Superman and Batman are iconic. Spiderman is interesting both as a superhero and as a well developed character. The Hulk is basically just Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde.
IIRC, that wasn’t Morrison; that was Waid’s follow-up to a Morrison story, where Superman and Wonder Woman were hauling the moon around (via chains ringed up by Green Lantern) for to incapacitate rather a lot of White Martians. Morrison had previously shown Superman moving the moon back into orbit all by himself (and then wrestling an angel to a standstill), but that was a special case.
All bow before the mediocrity that is Aquaman!
Yes, for the love of God: WOLVERINE!!! Wolverine is the most overrated character in comicdom. You could not read a Marvel comic or watch a Marvel cartoon show in the 80’s and 90’s without seeing something about Wolverine. He was fucking lame!
I was always a Gambit man.
Talk about your lame characters…
And the correct answer is: Wolverine is AWESOME!
I liked that scene a lot (Nightcrawler: “I’ll get him! I’m as fast and agile as he is.” Spidey: “Not on the best day of your life, Nightcrawler [webs him up].”), but it leads to a later inconsistency. Prof X removes Spider-Man’s memory of the fight (and the revelation that led to it), but a few issues later during a major battle, Spider-Man dodges an attack from the Absorbing Man, then squares off against (and handily defeats) neophyte villain Titania, who has She-Hulk-level strength but not enhanced speed or agility.
Spider-Man: With a little room to maneuver, nobody can lay a hand on me. Not the Absorbing-Man, not the X-Men, and not you.
My fanwank no-prize explanation is that Professor X felt guilty about what he’d done and (perhaps unconsciously) restored Spidey’s memory, after the issue became moot.
As for Aquaman, the amount of ridicule the character gets disqualifies him from ever being over-rated, though I admit the treatment in the Justice League cartoons was a huge improvement (the character was unambiguously super-strong, had a noble bearing, went all hardcore by hacking off his own hand to save his infant son, etc.) and I started to kinda like the guy. His portrayal in the somewhat more comical Brave and the Bold cartoons is entertaining as well.
But he’s nowhere close to being overrated.
No. Wolverine is LAME.
He is a one-trick pony. He stabs things. That is his solution to everything. If any problem comes up, you know that Wolverine’s contribution is going to be stabbing it. Maybe with a quip. The only variant he has on that is “Wolverine suffers horrible damage, survives thanks to his healing powers, and then stabs someone.”
Furthermore, he has a severely limited number of plots that are used with him. There’s “Wolverine’s female buddy is imperiled despite being a capable person on her own, and Wolverine must save her by stabbing people”. And there’s “Wolverine discoveres his heretofore unknown secret origins… which involve other people making him stab people they don’t like, until Wolverine stabs them and escapes to stab whom he wants to instead of whom they want him to”.
If Wolverine is not involved in one of those plots, then he’s guest-starring in someone elses’s book.
Even the Hulk gets more action plots. And if he’s got Bruce Banner’s brains at the time, then he has two tricks: “Hulk SMASH”, or “Hulk realize smash somehow not working so Hulk try thinking like puny man suggests”. But that’s one up on Wolverine, at least.
Wolverine was awesome during the first Hellfire Club storyline. Which was, what, thirty years ago now?
I am prepared to say that Batman is tremendously overrated.
It was a tough choice between Superman and Spiderman, keeping in mind most of my exposure to Supes is old comics and my exposure to Spidey is newspaper comics.
Superman is just ridiculous and suddenly has new powers (super lasso!) when it’s convenient, but at least he’s a hero. Spiderman (in the newspapers) seems to spend most of his time avoiding conflict or whining about MJ making more money than he does.
But hilarious. I loved the bit on family guy where he’s out in the ocean threatning the bad guy on the beach “Oh, if you come out here you are in big trouble”
That’s not the only time Spidey has squared off against the X-Men. The earliest I can think of is in Uncanny X-Men #36 (I believe), in which a misunderstanding on the part of the X-Men resulted in Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel jumping him. They caused him a couple of moments of minor inconvenience, but were no real threat. They would have been in real trouble if he hadn’t been pulling his punches.
Granted, the author probably meant the fight that had been wiped from Spidey’s memory, but there are explanations that don’t require Xavier to undo his tampering.
They got Green Arrow to play Aquaman. This hero mixing has got to stop. THat’s like getting Deadpool to play Green LAntern. BAstards
I’d vote Batman, but he probably hacked the SDMB servers years ago and added a sleeper program to prevent him from ever being voted “most overrated” just in case a poll like this ever came up. Or something.
I missed this post before…but…yeah, Batman can be done well, even keeping him in the universe with others…
If a story’s set in Gotham, with only Gotham based co-stars (who aren’t the Birds of Prey), and the villain’s not the Joker (himself something of a Villain Sue)… Then Batman’s skills can be left reasonable, people can call him on it when he’s an excessive asshole, and an interesting story can be told, that doesn’t feel the need to tear down the guest stars.
But…having superpowered or specialized-expert costars tends to screw it up - since there’s a resistance to having the Bat not outshine everybody, so they can’t be the top in what they do, or their power can’t be necessary or even useful. There are a couple counter-examples - Batgirl and Lady Shiva are allowed to outfight him, and when Dini had [del]his wife[/del]Zatanna appear in Detective, her magic was actually useful - and managed to surprise Bruce*. But, for the most part, they’ll have him outfight Canary, show Riddler’s detective skills to be an elaborate fraud (not that they’ll need to do that any more, since the awesome Reformed Riddler concept has been thrown out), or know the information Oracle has for him already.
It’s especially annoying when he does it when HE’S the guest star.
- And even this is mostly because Dini’s got a keen interest in magic, and Zatanna’s his pet character. (And I wasn’t kidding about his wife. Look up Misty Lee.)
It’s certainly an odd name to pull out of thin air, if we assume Spidey’s memory of the recent squabble was still wiped. Among the villain’s side were the classic Spidey enemies Doctor Octopus and the Lizard. Spider-Man’s fought either of them far more often then he’s tangled with the X-Men, especially since the battle you describe only has one X-Man in common with the group from Secret Wars.
I figure a writer’s error, of course, but I like my alternate explanation better, especially since in a later issue (when the heroes debate whether or not to take on a powered-up Doctor Doom), Xavier briefly mentions that he knows what it’s like to use power insidiously, suggesting he might have been dwelling on it recently.
Wolverine isn’t overrated so much as overexposed. Wonder Woman is by far the most overrated hero. She’s one of DC’s BIG 3, but has had very few interesting story arcs.
Now, be fair. Sometimes he slashes things too.
But he drinks beer, and that makes him my kind of guy. Plus, he’s good with kids.