Top Ten Comic Characters - 5-3
Here are the next group of comic characters who really are my favourites. They’re a quality bunch, and I think fairly varied. Though there are some similarities.
Danny Rand - The Immortal Iron Fist
I still feel that there is so much about this character that hasn’t been done yet. And I still find his interesting, when written well. Danny Rand grew up to watch his mother and father die in front of him and then spent the next decade in a crazy kung-fu alternate reality preparing for the revenge that he would mete out on their killer. He was out of the world for a decade, and he came back as a nineteen year-old kung-fu master, with a billion dollar empire, fists like unto things of iron, and the look of a young Brad Pitt. Yet he still gets down, and he took a black girlfriend and made his best friend the blaxploitation tiara-wearing Luke Cage, Power Man. In the end, you’ve gotta love a guy with the brand of Shou-Lou the Undying on his chest.
Top Moment: One would have to be at the very start of Brian K Vaughan’s Doctor Strange: The Oath where Iron Fist is sitting on a couch in the waiting room for the Night Nurse. He has some ice on his leg and says he pulled his hammy fighting some ninjas. It’s so laid back, but it’s classic.
Favourite Quote: You can’t go past the old second person use of “like unto a thing of iron.” Hence the name, man it must have been fun to write comics back in the Stan Lee day.
Bullseye - Daredevil (predominantly)
Bullseye is the only bad guy to make this list. There’s just something about him that I like. Not only does he fight Daredevil a lot, which is always cool, but he’s just an intriguing character who has been written well a fair few times. He has a wicked power, the ability to hit anything with anything, and as a kid watching his smash his face into a brick wall just so he could knock out a tooth and then spit it at a cop to kill him was the first and only thing I needed to know. Bullseye was completely bad ass. He’s killed two of Matt Murdock’s loves, but also had his ass handed to him in many big ways by DD. But he just keeps on bouncing back. He’s the Joker for Daredevil, in a way. He’s there to be the opposite, he’s there because he has nowhere else to be. He’s there to fuck shit up, and he always does.
Top Moment: Not such a great moment for Bullseye, but when he tried to mess with Milla and Murdock was waiting for it. Daredevil beat the absolute crap out of Bullseye and then carved some concentric circles into his forehead to leave as a reminder that he would always be there, and would always be better than Bullseye. Brutal and just a kick ass scene all around. It could have easily been the end of Bullseye and it would have made sense, but then we’d miss out on all the greatness that Bullseye gets up to now.
Favourite Quote: There’s actually a good line right before Kingpin sends him to get Daredevil for once and for all, Bullseye says, “I’m back to killing for fun again. And that - that’s not good for anybody. I need goals. I - I’m goal oriented.” Pretty bloody good dialogue for someone who can sometimes be written as just one sort of crazy.
Holden Carver - Sleeper
This series was one of the first things to get me back into comics because it showed me that the four coloured world didn’t have to be all about the standard supes. There were other tales to tell, in fact an infinite number of tales to tell, this was just one more medium. Sleeper is a brilliant super-noir that is all about the characters, and Holden Carver is at the centre of a great tale. He is a poignant character, a sad man stuck in a terrible situation. He is also a real man, a person who does what he can, plenty of lemonade from his lemons. He’s got a cool power, a great look, and some perfect dialogue.
Top Moment: Anytime he’s with Miss Misery is always a perverted pleasure, but the page that always summed it up for me was after he’d killed that guy with the toop-toop weapons, Tornado, or something. Carver goes off the side of the building and ends up splayed out on the concrete below. He’s in a bad state. But he’ll live through it, eventually. Nothing can end what he has.
Favourite Quote: I can’t feel this…can’t tell the difference between hot and cold. Not really…can just feel that it’s wet. (This is a great indication that Carver is one sad bastard of a character, and that he’s stuck in a noir cycle that never ends well.
Putting this list together has been interesting. It’s really shown me which characters I truly loved, and why. It’s always the writing. I don’t like someone because they have a wicked costume, or a cool power, not like I did back in primary school. Now I look at the writing and see how the character affects me. It’s kinda cool.
Next; the last two, and it’s a close one. Two great characters square off for the number one spot. I’ll birng them both, I promise.
Posted on September 17th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: comics
Leave a Reply