Sometimes, people ask me: Who’s your favorite superhero? It’s a difficult question, fraught with pitfalls for me, especially given my belief that every hero, from Matter-Eater Lad to the Silver Surfer to the PJ Masks has a valid claim for superiority. Contrary to the “LOLFail” that permeates much of superhero fandom, I could make a case that Doug Ramsey is a great superhero or Extraño of the New Guardians or even the much mocked Bouncing Boy. I believe everyone is awesome in the right light and our fictional heroes are no exception, making choosing the BEST of them all hard for me. Of course, picking is the name of the MS-QOTD game, and even I have to play by those rules, leading to today’s premiere query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is going to go with Billy Batson’s Captain Marvel during his Fawcett Comics days, but if asked tomorrow could easily say Wonder Woman, Spider-Man or even Ralph Hinkley, asking: What fictional hero constitutes your personal Best Of Them All?
4 Comments
Wow, what a question. Right now, for next five minutes it will be Optimus Prime..wait, no Ultraman!
Believe it or not, it’s Connor Hawke, but mostly because Chuck Dixon and Judd Winnick. Nobody else ever wrote him. Nope, nuh-uh.
Dick Grayson. Technically not a super, but you get me. He’s basically the Batman who had the benefit of having a Batman to see all the possibilities and branching paths in front of him, and he chose to make peace with his trauma instead of letting the trauma consume him like it did Bruce.
Dick fights crime because he’s genuinely a good dude who wants to help others because he’s been at that lowest point, as opposed to becoming a joyless, obsessive psychopath who’s thrown his whole self into a lost war he’ll never win because of something he’ll never be able to regain. In that respect he’s sorta the template for Peter Parker who didn’t really catch up to the fully formed character Pete was til the 80s as Nightwing. I’ll still take him over Peter solely for the chance to occasionally see a snarky, acrobatic Batman who’s cracking wise while still being a dark avenging badass or whatever.
Quite a challenge. Dick Grayson is indeed a fine candidate. So is, for similar reasons, Henry Pym as written by Roger Stern or Steve Englehart. Then there is Martin Pasko’s Superman. Or even Kurt Busiek’s Iron Man.
I don’t know who to choose.