Thanks to my cousin Elwood, who discovered comic books a couple of years before me, one of the first superheroes I was exposed to was Carol Danvers. (For the minutiae-obsessed, it was the Marvel Team-Up issue where she first wore her black lightning-bolt uniform.) Some decades later, both Carol and I have graduated to more adult activities, in that she’s now Captain Marvel and I’m…
…still a nerd talkin’ comic books. A concerted push to bring Carol Danvers to the forefront of the Marvel Universe began right around the turn of the century, and frankly, it hasn’t always been successful. (Right around the ‘House Of M’ crossover, I really disliked both the character and the creative team behind her adventures.) Now, after a series of really good stories, an upcoming big-budget solo outing, key positions in the Avengers AND in the Ultimates (and also the first uniform in her history that really works on all levels) I am officially a member of the Carol Corps, leading us to today’s mind-changing query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) just couldn’t get into the Brian Reed version of Carol Danvers, but have found her to be one of the most fascinating Marvel heroes of the last five years, asking: Which character in your favorite stories wasn’t initially a favorite, but eventually grew on you the most?
5 Comments
Hmm, I would have to say Cyclops. As a kid, I saw him boring and uptight while Wolverine was the cool guy. As I grew older, I started to appreciate levelheadedness and leadership of Cyclops while my view of Wolverine has deteriorated. All in all, I’ve come to appreciate responsible and thoughtful leaders more over brash, weird drunken uncles.
I’m gonna say superman. I used to find him really generic and boring, basically a walking stereotype of a hero. But pretty much after reading Gods Among Us I began to like him. Nowadays I’ll enjoy a superman comic just as much as the next guy.
Han Solo. As a very young kid (no older than 2 or 3 years old), I didn’t see the appeal of “some jerk pilot” with no powers and was only really interested in Han because he had an awesome best friend. Then I got a little older and really started to appreciate Han’s role in the story and his growth from a selfish jerk who only cared about himself to a changed man who put others ahead of himself (at least in the older cuts of the film series before they tried to “improve” it). Now he’s my second favorite character in the original trilogy after Chewbacca.
I have to go with Kitty Pryde. Growing up, I loved (and still love) Kurt Wagner and Piotr Rasputin in both X-Men and Excalibur, but Kitty initially annoyed me. As I continued reading, I started liking her more and more. Now, she’s one of my favorite characters (but I can’t stand Bendis writing her).
I want to back you up on Carol Danvers. I read Major Spoilers and listened to the podcasts for years without buying comic books, but then I picked up the first trade in the DeConnick run. I was hooked, because the comic book was fun yet still adult. It felt like a true feminist movement in Marvel’s comics. Hearing about her backstory and some of the terrible things writers did to her makes me not want to find those back issues, but the current run really helps me understand why Kamala Khan wants to be Carol Danvers.
In another form of pop culture, I propose Blackwall from Dragon Age Inquisition. He seems like such a noble, boring straight-forward character (much like Grant Ward in Agents of Shield), but turns out to have a much greater complexity.