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Friday, August 22, 2008

The "50 Things I Love About Comics" Meme

John Seavey recently posted this meme on his blog. Here's my list of 50 things I love about comics (in no particular order):

1. The X-Men
2. Cyclops
3. Stan Lee



4. Grant Morrison's "Batgod" Batman


5. Fables
6. The basic concept of the Green Lanterns: space cops with magic rings
7. Primates with super powers



8. The Legion of Super Pets



9. Digging through quarter bins at conventions
10. The smell of old comics
11. Covers with dialogue on them
12. Lex Luthor's 1980s, George Pereze-designed battle suit



13. Dr. Doom speaking in the third person
14. John Romita Jr.
15. Chris Claremont's Magneto
16. Uncanny X-Men #175
17. Steve Englehart's crazy time traveling Kang stories
18. "I know your secret."
19. Silver Age Jimmy Olsen stories



20. The Justice League
21. The Avengers
22. The crappy paper on which comics used to be printed before the glossy stuff used today, so comics felt like books instead of magazines.
23. Darkseid



24. Thanos



25. Fin Fang Foom



26. Noble Causes
27. "With great power comes great responsibility."
28. Stan Lee's memory-saving alliterative character names
29. Thor's Shakespearean speech patterns
30. Jack Kirby
31. Bernard the Poet
32. Uncanny X-Men #190 and #191



33. DC's Showcase Presents and Marvel's Essential collections
34. Kingdome Come
35. Marvels



36. The Watcher, especially the fact that he's sworn to observe and never interfere, but he interferes every damn time.



37. Subplots
38. "My ward is a junkie!"



39. Claremontisms, especially: I’m the best there is at what I do” “The focused totality of my telepathic power” “No quarter asked, none given” and “I'm nigh invulnerable when I'm blastin’!”
40. Cable's convoluted history
41. DC's legacy characters
42. The women of the Hellfire Club



43. The idea that superhero comics are a modern mythology
44. Continuity
45. Pouring through my longboxes for hours on end, organizing my collection
46. "Ultron. We would have words with thee."



47. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe



48. "To Be Continued."
49. Footnotes: I've read countless comics I never would have otherise because of them.
50. The letters page, a great way to end a comic: the story is over, but I'm not quite ready to move on to the next one.

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3 comments:

  1. Cool list. I share quite a few of those with you. Later I will post a few of my own. All I wanted to say now is that is the pimpest picture of Stan Lee ever!!! Shirt open and everything.

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  2. I'm surprised you didn't put the Watchmen on the list. It is the only comic to win a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time's 2005 list of "the 100 best English-language novels".
    That makes it the greatest comic book in the history of great comic books and greater than any comic that will ever be written! Or something like that.

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  3. Yeah, I googled Stan Lee expecting a pic from Mallrats or something. Instead I find out that Stan Lee was apparently a porn star in the 70s. If there was ever any doubt about putting him on my list, that clinched it.

    I dunno, Dr.Bitz, Sandman has won similar accolades and I didn't put that on my list either. Probably because I'm not a 15 year old "Goth" girl w/daddy issues. Zing!

    Ha ha, just kidding, ~boots.

    Seriously though, despite Watchmen's clear status as the greatest combination of words and pictures in the history of reality, by the time I first came to it, it was already clearly established as such, and I knew what I was getting into with it.

    So while I certainly enjoy it and appreciate it, I don't have the same personal connection to it that I do some other things on this list, so it just didn't pop into my head right away. For example, Watchmen is a far better work than Marvels, but I read Marvels when I was younger and it created a far more visceral and moving reaction in me that I recalled more readily than my critical analysis and appreciation of Watchmen.

    Though were I to redo the list with a bit more thought, I'd almost certainly include it.

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