First Impressions: Thor

Let’s get this out of the way quick and dirty: The Thor movie is coming out this weekend; I already saw it, Rickey already saw it, Kevin already saw it, we all loved and you really need to go see it.

Shill over.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how for those of us who started reading or at least sampled comics young then went on to become devoted fans, some of our early impressions of certain characters don’t match up at all to the most quintessential versions or the ones we become most familiar with. I wrote a column about my experiences with the X-Men in this regard over on my Marvel.com blog and recently here about the Justice League.

Comics is that rare artistic medium where serial stories continue more or less indefinitely with radical changes being implemented fairly frequently, but the status quo nearly always returning eventually in some form or another. You don’t see the stuff you see in comics on, say, television, where a show will run maybe a decade tops and change subtly along the way, but if a main character gets recast or the mission statement changes completely, the result is cancellation more often than revitalization, and regardless there will be no hitting of the reset button and near immediate re-launch.

If you grew up as a comics fan in the 90’s as I did, odds are strong that your first encounters with certain characters or concepts were very askew from where those properties started or ultimately returned to. Superman didn’t stay dead, the clone didn’t continue as Spider-Man, Batman’s back got unbroken and Wolverine only kept the bone claws a few years, but in many cases that’s how we met these guys. As I said in that post on the X-Men, as far as I knew Moira MacTaggert led a team consisting of Legion, Siryn and Madrox and that was that.

In that spirit, I want to periodically look back at the way different characters were when I first really read their stories, for nostalgia and fun’s sake, but also for contrast and to demonstrate how incredibly resilient and unbreakable these folks can really be.

Let’s start with Thor, who I kinda thought was a bad guy.

Now I knew that wasn’t really the case because Adventures in Babysitting aside, I was aware of Thor from the odd Avengers issue I had come across when I was really young and knew he was the friendly strong guy with the hammer who was friends with Captain America and Iron Man. I was also a bit of a mythology buff, so while I was a bit confused as to why Thor was blond, I also knew he was one of the good guys.

So why was he beating up The Silver Surfer?

I began to expand my Marvel tastes beyond New Warriors and X-Men around 1993, and thought the perfect way to do so would be in the big event starring every character, The Infinity Crusade. The gist on that one was that Adam Warlock’s “good” half, The Goddess, enslaves a bunch of heroes by exploiting their faith and attempts to use them to destroy the universe because there’s no way it can be good enough so better to let it burn.

Also of note: Everybody in the series—including Thanos and Silver Surfer, who seem like pretty formal guys—refer to Professor X as simply “Prof. X,” always using the abbreviation and period. Also, when the heroes who still have their free will storm The Goddess’ stronghold, Iron Man “randomly” selects Forge and Nomad to stay in orbit and monitor the situation rather than fight anybody, perhaps Tony Stark’s all-time shrewdest move.

One of the Goddess’ thralls was Thor, who beats the crap out of both Drax and The Hulk. I was picking up a lot of the crossover issues and bought Thor’s book where he engaged in those fights as well as one with Super-Skrull. The weird thing was he didn’t need much coaxing from The Goddess because he was already pretty unbalanced and taking orders from a black-haired chick named Valkyrie who kept telling him how much everybody hated him and he should take over Asgard. He was also not an Avenger and apparently had been away for years, as the rest of the cast was often referencing “Eric Masterson,” whom I would later come to know as Thunderstrike, but who had previously been a fill-in Thor with a bear and funky facemask.

So the Thor I thought I knew had been gone for awhile but had apparently just returned, yet he acted nothing like the Thor I’d heard about and was for all intents and purposes a really powerful and insane super villain with his own ongoing series—following me?

After the Infinity Crusade ended, while most of the heroes went back to being heroes, Thor remained nuts and headed into the Blood & Thunder crossover between his own book, Silver Surfer, Warlock & The Infinity Watch and Warlock Chronicles; that’s kind of crazy that not only did Adam Warlock have two ongoing titles in 1994 but also outnumbered Thor during a crossover ostensibly about him—Adam Warlock was truly Marvel’s most unlikely rock star during the early 90’s, but I digress.

I really enjoyed Blood & Thunder, which was basically just a big action punch ‘em up with Thor getting progressively more powerful and crazy and fighting everybody he comes across as they keep recruiting more and more powerful cavalries—it goes from Beta Ray Bill to the Surfer to Warlock to the whole Watch to Doctor Strange to Thanos and finally to Odin. The Warlock Chronicles chapters in particular are a treat as you’ve got early Tom Raney art and he absolutely kills it drawing nutso Thor plus hordes of trolls and monsters.

The heroes and Thanos find ways to slow Thor down even after he gets a hold of Drax’s Power Gem, but he always breaks free and absolutely crushes them until he storms Asgard ready to raise Hel. As I mentioned, Odin finally has to step in and invades his son’s mental landscape where he frees Thor from the shackles of “warrior’s madness” and they team up against a giant-sized and super-empowered Valkyrie.

After that, Thor was sane again, but went through a bunch of changes to his familiar costume during which I somewhat lost track of and interest in him (though I have since gone back and read the William Messner-Loebs and Warren Ellis stuff I missed, which was actually pretty cool).

I later got re-acquainted with Thor via Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers, wherein he’s back to being the noble warrior I recalled from my early youth. Once I got full-fledged and gained access to Wizard’s and later Marvel’s libraries, I’d devour the full run of Walt Simonson—you will find few super hero purists who won’t agree those are some of the most wild and fun comics ever—as well as catch up on the underrated Dan Jurgens years, Mike Avon Oeming’s awesome forays, and through into today.

It’s somewhat funny that my first impression of Thor was of a berserk bad guy who ruthlessly dispatched more heroic types, given that so many of his classic stories not to mention the myths of yore deal with his legendary temper and how he needs to learn temperance and humility; indeed the entire basis of his Marvel origin—and now his blockbuster movie—are Odin punishing him for being brash and a little nuts. Some of the best Thor comics in recent years in my opinion were the rocking Matt Fraction Ages of Thunder one-shots featuring a Thor who loved to fight with little to no thought as to consequences or reasoning. Noble, regal Thor is a great character, but there’s a lot of mileage in that crazed warrior prince as well.

I’d actually be curious how many comics neophytes could come out of the movie over the next few weeks, be handed Blood & Thunder and think it seems pretty consistent.

Enjoy Thor!

Half Full

You know what's worse than eight issues? No issues.

Perspective: an absolute necessity for the comic book fan.

Thanks to Roger, Chris, Nate, et al for the magic while it lasted.

Thor Corps Reunion Tour

I cop up front to never having read a single comic they’ve appeared in—though I desperately want to—but I think from observation and what I’ve gleaned via the Internet alone that I’m not wrong in saying few concepts could be more definitively 90’s than the Thor Corps.

I’ve said before that I didn’t read much Thor back when I was a kid, but I was dimly aware of the Thor Corps via stuff like Wizard, Marvel Age and just passing the covers in the shop. It was a concept that both baffled and delighted me as so many comic book-related things did at the time. I could understand the idea that somebody else could wear Iron Man’s armor, fill in for Batman or even make a claim—or four claims—to the name of Superman, but even I knew Thor was different than that; he wasn’t a costume or even a name to be passed down, he was a mythological figure whose whole deal was that he was in fact Thor, the Norse god of thunder. There couldn’t be four guys who were Thor.

And yet there were.

Actually there was another Thor in the Marvel Universe even before that, but that’s a story for another day…


Anyways, they made for a cool visual, and examining each character on their own, it’s actually a neat mix:

-The original and legitimate Thor; son of Odin, prince of Asgard and all that jazz.

-Thunderstrike, the “Everyman Avenger,” in reality architect Eric Masterson who got fused with Thor for a time and was in fact subbing for him when the Corps originally formed; he eventually got his own identity and ultra-90’s costume, sleeveless leather jacket and ponytail included.

-Beta Ray Bill, freaking phenomenal horse alien who proved worthy of wielding Thor’s hammer back in the Walt Simonson days, got his own golden mace, Stormbringer, and has been “oath brother” to the big T ever since.

-Dargo Ktor—‘Nuff Said.

So from what I’ve read, the Thor Corps formed when the original Thor’s old nemesis Zarrko the Tomorrow Man—great name—tricked Dargo into fighting Masterson, then Bill stepped in and they decided to join forces as what could have been the greatest hair band since Poison, but instead turned out to be a pretty solid super hero team who had a crazy time travel adventure. Later on, after Masterson became Thunderstrike, the band got back together with the real Thor along for the ride this go-around and fought a dude named Demonstaff.


It honestly sounds tremendous and I’m begging for a trade of this stuff to coincide with Thor’s movie next year.

More than that, now that I know guys like Dan Slott and Evan Skolnick are hanging on my every word here, I’m gonna appeal to whoever’s game, be it current Thor writer Matt Fraction, Thor Corps creator and steward Tom DeFalco, or even that Christos Gage kid if there are no other options: Let’s bring back the Thor Corps, guys!

I will guarantee you that if Marvel.com doesn’t make Dargo Ktor the shocking fan favorite character of 2011, it won’t be from lack of trying.

(Thanks to the aforementioned Mr. DeFalco for not only giving me a topic to write about tonight, but creating an idea here I seriously think sounds rockin’ and could have legs given the chance)

Art Attack: January 2011's Coolest Covers

It's going to be an interesting period for comic book covers come the first of the new year, as DC will be opting for stark white backgrounds, iconic silhouettes, and logos in place of full titles as part of a special month-long initiative. It's a bold move that's gonna make for some distinct shelf displays, but it's also a true test for artists, as it really tests your chops to make a cover pop without any background bells or whistles. Thus the DC covers I've tagged here I really consider primo accomplishments.

Some other notes...

-A lot of months, it seems like Jim Cheung does very similar things for each of his covers, but he's so good it really doesn't matter--his art is that pretty.

-I haven't read a single issue of the new Azrael series (no offense to the creative team), but it has consistently excellent covers.

-My buddy Ryan "Agent M" Penagos really dug Simone Bianchi's Black Panther cover as did I, even more than we do his usual work, though we can't pinpoint exactly what makes this particular one special.

-I'm with Sean T. Collins: more Steel please.

-Phil Noto is kicking some ass on covers of late.

-Ultimate Thor kicking Ultimate Hulk in the head wins.

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #4 by Jim CheungAZRAEL #16 by Guillem MarchBATMAN: EUROPA #1 by Jim LeeBLACK PANTHER: THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR #514 by Simone BianchiBRIGHTEST DAY #17 by Ivan ReisBUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #40 by Jo ChenCAPTAIN AMERICA #614 by Marko DjurdjevicDEADPOOL #31 by Dave JohnsonDEADPOOL MAX #4 by Kyle BakerDRIVER SPECIAL #1 by JockTHE FLASH #10 by Francis ManapulHELLBOY: THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD #1 by Scott HamptonIRON MAN: LEGACY #10 by Juan DoeLOKI #4 by Travel ForemanSCARLET #4 by Alex MaleevSTARMAN/CONGORILLA #1 by Gene HaSTEEL #1 by Alex GarnerSUPERBOY #3 by Phil NotoSUPERMAN/BATMAN #80 by Fiona StaplesTHE ALL-NEW BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #3 by Rick BurchettTHOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER #8 by Chris SamneeULTIMATE COMICS THOR #4 by Carlos PachecoUNCANNY X-FORCE #4 by Esad RibicWEIRD WORLDS #1 by JustinianoWOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS #2 by Bryan Hitch

Five Comics Worth Reading - August 2010

INCREDIBLE HULK
By the nature of the character and his history, it’s not uncommon for most writers to just do big smash-‘em-up action stories when it comes to The Hulk, and a lot of them are pretty fun, but I love when folks go outside the framework and cast him in sagas with uncharacteristic depths. I’ve made no secret that Peter David’s Hulk run is one of my favorite extended comic works by virtue of the psychological edge he brought and the use of humor. Over the last several years, Greg Pak has brought his own unique take to the Hulk mythos while also providing no shortage of epic fights from Planet Hulk to World War Hulk. Since the creation of Bruce Banner’s son, Skaar, Pak has introduced a new element not really explored in Hulk history: the notion of family. With Incredible Hulk #611, the wrap to Pak’s end of World War Hulks as well as a major climax for the Skaar saga, he really stepped it up a notch further with an issue packed with both an amazing battle between gamma goliaths as well as an emotional punch provided by the mining of Banner’s own childhood and how it has affected him even more than we knew. It’s smart, it’s raw and it balances intensity and fun with intellectualism; it’s great work from a great writer not to mention possibly career-best stuff from artist Paul Pelletier, who has had a heck of a career, so I don’t put that lightly. I’ve been fortunate enough to scan the first issue of this book’s new incarnation, Incredible Hulks (yes, plural) and the hits are going to keep coming in a “team” book that fills a niche I don’t think we’ve fully seen.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST
Justice League International was a seminal work and a wholly unique one for the time it came out in, casting super hero teams—indeed THE super hero team—in a more down-to-earth and humorous light. Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis did an incredible job sustaining what could have been a quick burnout concept for years and elevating characters like Booster Gold, Fire and Ice to places they never would have been. Unfortunately, once the title did run its course, the characters seemed to flounder and lose their place save for the occasional fun reunion mini; they were a group people had a lot of affection for, but that seemed to have had a definitive expiration date. Kudos then to Judd Winick—the the initial aid of Giffen—for finally bringing the old crew back together and making them work in a more serious context that doesn’t chuck the fun wholesale and incorporates all the characters’ continuity. Generation Lost has been a neat ride thus far that has some weight to it with the threat posed by Max Lord feeling large in scale and a cool underdog vibe to how the JLI crew is viewed both by others and themselves. I like the way Winick has cast Booster and company as underachievers determined to prove the world wrong but not entirely confident they can; it feels organic. I’m also amazed I didn’t see the Kingdom Come connection coming, so more props for that.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
I’ll admit that, particularly as a Roy Harper fan, Justice League: Cry For Justice was a tough sell for me, but I’ve also got to say I’ve really been digging what James Robinson has been doing with Justice League of America since taking over in earnest and getting his first few issues out of the way. I like that he has made it the one-stop-shop for all DC characters and continuity; a nexus of the DC Universe with dozens of cameos and allusions to past stories every issue. In some ways it feels like if Starman was a love letter to a certain type of fiction and era of nostalgia, Robinson’s JLA is that on a grander scale to DC as a whole, and I can dig that. I’m still not 100% sold on Congorilla—I don’t subscribe to the “he’s cool because he’s a talking gorilla” deal that I know is enough for some people—or Supergirl in the big leagues, but I like Robinson’s take on Dick Grayson-as-Batman and he seems to have a decent shot at figuring out the formula for ciphers like Donna Troy and Jade. Seeing Mark Bagley get to draw so many characters is a nice perk and the current crossover with Justice Society of America is popcorn action done pretty entertainingly, so no complaints here.

MARVEL UNIVERSE VS. THE PUNISHER
Jonathan Maberry has very quickly and suddenly emerged as a promising new voice in the Marvel stable of writers. I found his DoomWar event to be a well-plotted, well-paced story with plenty of action and an old school super hero dynamic that didn’t feel dated; Maberry is a successful novelist who clearly has an excellent grasp of his tools as a writer and a comic book fan who has been able to translate his skills to this medium. Marvel Universe Vs. The Punisher allows Maberry to flex different muscles in a post-apocalyptic tale that resembles I Am Legend done Marvel-style but also stands on its own just fine. Frank Castle fits nicely into the role of archetypal of the grumpy, jaded loner looking to stay alive and refusing to acknowledge his own heroism. Maberry’s take on Marvel characters seized by a 28 Days Later-like rage virus is both scary and fun, with little jokes and flourishes only a guy who knows his stuff could make. Goran Parlov is really clever with his art as well, incorporating in gags like bird-themed characters being among the first scavengers to pick apart a homeless shelter (apparently I have a more twisted sense of humor than I thought). This is only a four-issue limited series that’s already half-way done, so I urge you to get your hands on it ASAP.

THOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER
I let the first two issues of this series sit at the bottom of my pile of comps from Marvel for weeks and am now very much regretting it. It’s real cool the way Roger Langridge is completely re-imagining the Thor saga as a total “stranger in a strange land” story; the characters of Thor, Jane Foster, et al. feel familiar yet new and you’re really not sure what’s going to happen next. Thus far Langridge has done a great job of capturing what it would feel like if a world as fantastic as Thor’s subtly infringed on our relatively mundane one, a story I’ve seen before but rarely done so well. I also like the way the layers are being slowly peeled back to introduce teases of Asgard and the super heroic into Jane’s life and we get to see it through her eyes; I’m on the edge of my seat thinking how rad it’s going to be when we actually see Odin and the rest, so I hope it continues to be built to a little bit at a time. In addition to a great new take on Jane that casts her as more than just a Silver Age love interest, Langridge really explores some intriguing sides of Thor, not just focusing on the proud warrior but also the homesick traveler and perhaps most engaging the lost orphan missing his family and chasing their love. Chris Samnee is one of comics’ best kept secrets and he’s really breaking out here. Can’t wait to see where this goes and if the goal is to get people psyched for the movie, I daresay this book should be a nice success.

My Five Favorite Avengers

Ok, so the Lost fervor has died down a bit and it’s time to cash a check I wrote over a week ago.

Yes, you can say goodbye to those sleepless nights, because I’m finally set to reveal…

…my five favorite Avengers.

THOR
In last week’s Avengers #1, after Kang gets blasted across several roofs via a blast of mystic lightning from Mjolnir, Hawkeye says, “And that’s what it’s like to be on the Avengers with Thor” (or something similar enough for me to get away with it)—and that right there pretty much sums up why I love Thor as an Avenger: He’s the ultimate powerhouse bruiser in the Marvel Universe (excepting The Hulk, who is more a force of nature) and thus it’s number one team is just cooler when he’s on it. Thor makes both the best cavalry as well as the best way for a villain to score a quick belt notch and thus make whoever takes them down seem like more of a badass. It’s also always rad to see Thor with his Shakespearean speak dealing with reporters or standing eight feet tall with a smile or sneer over the rookie Avengers or enjoying mead and mutton feasts provided by Jarvis. Thor is such a crazy, unique character that everything about him and a group of mortal heroes just gets better when the two get mixed.

LUKE CAGE
For my money, the best addition to the Avengers in the last decade and Brian Bendis’ greatest triumph as godfather of the franchise. Luke Cage was a character who had been around for decades before he got roped into New Avengers, and during at least half that time I’d say no way he qualified as A-list material, but it was like the hometown boy making good and getting into the majors or something, so we dug it at first. But Bendis was bound and determined to show that Luke belonged, and I’d say he succeeded. The nice thing was, though, that Bendis didn’t have Cage become some out of nowhere world-beater dispatching cosmic level threats in a feverish attempt to prove he wasn’t wasting a roster slot, he just slowly but surely became the quiet conscience of the team, the guy who steered everybody else in the right direction, and yes, was still one bad sonuvagun. When Luke became de facto team leader with no official proclamation post-Secret Invasion, it felt totally natural and totally earned because his maturation process had been a joy to experience—well done, Mr. Bendis.

THE WASP
Janet Van Dyne grew up in the Avengers, entering as a flighty young woman and ultimately becoming perhaps the gutsiest heroes male or female to ever serve. The thing is, I liked The Wasp in all her incarnations, and her versatility was one of her best assets. She was ridiculously Silver Age as the original Avengers’ flirtatious airhead, but unlike a lot of other female characters of the time, she kinda seemed in on the joke, whether Stan Lee and others wrote her that way intentionally or not, and that made her cooler than The Invisible Woman or Wonder Woman. But no doubt Janet Van Dyne’s finest moments came after in the fallout of her messy domestic dispute with and divorce from Hank Pym, rather than curl up in a ball somewhere, she marched into Avengers Mansion and told no less than Captain America and Iron Man in no uncertain terms that she was the team’s new chairperson and they’d better just deal with it. I dug that Jan was a damn effective team leader and held the group together during the darkest days of “Under Siege,” yet didn’t suddenly become so uptight she wouldn’t come on to Paladin shamelessly—this balance of bold and bubbly made her a great character for the remainder of her days.

CAPTAIN AMERICA (Steve Rogers)
The Avengers weren’t really the Avengers until Captain America came along; they were just a loose-knit group of bickering demigods trying their best to work together until they thawed Steve Rogers out of this iceberg and he decided the team was a good idea and threw his considerable talents towards making it work. The heart and purity of Captain America was what inspired the bulk of the Avengers to be Earth’s Mightiest Heroes over the years, and placed them several notches above the Defenders, Champions, etc. Only Superman can boast the same symbolic value as Captain America in terms of his effect on his several heroes, but Cap trumps the Man of Steel by also being one of the best team leaders in comic book history and certainly the finest the Avengers have ever seen. To continue the DC shorthand, Captain America has the strategic genius and quick-thinking of Batman, but with Superman’s charm and winning personality. I don’t think anybody believes in the Avengers quite like Cap does—they gave him a reason to continue on in a world that had left him behind, after all—and nobody works as hard towards keeping them in fighting shape. A good ol’ fashioned “Avengers Assemble!” charge doesn’t give you nearly the chill if Steve Rogers isn’t racing at the fore.

HAWKEYE
So you’ve got gods, super-soldiers, billionaire geniuses and uber-powerful mutants making up the Avengers, and then you’ve got Clint Barton: the guy with the bow, the arrow and the attitude. That to me was always one of the coolest thing about the Avengers: that a dude like Hawkeye could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest and not seem out of place in the least. He’s the guy who questioned whether Captain America was leadership material; the guy who managed to found an Avengers team in California. You can say there was already a precedent for an archer fitting in amongst the powerhouses with Green Arrow in the Justice League, but as much as I am a GA fan, it always seemed like he either was just another square-chinned cipher in the JLA’s fledgling days, and then later more the rabble-rousing square peg than anything else; Hawkeye would mouth off, sure, but at the end of the day he was integral to what the Avengers were all about and very much the heart of the team in a way his DC counterpart never quite was. Despite starting out as a questionable Iron Man villain, Hawkeye was a true blue good guy with a romantic streak who was made to be one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. I absolutely love when the rest of the team has been taken out and it’s Hawkeye who has to beat the odds and make the impossible shot against a rampaging She-Hulk or omnipotent Collector to win the day—and that’s why he’s my favorite Avenger.

Coulda Beens

Writing the other day about Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk’s various attempts to inject new blood into the Marvel Universe during their Web of Spider-Man run got me to thinking about the other various characters to debut in the 90’s (and earlier) heralded as “the next big thing” who either promptly went nowhere or settled comfortably into a role as the occasional guest star or reserve team member.

Comics is of course littered with literally thousands of concepts that never achieved the success their creators intended and you could probably sustain a blog for years on those alone (I’m sure somebody out there does). I can think of a few in particular though that I thought had squandered potential or came along either at the wrong time or wrong place to go all the way (and I’m not just talking about X-Treme); some of these characters have enjoyed a modicum of success, but certainly nowhere near what could have been.

BRONZE TIGER
I’ve spoken of my affection for Richard Dragon before, which runs alongside my thing before Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and both mostly amount to this: there are guys out there in the DC and Marvel Universes who aren’t particularly well-known or “A-list” but who are better in hand-to-hand combat than their more well-known contemporaries. Same deal goes for Bronze Tiger, but he’s also got the added benefit of a far more interesting and conflicted back story as a former compatriot of Dragon who was captured and brainwashed by Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, forced to become a killer, actually beat Batman, then broke free and sought redemption as a member of the Suicide Squad. Now there’s enough there for a solo series to run at least a couple arcs in my opinion, but if not, why would “guy who beat Batman” not be enough to at least get the Justice League to read your resume? Yeah, there’s the whole “former assassin” thing, but that just adds to the potential drama.

THUNDERSTRIKE
Once he shed his persona as a substitute Thor and gained his own heroic identity, Eric Masterson had the misfortune of receiving a horribly dated 90’s costume complete with sleeveless leather jacket, pierced ear and pony tail—and I’m convinced this had far more to do with his lack of longevity than anything else. Because when you look at the idea behind Thunderstrike—a “street level” Thor who has the power of a god but walks among mortals and deals with legitimate issues—it’s a solid one that I think could have been made to work given more of a chance. Masterson was also already a pretty well-liked character during his time headlining the main Thor title, so he had something of a built-in fanbase; again, it was just bad timing. Thunderstrike came along at a time when the market was barely supporting one Thor title, let alone ready to propel another to success, and again, little things like the visuals just didn’t earmark the character for long-term success. Nowadays, with the Thor franchise more viable, I think Eric Masterson or Thunderstrike could fill a nice niche role bridging Asgard and Earth.

X-O MANOWAR
I never really followed any Valiant title too religiously, but if I had, I think it would have been X-O Manowar (or Harbinger, but probably X-O Manowar). When you take just a cursory glimpse at the character, he’s Iron Man but with the ultra cool twist of the dude in the armor being a freaking caveman who went into suspended animation for centuries and woke up in our time to become a businessman and super hero with his alien battle armor; he’s Captain America and Iron Man plus elements of Venom and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer all mixed together! The guy also just looked rad, so if his IP is lying around out there somewhere, somebody with some cash and motivation should give it a look.

SPIDER-WOMAN II
While original Spider-Woman Jessica Drew has been the recipient of a tremendous popularity resurgence in recent years, I always thought her successor, Julia Carpenter, had as much if not more going for her and it’s too bad she’s more or less in limbo now. During a period in Avengers lore when most of the female team members got short shrift in the 90’s, Julia was portrayed as professional and confident and I always felt it was a nice moment when the main team shut down the West Coast branch yet invited her to stay on (and then she turned them down). Her being a single mom who was committed to raising her daughter not fully divorced from her costumed career also made her unique in those halcyon days. She’s also got neat psychic web powers plus a dynamite costume, so surely there’s a place for her somewhere outside of Canada?

THE RAY
For years, the second character known as The Ray has coasted on the fact that Joe Quesada originally designed him with an awesome look both powered-up and just in costume to remain at least on the periphery of the DC Universe whether as part of the Justice League, Young Justice or the Freedom Fighters. However, those who followed Ray’s somewhat surprisingly long-lived solo series in the 90’s probably had higher hopes for him to become a breakout star on his own, much as I did. In addition to the great visuals Quesada gave him, Ray also had a nice stretch of character development by Christopher Priest that included major daddy issues with his Golden Age heroic father, a childhood that saw him raised in virtual isolation, and a doomed love life that somehow included a fling with Black Canary. Ray has that nice balance of legacy and uniqueness that I feel like should translate to another shot in the spotlight, or at least a prominent role in one of the two Justice Society books.

STRYFE
Now it may seem somewhat unfair to place Stryfe on this list due to the fact that he was a primary villain in a semi-major X-Men crossover less than a year ago, but nonetheless, the guy was a big-time personal favorite of mine—and many other—as a kid, and I think we all had bigger things mapped out for the Chaos Bringer in our heads. He made such a blockbuster debut in X-Cutioner’s Song (ok, technically he had been around a few years at that point, but just as an ancillary X-Force villain, not a real deal X-Men baddies) that I think we were all pretty sure we had the next Magneto or Apocalypse on our hands. Yeah, his name was a bit corny and he lacked the big picture motivation of the other villains I just mentioned, but Stryfe was a step above the generic schemers populating the X-books at the time based on his deeply personal connections to characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey and the motivation he derived from therein. He was hugely powerful, spoke like an over-the-top lost work of Shakespeare and when rendered right his thousand-angled costume looked bad ass. However, after his big crossover tour de force, he settled back into being just Cable’s personal nemesis, and then died a couple times without much fanfare before fading from collective memory. His return in Messiah War was much-welcomed from where I sat and he was handled perfectly by Duane Swierczynski, Chris Yost and Craig Kyle, but I hope there are more plans for him beyond sitting in an apocalyptic future somewhere, since even if his full potential may never be realized, Stryfe is too good a bad guy to let rot on the vine.