VIEWS FROM THE LONGBOX #18- THE RUNNER-UPS

[Michael Bailey]

Week Eighteen: The Runner-Ups

I just spent five weeks going through my top five all-time favorite super-heroes ever and I have to say (or write) that it was fun. Writing those columns was enjoyable mainly because I like discussing super-heroes but it was also neat to finally put into words the thoughts and feelings I’ve had swirling around in my head regarding those characters. The thing is that despite the fact that I am more comfortable with a Top Five than a Top Ten List (mainly because a ten part series seemed like a bad idea) it does bring up a very good question; what characters were close to making the list that for one reason or another just didn’t? So I thought to myself that since this is the first column of the year that it might be fun to go clean up around here so to speak and go through the five characters that are good enough to be in a Top Ten but just didn’t, for one reason or another, make the final cut.

Number 10: Iron Munro

There is a part of me that has a soft spot for the really obscure DC characters, especially those that were conceived and/or written by Roy Thomas. A buddy of mine pointed out to me recently that as much as I am a Superman fan my many of my personal likes and dislikes can all be tied to an early love for the All-Star Squadron, Young All-Star and Infinity Inc. He’s absolutely right too. I have such an affection for DC’s (and to a certain extent Marvel’s) Golden-Age characters. Not the Golden-Age stories per se. They have a lot of charm, but I like the concepts, the costumes and what writers like Roy Thomas, Len Strazewski, James Robinson, David Goyer and Geoff Johns have done with those characters.

It’s strange; I like the idea of the Golden Age and even some of the stories from that era but I seem to be especially drawn to what writers in the past twenty to thirty years have done with them.

I guess I don’t like the Golden Age so much as the idea of the Golden Age.

Iron Munro, however, is not a according to Hoyle Golden-Age character. In fact he didn’t make his first appearance until Young All-Stars #1, cover date June 1987 (which means it probably came out in February or March). Iron Munro, and Young All-Stars as a concept, was created after the Crisis on Infinite Earths pretty much gutted the concept of Earth-2 and pulled the rug out from under what Roy Thomas had been doing in both All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. In the new DCU there was no Golden-Age era Superman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman and Green Arrow, so Thomas either created or pulled in characters to fill that void. Iron Munro was the Superman replacement. Sort of. Actually Ubermensch and the rest of Axis America were more of a direct this character equals that character for Superman and the rest, but Iron Munro was the spiritual replacement for the Man of Steel.

In fact, Iron Munro was the son of the original Superman. In 1932 Phillip Wylie’s novel The Gladiator was published and told the story of a man named Hugo Danner. Danner’s father was a scientist who developed a serum that could give a person amazing strength and resilience. It would only work on the unborn though, so after slipping his wife a Mickey he injected her with the serum and it became apparent soon after Hugo was born that he was different. Eventually he became amazingly strong, extremely fast, could leap an eighth of a mile and nothing more powerful than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin.

Sound familiar?

The Gladiator is an amazing novel and if you can get past the author’s apparent distrust and even hatred of women it’s a pretty good read. Wylie had the angst driven guy with powers six decades before Stan Lee did. Hugo’s life was one tragedy after another and he could never seem to find any sense of happiness. Roy Thomas, as he would do often through the course of Young All-Stars, took from the literary works of the past and had Arn “Iron” Munro be to the son of Hugo Danner despite the fact that in the novel Hugo's father told him he wouldn't be able to pass his abilities along to his children.

The reason I like the character so much is that, as clichéd as it sounds, Iron Munro is a very different kind of hero. He never had a costume and spent the entire series wearing white pants (after Labor Day even) and a black T-shirt. He was a bit of a hound dog too when it came to the opposite sex and at one point Thomas showed the consequences of sleeping with strange women by giving him a social disease. (Apparently Munro was tough, but not that tough). As much as I liked the character, though, he is pretty obscure and doesn’t have the history the Top Five did.


9. Flash (Jay Garrick)

He is one of two speedsters on the list and whereas Iron Munro is a Golden Age era character Jay is a true Golden-Ager and my favorite character to come out of that time period.

Like most things it wasn’t always like this. I didn’t really know who Jay Garrick was until about 1992 or so when the Len Strazewski/Mike Parobeck Justice Society of Americaseries came out. I didn’t buy the entire series until about 1995 or so when I started into the All-Star Squadron but that is where my Golden-Age love started. But it wasn’t that series or his appearances in All-Star Squadron that made me such a fan of Mr. Garrick.

It was Mark Waid.

See, around the time I bought those Justice Society of America issues I filled out most of my run of Flash. There was something about [B]Mark Waid[B] writing Wally West that I responded to (more on that in a few paragraphs) but when he started using Jay Garrick it gave the book that whole generational feeling that I responded to so much. I liked Jay. He came off as the likable patriarch of the speedster family and Waid gave him such affection for Wally that it was hard not to like him. Thankfully when James Robinson, David Goyer and eventually Geoff Johns started using him in JSA they kept that elder statesmen aspect and made him the older hero you could talk to. Wildcat is there to train you to fight. He’s a great guy, but I have to agree with Beau Smith that more than anything Ted Grant is that bad uncle who sneaks you the beer at the family reunion and show you how to break a guy’s nose. Alan Scott is not as personable. He’s a role model and a great hero but with all of the tragedy he has suffered and the changes he has gone through in age and in power he doesn’t seem approachable.

Jay Garrick is different. He’s the one most at peace with his age and his position in the super-hero food change. Maybe it’s because he had such a healthy relationship with Barry Allen where he was able to let go a bit and let the younger heroes have their day. I get the feeling that this guy loved the life he led, loves his wife and is just satisfied with where he is as a person and as a member of the Justice Society.

Plus he has such an awesome costume. It may be simple, but I think it is so sleek and cool looking.

8. Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner)

So it’s the spring of 1994 and I’m eighteen years old and about to graduate from high school. My driver’s license allowed me the freedom to start going to the comic shop whenever the mood and monetary funds struck me. One day after school I went over to Comic Quest, my home store at the time, to check out what was on the stands. I had no real agenda that day. I just wanted something to read.

On the racks was Green Lantern #51. Now at the time I wasn’t particularly into Green Lantern. I had read Emerald Dawn I and II and picked up the first three or four issues of the series that started up in 1990 but outside of enjoying those books I had no real connection to Hal, Guy, John or the Corps, which at the time was non-existent. I also had no idea of what would become a decade long controversy regarding Emerald Twilight because I had not yet stepped out of my sheltered existence and into the larger world. So I when I picked saw Green Lantern #51 I had no emotional baggage and thought, “Hey, that looks interesting.”

Little did I know where buying that book would lead me. Up until this time I had never really found a character to get into on the ground floor. I think most comic fans have one or two characters that they discovered on our around their first appearance and because of that the character becomes special to them. There is something about having a character be “yours”. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to describe. It almost happened with the Will Payton Starman but, no pun intended, the stars just weren’t aligned on that one. Kyle was that one character for me that I got to see right from the start. I’m pretty sure that fans in the early eighties got a similar feeling when they discovered Firestorm in the early eighties or going back even further the lucky ones that managed to find Spider-Man in 1963 or 1964.

For the next ten years (outside of a few months where I couldn’t afford to do so in 1996) I was a devoted follower of Green Lantern. I bought the monthly title, the annuals, the mini-series, the secret files and origins, the eighty page giants and even that God awful Circle of Fire fifth week event. Ron Marz established a character that may not have been the most original of concepts (regular Joe gets a magic ring and finds that with great power comes great responsibility) but had enough heart to make it something people like me could latch on to. I liked Kyle. Really liked him. Even when Judd Winnick took over and Marz left I still liked what was going on. Later, right around the time of Rebirth, the title started to tank, but from ’94 to about ’03 or so that book was always at the top of the reading pile for that week.

Fortunately Rebirth didn’t destroy Kyle as a character. I wasn’t much on the whole Ion thing (the concept or the series) but after the very awesome Sinestro Corps War he is part of the Four Musketeers Green Lantern style.

I guess he would be the d’Artagnan of the group.

7. Flash (Wally West)

Despite a few flirtations with becoming a Flash fan, especially around 1990 when the television series was about to air, I didn’t become a true follower of those who ride the lightning until 1994.

The more I think about it the more I realize how important 1994 was to me as a fan. It’s interesting to think that Zero Hour would become the rock my church was built on so to speak. It was the catalyst that allowed me to take that first step into a larger world. So many people look back on that event with feelings ranging from mild annoyance to outright loathing but I can’t bring myself to hate it at all, especially since it led to me reading Flash on a regular basis.

Certain books I get into because of the characters and other books grab me because of a creator and sometimes it is a combination of the two. Wally West is one of those combinations. I liked the character. When I collected the title for a few months in 1990 I found that I enjoyed what William Messner-Loebs did with the character and going back a little earlier I even dug what Mike Baron was trying to do. Wally was interesting. He had dimensions and once again I find that something I liked just fine and dandy, dandy and fine was the center for controversy. Apparently as many people had a problem with Wally at the onset of his series as Bart Allen had at the beginning of the 2006 iteration, though to me the problems that came out of Wally assuming the mantle were more culture shock and the problems that came out of Bart becoming the Flash was that it was a really, really, really bad idea.

But then again I could biased. It’s happened before.

The creative part of the combo comes down to two writers; Mark Waid and Geoff Johns. Mark Waid was responsible for getting me to regularly collect the title and Geoff Johns kept me around after I thought I was pretty much done with it.

Waid infused a sense of legacy with Wally that hadn’t been there before while at the same time making him his own man. The previous writers had skirted the issue and focused more on Wally in the then here and now. Mr. West had a great supporting cast but Barry Allen was treated, on the whole, like something that was holding Wally back. Waid took that and used it to establish Wally as part of a line of speedsters but also used it in the Return of Barry Allen story to establish Wally as his own hero. Was Waid’s run perfect? No, not perfect. There was this perception that at every twenty-five issues or so he would supposedly kill and replace Wally only to have him return a few issues later. Despite this I hold Waid’s run on the character as a whole to be one of the best in comics, which is why I was surprised that I liked Geoff Johns’ time with the character so much.

It is rare in comic books, especially those that were published in the nineties and in the past seven years or so, to have a change in writers go as smoothly as did on the Flash. Now I know that Johns’ start on the book was rocky with some fans and even I had my initial doubts, but over time, especially after Iron Heights he won me and others over. Johns’ single greatest achievement on the title was bringing back the glory of the Rogues gallery. Its not that I didn’t like the concept of Barry’s old enemies going legit and starting new lives. It worked and made for some interesting stories, but Flash is one of the few super-heroes that has a good gallery of villains and Johns brought that back by not only re-imagining the older ones like Captain Cold but also new ones like Girder, Murmur and especially Zoom. Johns balanced the new/old villains with Wally’s personal life, which made for exciting and emotionally engaging stories.

Add all of that up and Wally is number seven on the list.

6. Spider-Man (Peter Parker)

I’m not going to get too deep into Spider-Man in this exciting episode because not only is it running a little long but I plan on devoting an entire installment to the character in the next week or two, so a lot of what I would have said here is going to be there. What I will say is that recent events in my collecting have raised my opinion of the character. I always liked Spider-Man. I mean how could you not? He is quite possibly the most perfect comic book super-hero ever created and while most non-comic book people respond to Superman and Batman and the Hulk for one reason or another there seems to be this universal love for Spider-Man. I don’t quite know what it is. I mean I know what I like about the character and what he means to me but it seems that Spider-Man is liked by just about everyone despite race, creed and color.

Maybe they’re right and when I say they I mean the dozen or so writers and editors I’ve seen interviewed about Spider-Man. Maybe it is the full face mask. Maybe everyone can imagine themselves as Spider-Man because of that mask. Peter Parker is the everyman of comic book characters and the fact that you can’t see his face as Spider-Man takes that one further. Superman doesn’t wear a mask, obviously. Batman and Captain America do, but you can still see some of their face and in the case of Captain America and the Barry Allen Flash you can see their eyes as well. You can’t do that with Spider-Man and it is interesting to me that with nothing to connect with, especially in the eyes, people still relate to him.

The rest of why he is number six on the list and more will be in that future Spider-Man “fueled” installment, but I will state that if I had waited another year or so to make up this list it might have been different.

Anyway, that’s it for my first column of the year. I have absolutely no idea what future installments will be about because I usually write these things as the ideas hit me but I’m sure I’ll have something to say. One of my few resolutions this year for this column is to get it out on time and on a weekly basis so we’ll see how that works.

(Michael Bailey is a life long super-hero fan who lives in Fayetteville, GA with his wife Rachel and their little dog named Boo. In addition to what you just read Michael produces a mostly weekly podcast that is also called Views From The Longbox as well as writing reviews for the Superman Homepage, participating in the mostly bi-weekly Unique Geek podcast and has just started a blog about Superman, Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk called The Blue, The Red and The Green. He really feels bad that this column has been delayed for several weeks but the holidays are usually a weird time and between that and work there was very little in the way of free time. Hopefully Michael will do something smart next year like, say, write a bunch of columns ahead of time. But that makes sense so it probably won’t happen.)

[Chase Bouzigard]

A great read as Allways Mike, However

I feel that Kyle Is much more like Aramis then d’Artagnan. But haveing just reread the The Three Musketeers (I read it ounce a year). Geoff ssure is writeing GL like a space version of it.

[Michael Bailey]

Originally Posted by Darthchased

A great read as Allways Mike, However

I feel that Kyle Is much more like Aramis then d’Artagnan. But haveing just reread the The Three Musketeers (I read it ounce a year). Geoff ssure is writeing GL like a space version of it.

Based on not reading the book and reading about the characters (really need to get to that novel at some point) I always saw Aramis as Hal, with Guy as Porthos and John as Athos. The reason I chose d'Artagnan for Kyle is that he is younger and despite being solo for a number of years he is still kind of the new guy trying to fit in.

Again take this as the ramblings of a man who has yet to read the book.

Though I will say this; I would never cast Chris O'Donnell as Kyle.

[Chase Bouzigard]

Originally Posted by Michael Bailey

Based on not reading the book and reading about the characters (really need to get to that novel at some point) I always saw Aramis as Hal, with Guy as Porthos and John as Athos. The reason I chose d'Artagnan for Kyle is that he is younger and despite being solo for a number of years he is still kind of the new guy trying to fit in.

Again take this as the ramblings of a man who has yet to read the book.

Though I will say this; I would never cast Chris O'Donnell as Kyle.

Hal- is dArtagnan Sure he is older than Kyle, However, he is brash cocky, and Impulseive. He is also the model of no fear, and he will qustion athority. He does have great respect for the corps, but will go aginist it for his own honor.

Kyle- Aramis, He has been the torch barer for so long that he lives and brithes for the Corps not unlike Aramis did for his contry. Kyle Also is more Spiritual than the outhers (Aramis is a prist).

Guy-Porthos, No qustion there Borth or the tough guys of the group, that has a ruff time keeping his mouth shut, but he is good in a fight, and the life of a party. He also will say the thing that needs to be said that no one else will.

John- Athos, the older one with a past, I think that discribes john well. a quite leader with the wight of the world on his sholders.

[Michael Bailey]

Originally Posted by Darthchased

Hal- is dArtagnan Sure he is older than Kyle, However, he is brash cocky, and Impulseive. He is also the model of no fear, and he will qustion athority. He does have great respect for the corps, but will go aginist it for his own honor.

Kyle- Aramis, He has been the torch barer for so long that he lives and brithes for the Corps not unlike Aramis did for his contry. Kyle Also is more Spiritual than the outhers (Aramis is a prist).

Guy-Porthos, No qustion there Borth or the tough guys of the group, that has a ruff time keeping his mouth shut, but he is good in a fight, and the life of a party. He also will say the thing that needs to be said that no one else will.

John- Athos, the older one with a past, I think that discribes john well. a quite leader with the wight of the world on his sholders.

Yeah, really need to read that book.

[Chase Bouzigard]

Originally Posted by Michael Bailey

Yeah, really need to read that book.

Yep, All the movies suck. The book is fantasitc.
Just start to read it and you will never put it down.