After nearly 1,100 ballots were cast, YOU the reader ranked your favorite 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 revealing that list throughout the rest of the month. The countdown continues now...
25. Black Widow – 588 points (7 first place votes)
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 revived as part of a twisted series of clones made of her.
24. Rogue – 649 points (15 first place votes)
Created by Chris Claremont (and Dave Cockrum, I believe), Rogue's powers developed when she was a young teen and she kissed a boy and her power to absorb people's powers and memories manifested horribly. Scarred by this, Rogue was taken in by her foster mother, the mutant terrorist, Mystique.
She ultimately made Rogue a member of her group, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and set Rogue after Ms. Marvel, where Rogue absorbed Ms. Marvel's memories AND powers, making Rogue very powerful, but now fighting for control of her own mind.
She was forced to turn to the X-Men for help, and Professor X agreed to help her.
She joined the X-Men and soon proved herself...
She has been a stalwart member of the X-Men ever since, even leading a team at one point! For a while after the Avengers vs. X-Men war, she served with the Uncanny Avengers, the joint X-Men/Avengers team. She then returned to the X-Men where she ultimately married her longtime love interest, Gambit. She and Gambit are currently serving on Excalibur.
23. Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) - 665 points (11 first place votes)
Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, was created by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan. She was a supporting character in the original Kree Captain Marvel's comic for quite awhile, until Carol was exposed to a Kree device that basically made her like the Kree, so she was, essentially, a female version of Captain Marvel. She took the name Ms. Marvel.
Carol soon got her own series (soon, as in, right away), which lasted for a couple of years. Towards the end of her series, she joined the Avengers. However, in a controversial story, Carol was brainwashed by some time-traveling guy to fall in love with him so that she could give birth to him (as he did not have a body on our Earth). The two then left together all happy.
Chris Claremont, the writer of the Ms. Marvel series, took issue with this, and in an Avengers Annual, brought Carol back and pointed out how angry she was at the Avengers for taking her situation as genuine. In the same story, Carol was stripped of her powers and her personality, really, by the mutant Rogue.
Eventually, in the pages of X-Men (who Carol had been recuperating with), she gained NEW cosmic powers and a new name, Binary.
She stayed in outer space for some time, but returned to Earth, mostly stripped of her Binary powers, but re-joined the Avengers as Warbird.
She later joined the New Avengers as Ms. Marvel. She got another ongoing series (this one lasted a lot longer than her first one in the 1970s) and then eventually got another ongoing, this time she finally took over the Captain Marvel mantle...
Since becoming Captain Marvel, Carol has gained larger prominence within the Marvel Universe. During Civil War II, where the first crossover was Iron Man vs. Captain America, this time it was Iron Man vs. Captain Marvel. She has become one of Marvel's biggest heroes. She also recently starred in a blockbuster film adaptation.
22. Nightcrawler – 686 points (7 first place votes)
Created by Dave Cockrum and Len Wein (Cockrum had originally designed the character to be part of a proposed Legion of Super-Heroes spin-off team that was going to be called the Outsiders before he left DC and brought the character with him to DC), Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) was an interesting mutant. You see, he was one of the rare mutants where mopiness did not come second nature to him. Now, don't get me wrong, he certainly had his mopey periods, but they often tended to be sort of out of nowhere stretches of time, almost as if they were invented problems that he didn't really have (for instance, there was a stretch around Uncanny X-Men #200 where Kurt suddenly doubted his competence - it was like, dude, you're on a team with Rogue and Colossus, your competence should be the last thing on your mind) and then he went back to normal.
And his normal self was a happy-go-lucky mutant who was cool with the fact that he looked like a demon. Now, it certainly helped that he was raised by circus folk who treated him like he was normal. It also helped that he was having sex with his foster sister. So he grew up with a ton of self-confidence that comes from being a famed circus performer (which always made the bouts of self-doubt fall flat to me). And that was a neat contrast to the depressing antics of "The love of my life is dead" and "All my family members die" and "Professor Xavier is a jerk."
Nightcrawler's powers were also fun - teleportation in a flash of brimstone is a neat visual (although before Dave Cockrum left the title he was starting to give Nightcrawler some odd powers - what the heck was up with "blending into shadows"?!? Where did that come from?).
Another interesting aspect of Nightcrawler's personality was that he was one of the few religious heroes. Of course, this being comic books, where things tend to go from one extreme to another, Kurt couldn't just be "religious," he had to be a freakin' PRIEST, which was ridiculous. Then again, if you think him being a priest was ridiculous, what do you say about a storyline where he would be manuevered into becoming the Pope of the Catholic Church, only to reveal that he was a mutant to...uhmm...I forget...cause the Rapture, maybe? Man, how crazy is it that that run of Uncanny X-Men is still canon. Can't Mephisto get rid of the concept of Kurt being an ACTUAL demon?
After being injured in the Mutant Massacre, Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde were led to believe that the X-Men were dead. So they formed a new team in England called Excalibur. Now, you would THINK that such a team would only last as long as them learning that the X-Men were alive, but noooo....instead, they stuck around even when it was pretty clear that Excalibur was about as effective of a concept as the X-Terminators. Still, Kurt grew as a character during this period, as he became more of a lead character.
When he and Kitty returned to the X-Men (along with Colossus, who had joined Excalibur after his brief "Magneto's pal, Colossus" period), though, Kurt slid pretty easily back into the team dynamics. He actually led his own team for a while during Joe Casey's run. Here, Casey has Kurt give a compelling argument to Chamber to join the team...
Kurt eventually sacrificed his life to protect the first new mutant born since Scarlet Witch said "No More Mutants." Hope turned out to be the reason mutants began to exist on Earth again, so it was probably a good bet by him.
Eventually, the X-Men rescued him from death itself and he rejoined the team, where he has been ever since. He even got another ongoing series after his death, as he became a teacher at the school...
With the new Dawn of X relaunch of the X-Men titles, we have not yet seen where Nightcrawler is, but it is likely that he will pop up in one of the books eventually (or even more likely, in one of the next wave of books).
21. Kitty Pryde – 693 points (8 first place votes)
Kitty Pryde was created by John Byrne and Chris Claremont, and she first appeared right at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. She was a new student at the X-Men, and since she was much younger than the rest, she worked as a POV character for the readers.
Kitty was a nice, bright Jewish girl from Chicago who had the ability to phase through objects. She was quite down-to-Earth, and soon became a fan favorite.
One of her most famous moments was when she was left home alone when a demon attacks the school (this was the final issue of Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin's run on the book)...
Kitty began a relationship with her teammate, Colossus, which ended it heartbreak for Kitty. After serving with the X-Men for a number of years (and bonding with almost all her teammates, most notably with basically her surrogate mother, Storm, and her surrogate father, Wolverine - who trained her in the ways of the samurai), even finally getting a cool name - Shadowcat - Kitty was injured during a battle, and was separated from the rest of the X-Men.
During this time, the X-Men were believed dead - leaving Kitty to start a new group in England, along with her fellow wounded X-Man, Nightcrawler. The two helped found Excalibur, where Kitty stayed as a member for the next number of years (in fact, correct me if I'm off here, but I believe Kitty actually was a member of Excalibur longer than she was originally with the X-Men. Is that right? It's like, 1980-88 for X-Men, and 88-98 for Excalibur, right?), even forming her next major romantic relationship with Peter Wisdom, a gritty English operative.
The two split, and so did Excalibur, leading Kitty back to the X-Men. After the apparent death of Colossus, Kitty took some time off, but was brought back to the X-men by Cyclops, and she was reunited with the not-so-dead-after-all Colossus. She seemingly then sacrificed HERSELF to save the Earth from a giant bullet.
She eventually returned to the X-Men and when Cyclops and Wolverine had their big falling out, she helped Wolverine launch a new school for mutants. She remained there as co-headmaster for quite a while, interacting with the time traveled original X-Men a great deal (sort of becoming their field leader). She also met and fell in love with Peter Quill, Star Lord. She served as a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, filling in for Peter (she loooves dudes named Peter). Eventually, that relationship did not work out (she loooooves ending relationships with guys named Peter) and she returned to the X-Men where she became the overall leader of the X-Men. During her time with the team, she reignited a romance with Colossus and they almost got married, but backed out at the last moment (again, she digs guys named Peter and also digs breaking up with guys named Peter).
Recently she was made the Red Queen of the Hellfire Club and is in charge of the newly formed (reformed?) Marauders.
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