Drunken Comics Rage

And we have arrived!  The Monkey reveals his eagerly awaited (in an "Are we done yet?" sorta way for DCR readers, I'm sure) Tier 1 favoritest heroes!

Part 1 of "An Exercise in Hero-ity" laid out our ground rules.  Each DCR drunken contributor would ponder their favoritestest heroes, then list them out in tiers.  Each tier should have a small max number…say 3 or 5…to force hard decisions and interesting discussion.  The exercise was fun and wasted enough time we thought we'd share.  Sadly the other fellows in DCR struggle with rules, reading comprehension, and general laziness, so there's no telling what you'll get from those heathens.  My Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of An Exercise in Hero-ity were unveiled to much jeering the last three weeks; here, today, finally, I'll reveal my Tier 1, all-time, world class, superduper favoritest guys.  Gear up for a letdown.

Daredevil
Colossus
Thor

Before I get started, now that I've revealed the members of the coveted Tier 1 list, I can share this little nerdy anecdote. A few years ago, I was cooking up a super team for some ol' superhero PC game…Freedom Force, I believe…with Daredevil, Colossus, Havoc, Nova, and maybe Iron Man. Had I any artistic ability at all, I would draw that group standing around in various poses over and 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.  Boy, if I could only draw.  Or write.  Or speak coherently.  *ahem*  Moving on…

This tier was the easy, no-brainer one for me.  There's a big ol' gap between these three and everybody else…although I do have to admit that Thor is a slight step down from the others. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Anyway…so why these three?

I suppose Colossus was my first 'favorite' dating back to my X-men collecting days.  (I used to subscribe to Marvel comics through the mail…they’d show up in those little brown wrapper sleeves.  Uncanny X-men, Avengers, and G.I. Joe if you can believe that.  How did Snake Eyes not make my tiers?  Great question.  COBRA!)  I've always been a strong-guy fan, as has become apparent for those slogging through my tiers, and for whatever reason the whole organic-steel thing struck me as pretty damned cool.  It’s a shame to me that they've essentially only ever used him as a whipping boy.  So many memories and visuals for me with Colossus.  I remember Colossus ripping the engine from the moving car…stuck in his armored form and getting lessons on controlling his great strength from Wolverine by washing dishes…holding up any number of burning buildings from the inside…dragging the Brood, Brickbat, from the rubble of a building that had collapsed on them during a scrap…snapping the neck of Riptide…smashing through the defenses of the X-Mansion while under the mind control of, umm, someone.  And many, many more, too many to mention.  And the personal stuff…his love for Kitty, the loss of his sister and brother, and his ‘turn’ to the side of Magneto.  And this doesn’t even touch on the events of his ‘death’ and rebirth, or of Ulti-Colossus, which I’ve left largely unread.  Although what little I have read included a short bit with the Ulti-X’s and the Ultimates apparently facing off briefly, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. (I’ll say that was it) guy radioing to another that “Things are ok out here, although the big metal guy has been kicking Thor’s ass around the parking lot for the last ten minutes.”  Good times, although that raises my longstanding criticism with the Ulti-verse: SHOW ME THE FUCKING FIGHTS.  Gah.  The individual scraps are too short in presentation: show me the punching! 

It has been very satisfying to see Daredevil both gain popularity and critical acclaim over the last several years.  I don't remember getting my first DD book, but I sure have a crapload of them now.  My enduring image of DD is him taking on all comers, against great odds; getting the crap kicked out of him, winning the day, and crawling back in his apartment window, half beat to death.  The next night he rolls out of bed, tapes up his ribs, and heads back out to Hell's Kitchen.  Awesome stuff.  Dude has had a pretty rough time all the way around.  So much pain from all the women in his life.  Such deep history with Bullseye and the Kingpin.  I love the recurring theme of him walking into Kingpin’s building, kicking the crap out of his security, just to remind Kingpin he could do it, any time he wanted.  His relationships with Spiderman, with Doctor Strange, with Ben Urich…great stuff.  And of course Stick and Stone and breaking ninja bones.  Tell me that Daredevil scrapping with like 19 Hand ninja at one time isn’t an enduring image? And more than any hero that comes to my (feeble) mind, fighting to keep his identity secret, and to keep his ‘real life’ in order.  They all go through it, it seems…but what other character has an arch-nemesis who fully knows his identity (Kingpin) yet through a warped, twisted mix of honor and respect and revenge keeps it largely quiet?  Pretty remarkable and compelling to me.  He has been an every-man hero, of sorts, with problems that struck me as more ‘real’ than many others…whatever that might really mean.  Of course it helps that I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of DD stories, so that can tend to make one feel that character is a bit deeper than others, eh?  Ah well, let’s not let fact get in the way of opinion.  Although one fact is that the movie was terrible and shall never be spoken of again.  At least it spawned the Elektra movie, which wasn’t terrible (perhaps because I was so less emotionally invested), and frankly I could spend a lot of hours watching Jennifer Garner do karate stuff.  MMMMmmmm.  Wait, what were we talking about? 

Thor…is Thor.  I loved mythology growing up…I swear I spent hours reading through the Dungeons and Dragons Deities and Demigods book…so Thor was an obvious target for me when I picked up Avengers way, way back when.  I've always felt Marvel wasn't huge on having uber-powerful dudes casually walking around in their universe, but I appreciated that generally Thor has been portrayed as a serious heavy hitter.  There has been some awesome imagery with Thor over time…just do a Google image search on him to see some of that.  There are any number of Thor-and-lightning scenes, Thor spinning hammer, Thor rearing back to throw hammer, Thor in various crazy armor, etc.  Oddly, I remember Thor trying to break the mountain in Secret Wars to free everyone huddled under Hulk as Hulk held the whole bloody thing up…a scene really more about Hulk and Richards and Iron Man, but still it is Thor that comes to my mind.  I remember a silhouetted Thor bringing a storm to quench a fire at Cap’s behest in a Daredevil issue with an ex-super-soldier gone wrong.  Not to mention…Beta Ray Bill, who apparently is in the current flavor of Alpha-Omega-Gamma Flight, which pretty much makes the purchase of that collection a lock for me at some point.  And Thor, sadly but predictably, being taken down by Superman in an Avengers/Justice League team up from a few years ago.  Ah well, I saw it coming.  I also got a big chuckle out of Civil War conveniently not including the real Thor (err, clone-robot-thing aside…although I was glad to see Hercules give that thing a HERC SMASH!) and Hulk…two Big Guns that sure might have removed some suspense had they landed on one side or another.  I’m eagerly awaiting the hardback collection of the new Thor series…Thor apparently becoming THOR again, although with JMS moving on, I wonder how long that vision will last…it’s a real challenge sometimes holding out, but I luvs me the collections.

And…I’m done, perhaps with more whimper than bang.  This was a lot of fun for me, actually.  I did it in several waves…came up with the guys, wrote a little bit, thought some more, wrote a little more, remembered a scene I forgot, wrote a little more.  Interestingly, I didn’t come up with guys I’d forgotten, or move guys around in the tiers…although I gotta admit some waffling on Moon Knight…my initial thoughts on the heroes that really resonated with me seem to have been pretty dead on.  At least until the DCR folks are gathered around drinking and talking comics again soon and someone brings up a hero I forgot…and then I’ll slap myself, and maybe Ghost for good measure.  Until then…

Filed under: General Comics Rage, Monkey Rage