After over 1,000 ballots were cast, YOU the reader ranked your favorite DC and Marvel comic book characters from 1-10. I assigned point totals to each ranking and then tabulated it all into a Top 50 list. We’re now revealing that list for the rest of November and into December. The countdown continues now…
I used to do sort of “biographies” for each of the characters on the list, but you know what, they’re on the Top 100 DC and Marvel characters list, so I think we should be working under the assumption that you all pretty much know the basic information about these characters. Instead, I’ll just write about whatever interests me about the character in question, including a notable comic book moment featuring the character.
40. Iceman – 306 (6 first place votes)
Iceman was a founding member of the X-Men. The youngest member of the team, Iceman had the second-lamest origin of the original six, as he froze a bully and everyone got mad at him until the X-Men showed up and well, that was about it. Iceman was the joker on the team, but behind the laughs, he had problems dealing with his sexuality. Since the other three guys on the team all fawned over Jean Grey (heck, so did their teacher), Bobby faked interest, as well.
That was the story for most of Bobby’s life – feigned interest in other ladies that never seemed to go anywhere. Lorna Dane, the X-Man known as Polaris, was one of the first examples of this phenomena. Meanwhile, the only long-lasting relationships he had were his platonic friendships with two of the guys on the original X-Men, Beast and Angel.
After the All-New, All-Different X-Men joined up, Iceman could not hide his hatred of Native Americans and/or Irish people, so he left the team (or at least I assume that was his motivation for leaving). Ultimately, with Angel he joined a new team, the Champions. The Champions were so incompetent that they made the New Mutants seem almost capable by comparison (and seeing as how the greatest success in the history of the New Mutants was getting Doug Ramsey shot, that is saying a lot). While on the Champions, Bobby developed his second major fake relationship with the Russian mutant Darkstar.
After the Champions broke up, Bobby joined up with Angel again, this time in a Beast-led team of Defenders. Since the previous sentence contained the phrase “Beast-led,” you know that was not going to work out. Bobby then joined back up with his old friends in X-Factor. Seriously, what does Bobby Drake do but wait by the phone for one of his old friends to call him and ask him to join a team? Has he done a spontaneous act in his life? Man, he was SO repressed! I mean, that makes sense and all, but still!
Bobby’s tenure on X-Factor was practically the definition of “humdrum,” with the exception of his powers growing stronger and stronger. This has been something that has continued for years and years as a plot point without ever actually going away. To wit, if I quoted a comic as saying, “Bobby does not understand just how powerful he is,” and then asked you what year the comic came out, you would not be able to guess. Heck, if I asked you what DECADE, you would not be able to guess – because it has been a plot point every other year for OVER THREE DECADES!!! For over 30 years we have had to hear how Bobby doesn’t realize just how powerful he is. You would think that just by virtue of everyone telling him this for three decades, he would catch on. However, there goes that repression thing again.
One somewhat notable aspect of his X-Factor run was his next failed relationship, with Opal Tanaka, who was, of course, tied to the Yakuza (a little known fact – in the Marvel Universe, every Asian person has ties to the Yakuza. Weird, right?).
Once X-Factor merged with the X-Men to form a new X-Men team, Bobby was placed on the B-team, and faded to the background for years. He had two notable storylines during this period – Emma Frost took possession of his body for awhile (guess what she told him? Yep, you guessed it – he was more powerful than he even knew!) and he also dealt with his dad getting sick. He left the team to be with his dad.
He came back in a cool storyline called Zero Tolerance where he was actually halfway competent, but as soon as it ended, he went away again. He next popped up as a member of a NEW B-team, Angel, Wolverine, him and Nightcrawler. It was like the time that the Avengers consisted of Black Widow, Hercules, Quicksilver, Crystal, Deathcry and Vision. A real “for serious? That’s your team?” team.
After that, he just stood around in the periphery for awhile (he is good at that) before seemingly losing his powers during M-Day. But no, he did not actually lose his powers, he just repressed them!! HELLO, PEOPLE!! Do you need for us to write you a map? The guy has repression issues!!! Once he got his powers back, he was chosen specially by Rogue for her team of “People Cyclops has no other use for.” While on that team, he developed a relationship with Mystique.
Finally, after a younger version of himself was brought to the present, Iceman came to terms with his sexuality and got past all of that repression…
Now finally open with his sexuality, Iceman has been the happiest that he has been in years.
39. Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze) – 345 points (4 first place votes)
Johnny Blaze was a stunt motorcyclist who performed in a stunt show ran by the aptly named Crash Simpson, whose family raised Johnny since he was a child. During this time, Johnny fell in love with Crash’s daughter, Roxanne. When Johnny discovered that Crash was dying from cancer, he sold his soul to the devil so that Crash would survive the cancer. The devil came through…only for Crash to die in a crash soon after. However, Roxanne’s love for Johnny was so pure that the devil could not take his soul, as it was attached to the purity of Roxanne’s love. So the devil did the next best thing, it bonded Johnny to the demon Zarathos, and the ensuing result was Johnny turning into the blazing skull flaming motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider.
Johnny split with Roxanne to protect her, as he was forced to turn into the Ghost Rider and take vengeance whenever he was near bad people. This kept up for many years, as Johnny traveled the country to try to find as much peace as he could. Eventually, he was able to split from Zarathos. However, over the years he has returned to being the Ghost Rider over and over again, including his current ongoing series.
38. Colossus – 351 points (2 first place votes)
Piotr Rasputin was a farmer on his family’s farm in Russia when Professor Charles Xavier recruited him to join the X-Men (like most of the other new X-Men, he was created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum).
Known as Colossus for his ability to grow in size and strength (and turn into metal), Rasputin became a longtime, and valued, member of the X-Men. He entered into a relationship with his teammate, Kitty Pryde, which Piotr sorta screwed up by falling for an alien lady during Secret Wars.
Piotr is a sensitive, artist-type, which is a cool irony with his powers, which are basically aggressive ones. After serving with the X-Men for many years, Colossus, distraught that his sister, Illyana Rasputin, was killed by a mutant virus, Colossus actually left the X-Men to join Magneto! After a while, Colossus realized that that was silly, and ended up joining up with Excalibur, and when that team disbanded, he re-joined the X-Men, staying with them until he seemingly perished in an attempt (a successful one, at that) to cure the virus that killed his sister.
He returned to life and rejoined the X-Men and Kitty Pryde. He also got to do a fastball special again…
Colossus was one of the X-Men who was possessed by the Phoenix Force during Avengers vs. X-Men and after the event finished, he was feeling really guilty for his actions while possessed and also had a hard time controlling his transformations, so he ended up joining up with a new version of X-Force and pursuing a relationship with Domino (Cable gave him a harness to help fix his powers).
He eventually came back to the X-Men, as he normally does, and rejoined the team soon before Secret Wars. During the Krakoan Age of the X-Men, Colossus has been involved with X-Force, and also was voted on to the Quiet Council of Krakoa before it was dissolved.
37. Black Widow – 355 points (1 first place vote)
Created by Stan Lee, Don Rico and Don Heck, Black Widow began as a Communist villain of Iron Man, even leading Hawkeye into villainy. Eventually, she turned to the “good” side and has been an ass-kicking agent of good ever since. Check out this bit from Marvel Two-in-One where she and the Thing have teamed up, and he needs to be protected from some bad guys, so she takes care of ONE HUNDRED BAD GUYS!!!
That’s how impressive she is as a fighter, and she carried that skill over to being a regular fixture as Daredevil’s girlfriend and partners in crime fighting. When they broke up, she was mostly in comic book limbo for quite a while before she joined up with the Avengers again (after briefly working alongside them early in her comic book heroic career). She was Captain America’s second-in-command and when he left the team, she became the leader for a sustained period in the 1990s.
As she has gained prominence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Widow has taken on greater prominence in the Marvel Comics Universe, as well, like her major role in Secret Empire where she contrasted against the heroes who believed that they could still save Captain America while she felt that they had to kill him. When it came time, though, to see if one of her young charges, Miles Morales, could kill Cap, she stepped in and stopped him, and she was killed in the process. She was then brought back through cloning.
36. Magik – 389 points (5 first place votes)
Illyana actually made her debut in the same issue that Colossus got his start, Giant-Size X-Men #1 (by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum). However, it was Chris Claremont who came up with the idea to give her a name and a personality and make her part of the X-Men’s supporting cast.
In Uncanny X-Men #160, she was captured in the demonic limbo for seemingly a second, but that was more than enough for her to live for years in Limbo…
The teenaged Illyana soon became best friends with Kitty Pryde. But we eventually learned that she had gone through some hardcore stuff while in Limbo and was now a powerful sorceress, on top of her mutant ability to teleport. The problem was that the use of these black arts slowly risked her very soul. Here, we see a little bit of the effect in an issue of New Mutants (she joined the junior X-Men team)…
After the events of Inferno, Illyana turned back to a little girl, but sadly she then contracted the Legacy Virus and was one of the first notable victims of the disease, with the extra indignity of dying with only Jubilee in the room…
Luckily, as it turns out, enough of Illyana’s soul had been left behind in Limbo that she was able to be sort of put back together, first as the demonic Darkchylde but eventually back to her normal self (well, teenaged normal self). She was one of the X-Men who was possessed by the Phoenix Force during Avengers vs. X-Men. When it all settled down, she joined Cyclops’ team of X-Men, searching for new mutants to teach…
She has become a major part of the X-Men during the Krakoan Age.
