Which story arc best captures the essence of a given superhero or team?

Cafe Society
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Can I just say that, in my opinion, the Watchmen are best encapsulated in the 12-issue miniseries Watchmen?

:smiley:

OK, but not entirely facetious. I mean, these guys came out of nowhere and after one single story in which it seemed like half the time was spent on that pirate-comic thing going on in the background, they all seemed fully articulated and defined, to the extent that a bunch of sad geeks on the Internet (nope, none of those around here, no siree) could spend ages arguing the whyness of which about them to the nth degree. It’s amazing how well the whole thing tied together, or at least so I thought.

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For** X-men** I’d have to say God Loves, Man Kills. Does a graphic novel count? If I wanted to introduce someone to the comic, this is what I’d hand them.

Agree (violently nodding my head) on Born Again * for* Daredevil. **

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Oh, for **Elektra ** - Frank Miller’s Elektra limited series.

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I learned long ago that I wasn’t enough of a comic geek to hold my own on the Dope, so I’ll choose a different medium:

Angel I’m going with the Pylea trip (last 3 episodes of season 2). Angel litterally turns into a monster, Wesley begins his descent into darkness. Lorne has mother issues. Numfar dances the dance of joy. These episodes feature the team aspect while still embracing the personal trials of it’s members.

Buffy Thinking “We didn’t learn much about Angel in Pylea?” thats because everything you need to know about Angel was between “Suprise” and “Becoming.” This arc from the end of Buffy season 2 has it all: Buffy in (emotional) pain. Angel is evil. Oz. Possession by dead lovers. Death of a major character. The 1st Buffy/Spike Alliance. And a finale that was more emotional than dying and more meaningful than saving the world.

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For the sake of consensus, I’ll post my agreements first:

Born Again: Daredevil

Batman Year One: Batman

If we count the Novel “God Loves, Man Kills” I’ll vote for that, perhaps the best
X-men story ever written-- otherwise, I’ll go with the very old, but very definitive X-men 57-59 By Thomas and Adams. It truly laid the emotional and thematic groundwork for everthing that follwed. It was the second major Sentinels arc.

“Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” is the definitive Superman story.

My own thoughts:

I’m thinking the current GL or just finished GL Resurrection of Hal Jordan as GL is probably going to be the closest thing to a definitive GL story we’ll get

Green Arrow – Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters is probably the most honest and complete portrayal of an often overlooked and maligned character – and definitive.

The Englehart Run on the Avengers was probably the best overall arc – since is was driven by Kang, though not central to all issues. To be specific 141-143 capped it and capped it well. cite I believe it really proved that the greatest heroes of our time gathered to face a common threat and also showed them as a team to not be infallable.

The Terra Arc in New Teen Titans really spoke to the heart and composition of the “Titans” and is probably the best example of them. It begins in Issue 30 and continues through Annual #3.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

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JLA: Most of the pre-Crisis adventures are overlooked in favor of what’s happened since. I’ve only read a few – but for all the nostalgia about JSA/JLA team-ups I think the Pre-Crisis adventure that best defines the League is the one where the JLA first met and battled the Justice Syndicate of America, simply because by meeting their ideological opposites they are more sharply defined by what they are not, and could never be. Similarly the animated JL cartoon best defined the League with the two-part **Justice Lords ** episode – that single story has been the engine driving several other JLU storylines since.

Among the more current adventures the one that best succeeds in defining the Big Seven JLA is “New World Order” when they reformed to defeat the White Martians in the Morrison-penned relaunched JLA 1-4: After years of JLA being in the hands of second and third tier characters and the “Bwah ha ha ha!” excesses of the Giffen era, everything was suddenly BOLD and DIRE and EPIC again. This story arc launched the Prep-Time Batman, J’onn as the Heart of JLA, Wonder Woman as the Warrior Spirit, Superman as its conscience, Flash as the Go To Man, Green Lantern as The Fearful Learner and Aquaman as the first credible Sovereign Leader of its oceans. All the big-event Morrison and Waid storylines that came after – **Rock of Ages, World War III, DC One Million, Babel ** – only succeeded because this storyline laid the groundwork. RUNNER-UP: JLA #8-#9, the two part story featuring VR, the Key and Connor Hawk using his dad’s trick arrows for the first time.

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Avengers: Busiek’s first three or four issues, where they pull in the whole team to go after Morgan LaFey.

Daredevil: The current run by Bendis beats hell out of anything Miller ever wrote, although I guess it counts as five or six story arcs. The second one, where an FBI agent outs Murdock to some tabloid, may be the best.

X-Men: The first Hellfire Club/Dark Phoenix storyline, culminating in Jean’s death on the moon. Everything they’ve done since–and I include the Whedon and Morrison stories here–is coasting on the momentum of that storyline.

Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage and the Fish that Ate Paris. Everything else Morrison did was just weird crap for its own sake, and all subsequent DP stories were published in error.

Blackhawk: As much as I enjoyed the Chakin stuff, and as fondly remember3ed as the Reed Crandall and Chuck Cuidera stories were, the character was never in better hands than when Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle helmed it.

The Badger: The very best stories for Norbert were the ones Bill Reinhold drew, and the best of these–the Badger story to end them all–was Hexbreaker. It really summed up everything we needed to know about Badger and Ham, and it introduced Mavis Davis.

Human Torch: Has there ever been a more thoroughly dissed, dismissed and underrated superhero than Johnny Storm? Byrne consistently showed him as a slow learner butt monkey (although his marriage to Alicia was handled pretty intelligently). But there is one story where he proved his worth beyond the shadow of a doubt, and did it in the most believable of terms. During the Claremont/LaRocca run on the book, Roma (a cosmic entity who fancies herself to be just this short of God) kidnaps Franklin, because he’s too powerful to run around unchecked. Any other writer would have had Reed or Sue get him back, but Claremont did it the hard way: He had the task fall to Uncle Doofus, who for once turned off the flames and relied on moral suasion and good common sense.

Nobody but me ever liked this run on the title, but Claremont earned extra props for this one. And LaRocca’s art was never better than on this book.

Archie: Pushed into a corner and forced to choose once and for all between Betty and Veronica, Archie Andrews shows what an old-school playa he is and hooks up with–Cheryl Blossom, a totally new hottie. Word up!

Hawkeye: For a little while, Hawk had a soslo series written by Steve Gerber in the front half of Solo Avengers. He encountered a vigilante killing gangbangers, who turned out to be–a little kid imitating the superheroes he sees on the news! This left Hawkeye with a very difficult problem: What to do with the kid? The answer was surprising, believable and totally in character. And unlike the Avengers West Coast title they also appeared in, Hawkeye and USAgent actually behaved like intelligent adults around each other in this storyline.

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**Krokodil. **

Daredevil. Hey, I liked Bendis’ “Out” “Underboss” and “Lowlife” – but saying they’re better than “Born Again?” I don’t think so!

Doom Patrol. I agree wholeheartedly. The one redeeming story he did after that was the one where Robotman’s new black cybernetic suit gains sentience and tries to kill Cliff’s brain.

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Miller is stronger on archetypal images; Bendis writes better dialogue.

Is that the one where the Brain and Monsieur Mallah declare their love for one another? Yeah, that was pretty good.

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Born Again is a very good Daredevil candidate. And I think your contrast between Miller and Bendis is a good one, Krokodil.

Sandman: yeah, yeah, not a superhero. But I’m going with Brief Lives, which isn’t my favorite arc (that’d be either A Game of You or A Doll’s House) but probably sums up Morpheus better than any other single collection. At that point, the character is fully developed and we’re not yet into the endgame of The Kindly Ones or The Wake. It’s-all-so-meta bonus: the whole arc is about the archetypicality of Morpheus and his kin.

Anyone have any nominations for Dr. Strange? Captain America? Iron Man? Dr. Doom?

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For Cap, it would have to be The Adventures of Captain America, a four-issue prestige format miniseries from the early '90s, by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire. It is an updating/retelling of Cap’s origin, of course set during World War II. It features Bucky and the Red Skull, as any good retro Cap story should. Maguire’s artwork is beautiful as usual (he is king of drawing expressive faces), and Nicieza tells a fast-paced story with plenty of old-school adventure serial-style thrills and chills. This would be the perfect Cap story to adapt as a movie script, and to introduce the character to new or skeptical readers.

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As for Iron Man, I say be patient and see how the first Warren Ellis/Adi Granov story arc shapes up. I’ve never been terribly interested in Iron Man, but I can’t think of a better writer to handle the character than Ellis, who is obsessed with the latest in high technology, body modification, and flawed heroes with substance-abusing pasts… all perfect aspects of a good Tony Stark/Iron Man story. I’ve only read #1 so far, but I like how he brought Stark into the present, setting his origin during an unnamed Middle Eastern conflict as opposed to the Korean War. The flying sequences, gorgeously rendered by Granov, really communicated the sense of wonder that a flying hero and his audience should be feeling, decades after everyone and their mother in comics could fly. This is what an Iron Man movie should feel like, slick and sharp, humming with new tech and the limits of what man and science can achieve when working together.

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For Dr. Doom, my favorite story was when he crossed paths with Arcade and the X-Men back during Chris Claremont’s run on The Uncanny X-Men. Von Doom may be evil by our standards, but he thinks he’s a hero.

The graphic novel where Dr. Doom and Dr. Strange teamed up against Mephisto was a pretty good showcase of both characters.

For Thor, Walt Simonson’s run was pretty good. Simonson actually read Norse mythology. (And the “Frog of Thunder” episode was hilarious.)

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Supreme: Story of the year, by Moore, is an interesting piece. It’s the Superman story. Sure, it says Supreme on the cover. Little things are slightly off, uniforms and villains and such. But reading it you know it is Supes. The way he carries himself, the things he does. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow was brilliant, but it serves more as a bridge from the Silver age to the post Watchmen mess.

Story of the Year reminds you why you spent ever dime your twelve year old hands touched on the Big Blue Boy Scout.