Avenger.  Whatever.  A question: if you were writing Moon Knight, wouldn’t you be totally obligated to at least once use the word “moonarang”?  Once?  I’d have to, no question.

Next: Tier 1, or "Is he almost done? I'm glad I'm not paying for this."

Filed under: General Comics Rage, Monkey Rage