Besides Alpha, what are some other comic characters u like?

[langkowski_fan]

Hey, this is just a little thing to get some conversation going, and to see what everybody's interested in. Obviously, everyone here loves Alpha, but what's some other comics/comic characters you guys are interested in? Besides Alpha, I also really like the Fantastic Four(the Thing is my favorite member), Hulk, Wolverine(usually just in his solo book), some X-Men(love the Beast), Black Panther, and Ghost Rider.

[Powersurge]

My comicbook collection is dominated by Marvel comics, amongst which my collection of Uncanny X-Men is easily the largest, with X-Men coming in a close second.

While I think that I have the first hundred X-Men, my interest really didn't survive the two-team split thing. My favourite X-stories are easily to be found within the confines marked out by the beginining of the all-new team (Storm, Colossus, Wolvie, etc.) til just after the Mutant Massacre ... which itself ended up going in a direction that I didn't like. Some good stories followed, like the return of the Brood, but with hindesight I'd say it really began to peter out for me from there on.

The FF are of course classic with their battles and dealings with the Hulk, Silver Surfer, Galactus, Dr. Doom, Terrax and Gladiator being legendary, must-reads. In all of Marvel comics the levitating of the entire island of Manhattan (Terrax) or the lifting of an entire highrise building (Gladiator) could only happen in FF.

I have a few more Avengers comics than most others, with most of them coming from Wasp's stint as leader. The Masters of Evil arc, where Jarvis gets tortured before the eyes of Cap and Black Knight, and Herc. gets bashed into a coma, sucked me right in, whilst Zeus venegeance on the Avengers (for the fate of Herc.) really helped keep my interest for a time.

Outsdie of Marvel I liked Image comics "WildCATs", at least until the returned to their homeworld, after which it all began to suck. And only continue to suck more and more the longer I held on.

Naturally, as a WildCATs fan, the Grifter spin-offs were something that held my interest for a time.

One comic I still have my eyes open for, and an ever growing collection of, are CHAOS comics Evil Ernie ... about an abused mutant teenager, who had telepathy, turned homicidal uber-zombie out to riaise a zombie army and kill everyone in the world so that he might be with his only true love, Lady Death, who has appeared to him in dreams a few times.

[Ben]

Topic moved to Other Comics

To answer the question: I really like Exiles, Have been reading Hulk and started the new thing series. I like the cosmic side of things, Adam Warlock, Thanos, Drax, Silver Surfer.

Ben

[Mokole]

I liked Rogue in the 80's and early 90's, then her character turned into everywoman and lost her appeal, but Rogue is still a good character to me.

Shinobi Shaw I always liked.

The Flash, Wally West, is the best character who is action-oriented but funny. I also keep an eye on the X-Men and Hulk but I don't read them.

My kids like Transformers and Teen Titans. I guess outside of the basic X-books (that includes EXiles), Teen Titans and Alpha Flight, I most like individual character books. That being said, Alpha Flight has always been my favorite, #2 changes always. X-Men, Hulk, EXiles, Teen Titans, Flash, then back to Teen Titans...

[langkowski_fan]

Yeah, forgot to mention I started the new Thing series, too...good stuff so far. And I have also read alot of the Hellboy stuff from Dark Horse..great horror stuff there, though I'm mostly a Marvel fan, through and through.

[PWalk]

I don't really read comics on a regular basis. When I do it's mostly TPB's.
I've been reading alot of Batman lately as well as Rising Stars by Stracynsky.

I've always been a mark for anything with Ben Grimm in it so I'll be reading that new series as well.

[birdygirl]

I like Wolverine, Storm, the Legion of Super-Heroes (old favorites of mine), the Wanderers (a Legion spin-off -- we've discussed them here before), and Kamandi (a marvelous Jack Kirby character).

Has anyone here heard of Kamandi? DC Archive Editions just published Volume 1 of his earliest adventures, (issues 1 - 10). Worth checking out.

Also, I read an interesting and unusual comic a few months ago: "Metadocs -- the Super ER". It's from Antarctic Press, and we got it through a distributor. There was supposed to be a second issue, but it doesn't seem to have been published yet. And when I asked about it at the two comics stores in my town, no one had ever heard of it! Strange.

[Garry/Al-Fan]

I like The Imaginaries. Unusual, fun, and good art (though I wished the originally artists could've finished issue # 4).

Blood of the Demon. Solid stories with cliffhanger endings ala old Strange Tales Dr. Strange stories, where one story leads into the next.

Picked up Black Panther to check out the Luke Cage storyline. I like it so far.

Wolverine "Enemy of the State/Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.". Tight. Over-the-top
(keeping secret all the killing Logan does at the end ), at times, but tight.

Weapon X: Day of Future Whatever. Nice sci-fi time-travel loop ending. Didn't really like this mini-series. Wolverine: ineffective. Heroes: killed easily. Bad-guys: win big.

[darc_light]

Well, I really like the Brood. The Brood Mutants (Earthfall) and Brood: Day of Wrath storylines are especially good, though I really didn't like the X-4 series, even with the Brood. I just love giant insects...

I like the Reavers, THE ORIGINAL CYBORG REAVERS, not Pierce's newest group of Anti-Mutant human kids. :P

The Reavers:
Donald Pierce ( The White Bishop)
Pretty Boy (I really like his "bare bones" design, it's creepy but cool...He's my fav Reaver)
Bonebreaker
Skullbuster (All of them)
Wade Cole
Angelo Macon
Murray Reese
Cylla Markham (Skullbuster II)
Lady Deathstrike

And their AOA counterparts,
The Altered Humans:
Donald Pierce (He's a LOT creepier in the AOA)
Slocum
Clegg
Dead-Eye
Mangle
Vultura
and briefly
Carol Danvers

Other assorted characters include the Sugar Man, Cannonball (I have to support my fellow Southerners! ), Namor, Rictor, Adam X The X-Treme, Deathbird. I really liked Skin from Generation X, but they killed him off...

I mostly like little known characters, Like Rex: Rex AOA was Apocalypse' personal servant, and Rex Earth 616 was Sugar Man's servant), Barbarus, Forearm, Batwing (Jimmy), Morlocks like Bliss, Tar Baby, Berzerker, Scaleface. also Noh-Var (Marvel Boy #?), Bobo (Namor's cousin), Neophyte (Of the Acolytes), Fang (Of the Shi'Ar Imperial Guard),The Skrulls, the Badoon... Lots of characters. I also like Shinobi Shaw!

I also like the Elders of the Universe, specifically:
Runner
Champion
Gardener
Possessor

I hate:
Valerie Cooper
Sabretooth
Selene, Black Queen of the Hellfire Club
And lots of others...

[darc_light]

It's Noh-Varr... He's Kree...

[DelBubs]

Before I stopped collecting about a year back, I was getting Uncanny X, The Authority, JMS's Squadron Supreme books and a couple of indie titles. In my time I have collected numerous books, but only two are read frequently, Alpha of course and New Warriors.

I didn't read the latest New Warriors and am of the opinion that NW and AF have had pretty parallel histories. An initial gem of a run and then reasonable stories, but eventual cancellation and two attempts to re-launch with a steady decline in the things that made the teams good in the first place. Plus, both have had a third series, that serious fans have welcomed less than a chicken with a cough.

So with all that said, at present I am collecting nothing, but am going to start collecting again and have targeted the upcoming Marvel big events to throw myself back into the melee. The Annihilation stories interest me and Nova looks the business on that front cover. Of course New Avengers is going to get a perusal plus 'Wolverine, Origins'. Not a fan of Thor, I am gonna steer clear of the Ultimate Universe, don't want anything to do with 'Planet Hulk' and only look at what the X is up to if there's an Alpha connection. So I can see myself picking up three to four series and quite a few Essentials volumes and I might take a look at what Kirkman is doing with Speedball and the rest of 'The Legion of Losers' or whatever they are called.

[Edited] How could I forget about 'Civil War', interested to see what spins out of that.

[Phil]

When I first started getting into comics I was a young'un and was attracted to the X-verse.
DC's stuff either seemed too dark to me at that age, or I didn't see the point in indestructible heroes that never lost, so I still to this day have never really been a big DC-verse follower.

I followed the X-verse solidly for about 10 years and am only really now down to just Wolverine, Exiles & Ult. X. The rest of the X-titles just seem really dull to me.

About 7 years back, probably through the original AWaves list and the 'net in general branched off into more indie stuff and broadened my horizons a lot, my reading taste, and film taste as well for that matter, having taken a deeper and darker turn and looked for books with artwork to match.
I buy a lot of stuff for the art these days too come to think of it.

About 5 years back I went through a serious Image phase buying a lot of really different genre'd books, many of which got cancelled pretty shortly thereafter.

At the moment I'm liking a lot of everything, so I've been getting a lot of anthologies just for the pure diversity of genre within.

I still probably read more Marvel titles than anything else at the moment though, so I'm not anti-superhero or anything.

[kozzi24]

I've been reading and collecting for about 20 years, and most closely follow Marvel Team Books.
Alpha is still the #1 fave, when "Alpha" is original members
The Roger Stern run of Avengers including the Masters of Evil battle and the following Olympion Pantheon story you cited are long time faves also.
I'm definitely with Del that the original run of New Warriors is a great read.
My favorite team book right now is either Exiles or Young Avengers. I haven't founf anything truly inspiring in Avengers, FF or the X-titles in quite a while.
Other long term favorites that I would recommend to anyone interested in s/f comics is the original runs of Micronauts and especially Alien Legion.

[Powersurge]

I suppose it might be worth mentioning, as we sit here talknig about comics, that my tastes have begun to swing back to my pre-teen DC or at least 4 colour comics taste.

One of the things that ultimately made me sick of the X-titles and Marvel in general is the huge amount of cynicism regarding mankind and human nature. I mean, why would anyone in the Marvel Universe even bother being a hero seeing as how bad people, apparently, suck there. I can just no longer stomach the martyr-elitist-social-activists-wet-dream "...for a world that fears and hates us" bs.

So, at present, I probably consume more JLU and Teen Titan cartoons than anything else; which is kinda funny considering the arc that has been going on in JLU with alot of government mistrust of the heroes. But them, the issue is presented with alot more compassion for the human predicament than in the MU. Heck, you even have JLUers like the GReen Arrow and, of course, the paragon of humanity, Batman, having deep sympathies for humanities and the governments fears.

I've taken a glance at a couple of comicbooks put out by a Canadian publisher, Speakeasy, such as Beowulf (naturally) and Helios. There is another comic put out by an entity called Chimera called Mutation that has some interesting comicy looking art.

Eeesh! Comicbooks.

[darc_light]

Amen Powersurge! I'm pretty sick of the basically hopeless world Marvel has built for it's characters, where every future is a dark one and the whole world wants all mutants dead. (It's not good to read depressing stuff when you're obssessive and prone to depression...)
When I do buy comics it's mainly because of a character I like (Like Kyle) or guest appearances by groups I like (Like the Brood, the only reason I read X-4 and Contest of Champions II was for the Brood, I really disliked X-4.).
I also dislike the mysticism coming into everything...Spider-Man's powers are "totemistic"?
And is anyone else tired of the mandatory superhero misunderstanding/fight that ALWAYS happens whenever two "good guys" meet.