What, I’m going to be the only person that had a crush on Jean Grey? I’ve always thought that telepathy and telekinesis are the coolest powers that one could have. Jean’s generally soft spoken (and very underused in the comics, IMOSHO), but if you think about it, she’s powerful enough to take on all of her teammates combined (except maybe the Professor). But despite all that, she maintains such a soft-spoken demeanor.
And she’s a redhead.
Beyond that, I’ve also always found Psylocke to be a major-league hottie. But her power wasn’t as diverse as Jean’s.
By the way, I haven’t read any of the comics for five years or so (I stopped collecting 'em when I realized that it would get really expensive after a while). What’s been going on? The last stuff I paid paid any attention to was the Onslaught stuff and the storylines immediately thereafter.
tracer, he stopped reading after the sucking (pun, of sorts, intended). I know because I also stopped reading after Onslaught, but I’m well versed in the matter of the bone claws.
I’m a Wolvie fan 'cause he actually uses all the hostility that I tend to keep pent up. 'Course he’d probably be in prison IRL, but that’s why fantasy worlds are cool.
Oh, and because his healing factor lets him drink a lot without getting drunk. Makes for an expensive night of drinking, but at least you’d never get whiskey dick…
[sub]Man, the things you post on “anonymous” Internet message boards…[/sub]
Banshee. I think it’s the accent. Either him, or Wisdom (who loses some points for being dead).
Runner-ups: Multiple Man and Morph.
Honorable mention for most improved: Bishop. I didn’t like him at all for so long, and then when they gave him his own book, they actually gave him a personality.
Jean Grey. I started reading about the time of the original Phoenix story. She had red hair, and enough power to destroy an entire galaxy… what’s not to love there?
Runner up: Polaris. She gets my vote for the most under used/badly used character. I loved the Peter David run on X-Factor where she was allowed to be her own character, instead of somebody’s girlfriend or designated mutant kidnapping victim.
Don’t forget the blue skin, the vampire teeth, and the missing fingers! Oh, and that Spider-man-like power of clinging to walls and ceilings that he has. In the right situation, clinging can be more useful than teleportation!
Nightcrawler: teleportation, the look, his fighting style, and his sense of humor.
Collossus: His personal moral code and strength were phenominal. He went out the way a hero should: sacrificing himself to save millions. I also loved the way he could become solid steel.
Shadowcat and Wolverine are contenders, though. Wolvie loses out simply because he’s often misused by the writers.
P.S. Wolverine got his adamantium back not too long ago.
Either Iceman or Cyclops. Iceman because he’s the underachiever and the joker, not the stereotypical hero personality. On the other hand, I like Cyke because he’s always controlled and responsible, and there can be no harder job in the world than trying to give orders to Wolverine and Gambit.
Gotta say either Cyclops or Beast. I really respect Cyclops’s “Boy Scout” routine. As for The Beast, well the whole “warrior-poet-scholar” thing is just right up my alley.
Skills-Duelist, he can fence with both hands and a sword in his tail. He's an expert gymnast. In a Marvel Swimsuit Isue, Tony Stark(Iron Man) sponsored a superhero Olympics. NC beat everyone, including Spiderman, in the gymnastics event. Due to his dark fur and years of practice, he can appear out of the shadows or dissappear into them. Kurt Wagner is also an excellent dancer, favoring the classic ballroom style.
I highly reccomend his 3 issue miniseries. Nightcrawler accidentally winds up in a distant dimension and has a chance to prove what a great hero he is getting home. It's a very light hearted series. Night Crawler is cast as something of a Musketeer.
There was also an issue of Bizzare Adventures with him, Iceman and Phoenix on the cover. This came before the miniseries and was used as a prologue. Though either is great on it's own. In a splash panel, Kurt sees alternate versions of himself. One is a duck. My favorite is a picture of Nightcrawler as a woman.
In addition, I like Nightcrawler's faith. When the X-Men ought Dracula (Much better and far less cheesy than it sounds) Storm was under Dracula's spell, in both senses of the phrase. Of the remaining X-Men only 2 had sufficient religous belief to harm the Lord of Vampires. Kitty Pride fails with a huge cross, but burns Dracula badly with a Star of David. Nightcrawler causes Dracula unendurable pain with a pair of crossed twigs. Kurt has a new miniseries coming soon. The cover shows an addition to his costume, a priest's collar.
As a straight man, genetics compells me to mention my lust for the female characters. If I had to pick one, I'd go with Storm. Besides being gorgeous, she's wise, knowing, accepting, and has that great wild streak. I agree with Forge about her change of style "This only made her even more beautiful."
Tommy-Archangel metal wings eventually burst from within. This revealed that his feathered wings had regrown. Warren still has blue skin, but his wings are back to white feathers.
Some of the posters here have chosen some of the most despicable characters as their favorites. If you were a super fanboy (like my self, I just can’t help it, and have learned just to accept it) you’d know some of the awful things some of the characters have done.
Where to start…
Cyclops - the man whore: People always see him as the noble, tragic figure. All the drama around the Dark Phoenix saga made him seem like such a sensitive and loving guy. But he was also seeing another woman before Jean went all evil, Colleen Wing. She even gave him a key to her appartment. Even after Jean “died”, he still was getting around, using the old “I loved her but she destroyed a star and what’choo doin baybee…” routine. Her tested the waters with Lee Forrester, and then let her drop for Maddie Pryor, whom he married even after he admitted to himself that he liked her mostly because she reminded him of Jean. (The fact that she was a clone be damned!) He thought she had died too, but it took him a minute or two to throw himself at the newly reborn Jean. Whatever happened to a period of mourning?!? Not only that, he’s also had naughty thoughts about Psylocke and Emma Frost. How dumb can he get, to think about cheating on his telepathic girlfriend?
Forge - the idiot boy: Forge has caused his own teammates so much pain, I wonder why villains bother to attack him at all. He was responsible for Storm losing her powers, (after he built a power stealing gun and gave it to a government official in front of Storm!?!) he killed the whole team once, sacrificing them to a demon he summoned (accidentally, so he says), and while he was their leader, he pretty much allowed the whole team to be possessed by the Shadow King, and let Legion go on a killing spree. Yet somehow people still consider him a genius.
Gambit - How evil can you get: He worked for Mr. Sinister. For years. He led a group of people, including Sabretooth, Malice and Scalphunter (amongst others), to the Morlock tunnels where his entourage proceded to maul and massacre all of them. What did Gambit do? He ran away. I can see why the ladies go wild for this guy.
Jean Grey - She’s just bland: I mean, when a character’s most interesting storylines revolve around people posing as her (Phoenix, Goblin Queen), there are some real issues.
Rogue - old villains never die, they wait to kill you in your sleep: She was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She destroyed the life of one of the X-Men’s closest friends, Carol Danvers, and has never even shown any remorse for it. In fact, she often gripes about being STUCK with half of Carol’s memories in her head.
Just for the record, I am an X-Men fan, and my favorite characters from the team are Cannonball, Havok, Storm, and Colossus. Wolvie and Nightcrawler too. They too might have had their dark times, but never as bad as those mentioned above.
Instead of approaching it as literature, I’d like to go with this direction:
If the X-Universe were real, and I were living in it, and found myself hanging with the X-Men, then the person I’d really want to snuggle up to is Beast.
No question. Intelligent, good sense of humor, strong, and warm and fuzzy to boot. What more could you ask of a man?
Ok. I have to take issue with some of your statements. Were we reading the same comics?
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Scott never dated Colleen Wing until after Jean died. I will grant you that he treated Maddie pretty badly, but he was being manipulated into the relationship by Mr. Sinister the whole time. I find it interesting that you say Havok is one of your favorite characters when he cheated with Maddie, his brother’s wife. (Hey, I like Havok too, but he’s done worse things than Cyclops.)
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Forge’s power removing gun was meant to apprehend the newly reformed Rogue, who was considered extremely dangerous because she had taken down the entire team of Avengers. Storm lost her powers when she threw herself in front of Rogue. Forge neither “killed” the team nor summoned the Adversary. The Adversary came of his own accord, and the team sacrificed themselves to stop him. The Shadow King had taken over most of the characters in the Muir Island Saga before Forge’s team of interim X-Men even knew what was happening. I am not sure which “killing spree” of Legion’s you’re blaming on Forge.
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He worked for Mr. Sinister briefly, not for years. He led the Marauders to the Morlock tunnels without knowing what their intentions were, and ran after trying to save as many as he could.
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Ok. When the original Phoenix saga was published, that was Jean Grey. The “cosmic-entity-impersonating-Jean” storyline was written over 10 years after the fact, and retroactively shoe-horned into continuity. The Goblin Queen was never Jean, never mistaken for Jean. They knew she was Madelyne Pryor all along. As for “bland”, I suppose you’re entitled to your opinion.
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Carol Danvers has been out of Rogue’s head for years now. From the time the X-Men accepted Rogue until she exorcised Carol’s personality she showed nothing BUT remorse. At least once in every issue. Rogue was a teenager when she was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led at the time by her adopted mother. Rogue’s story, like Gambit’s, is all about redemption.
For contrast, let’s look at one of your choices, Colossus. He callously threw over Kitty Pryde for another woman during Secret Wars, betrayed the X-Men by joining Magneto’s Acolytes, then when he returned and found that Kitty had a new boyfriend, he nearly broke that boyfriend’s back. Now, I like Colossus too, don’t get me wrong. It’s the flaws written into all the characters in the X-Books that make them interesting. You’re entitled to like or dislike whichever you please, just get your facts straight
And in closing, I would like to say, I feel like such a geek now…
Well, I’m not much of a comics fan, but I do like the way that The Beast breaks stereotypes. Here we’ve got this huge, strong, ferocious-looking creature… Who’s an MD, passes his time by reading classic literature, and will calmly wait around in his jail cell for his appeal to go through, even though there’s a fifteen-foot hole blasted in the wall.
And Storm is just plain sexy, in addition to having phenomenal powers.
But he was always flirting with Coleen. And as for Sinisters manipulations, I don’t think he fought very hard against them.
Havok, while he did sleep with Maddie, true, at least he stuck by her, no matter what. Even when she went nuts, he made a promise to never abandon her, and stood by her when no one else would. His involvement in Inferno is what made me really like his character.
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Your arguments will never overcome my disdain for comic-dom’s lowest character. He is supposed to be a super genius, and is regarded as such by his peers, but I cannot stand him.
(The killing spree was during the brawl on Muir Isle when Freedom Force attacked, and a ton of characters bought it, Destiny, Stonewall, some Reavers. Forge let the team go militant)
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He worked for him, knowing full well that he was an evil being. And then tried to plead that he had no Idea what was going on.
(I’ll confess. I like him too. But he’s easy to pick on.)
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I love the Dark Phoenix Saga, and while we thought it was Jean, it was really cool! But that’s not the was it ended up, and she was bland again. And as for Maddie, everyone knew she wasn’t Jean, true.
But part of her psyche was left in Jean’s mind, memories and the like. Thus using Maddie to make Jean a less bland waste of Paper.
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Butit was still her fault, and the team didn’t even want her there. And Carol Showed up and knocked her through the roof. The team forced Binary out of the group to accept Rogue the super-villain. IMHO she’s been a pet of Chris Claremont’s, and one I never saw the appeal too.
And as for Colossus, he was up front all the way about joining Magneto, Who was once asked by Xavier to lead the teams. He fought honorable against his teamates. It’s not like he stabbed his buddies in the back. And for Piotr, the dream wasn’t working. There was no malice in his leaving
Sorry for over dramatising the ordeal, but there a some characters that I just don’t like, and other I flat out can’t stand. And there are reasons for them all. Reasons that are often swept under the rug.
