Daredevil
I started reading comic books because of an initial attraction to Spider-Man. If Spider-Man was my gateway comic book, then Daredevil comic books were my main source of pleasure after I moved on from Spidey.
For me, the reason I liked Daredevil so much was that, as comic book heroes go, he had/has a dark, brooding personality that I identified with. As much as any character in the Marvel universe, he's flawed but strongly principled, so there was always that interesting dynamism going on with Matt Murdock.
Having grown up fairly religious, Daredevil searching for meaning connected to me even though I did not grow up with the Catholic guilt and ceremony that the books portrayed. The Catholicism angle is something the Netflix series played with some in season 1 and then returned to it in season 3, which was a welcome return.
One of the greatest periods of the Daredevil comic book series was when I was in my youth: the Frank Miller & Klaus Janson years.
In Tim Leong's Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe, Daredevil is shown to be statistically one of the weaker superheroes in terms of battles won, tied, and lost. In the book's "Battle Breakdown" graphical element, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is in the lower 25 percentile.
Like I said, he's flawed, but he's interesting.
Scarlet Witch
Gosh, I love Wanda Maximoff. From as far back as I can remember, I've been fascinated by/attracted to red-headed women. I blame on it Daphne from Scooby-Doo. She started it all.
As a minor unrelated tangent, when The Office was in its last seasons, didn't anyone else find it a bit implausible Dunder Miflin had three red-headed women in the office? Or maybe it's just me...
But I digress. Besides being beautiful to my teenaged eyes when I would regularly read Avengers comic books, she has really interesting powers with her initial "hex powers" and later with her ability to wield "chaos magic."
I never understood her attraction to Vision, but I get the storyline and why it was put into the Avengers comic book.
Within her character's arc, initially she and Quicksilver were Magneto's kids, but I guess later on in other variations, she was not Magneto's daughter. I like her best as Magneto's daughter.
As a member of the Avengers, I think her power was always under-appreciated.
Hawkeye
The first image is the first issue of a four-part series, during the 80s I believe, that I still have. I have the four issues that is a short story involving Hawkeye as the main character, not the supporting character he usually is with the Avengers,
A year or so ago, I reread the four-part series of comic books, and it's a decent story. Much to my surprise, the series ends with Cliff Burton and Mockingbird both naked and in a hot tub together. I don't remember being titillated by that image back when I read it as a kid, but I'm sure I was.
Much like Daredevil, Hawkeye relies on his excellent fighting abilities, specifically of course the bow and arrow, which is notably old fashioned.
You don't see a lot of purple-clad superheroes, but in a number of variations Hawkeye is often purple as can been seen in the Matt Fraction's fine run on Hawkeye, which brings us to the newest Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, pictured above. As Wikepedia relates, Kate's outfit is drawn to resemble a combo of the first Hawkeye and Mockingbird's outfits.
Unfortunately, the recent Kate Bishop Hawkeye series was cancelled, but I hope to find her in another series soon.
Iron Fist
It's a little strange that Danny Rand's story is quite similar to Bruce Wayne's: dead parents but rich as hell. However, the narrative of him getting the special Iron Fist power as a Westerner is appealing to white boys like me who have a fascination with Eastern philosophy, martial arts, and so on.
I didn't buy a lot of Power Man & Iron Fist comic books when I was a kid because the drugstore where I bought comic books usually didn't stock them on a regular basis for whatever reason. From time to time, they'd be available though.
But often those comic books provided a bit of comic relief to my reading because sometimes they would just be downright hilarious. In some respects, the recent run by Walker on Power Man & Iron Fist has taken that mantle.
My favorite superhero comic book of recent vintage is Fraction's The Immortal Iron Fist. It's a more serious narrative arch with beautiful artwork.
Wolverine
Going by "Battle Breakdown" again, Logan is hell of fighter. He ranks in the top third of battles won, tied, and lost, which is right below Sub-Mariner and She-Hulk and above Kingpin and Thor. That's good company to be in.
It's not hard to see why Wolverine is so beloved by Marvel fans. He's a major character in one of the most powerful and influential superhero groups in history, the X-Men, and the whole love triangle among he, Jean Grey, and Scott Summers made plot lines interestingly uncomfortable.
But to get to the real gist, his character's backstory and abilities are just so interesting and compelling. How great would it be to be able to live that long and be able to heal oneself? The character is basically indestructible until the adamantium covering his bones eventually poisons him.
His personality also calls out to some of our wish-fulfillments though with his ability to unleash havoc similar to how people talked about how Vikings would go berserk in battle.
Beast
As you can tell, I was an Avengers reader, and I prefer what some readers might consider the "supporting" superheroes of the team, whereas I don't find Captain America and Iron Man all that interesting. Thor has his moments, and I like the whole Asgardian pantheon that the comic books portray, but I never read Thor on a regular basis.
Beast, on the other hand, was a comic and literary foil to the seriousness of other characters. When I read The Avengers, he often quoted British literature, especially Shakespeare.
He was a biochemist though with a genius-level intellect, so that is one characteristic that drew me to him. His abilities are awesome. He's basically a superhuman atavistic well-read genius.
Hank McCoy also has the distinction of being both a member of the X-Men and the Avengers.
Black Widow
Here we go again with a red-headed lady superhero.
Looking at her history, I didn't know she originated as a menace to the typically boring Iron Man. I was introduced to her as a member of the Avengers, a former Soviet spy, who wed and divorced Hawkeye, and was at times the girlfriend of Daredevil. Natasha is one of the few girlfriends of Daredevil who doesn't get killed.
She's quick, agile, and very good at combat, but much to my chagrin, I never knew she was somewhat similar to Logan in anti-aging and healing characteristics. What I remember most is that's she's awfully good with weapons with an intellect adept at manipulation and tactical strategies.
The somewhat recent run of Black Widow by Edmondson and Noto was quite good.
Power Man aka Luke Cage
The first image is the character that I grew up with, an almost Blacksploitation version of Luke Cage. As African-American superheroes go, Power Man was a distinct contrast to the somewhat stuffy Black Panther and the helpmatey Falcon.
The guy needs cash, so he teams up with Iron Fist to create Heroes for Hire, one of the better ideas in the Marvel universe in my opinion. Instead of being a jingoistic, Captain American syle superhero, Power Man needs to get paid.
Even though the premise of Heroes for Hire was a bit sketchy (after all, Danny Rand is rich), I liked the whole counterpoint of superheroes needing money and doing their work as a job, not for some altruistic endeavor.
In some ways, Luke Cage is a non-flying, fallible Superman. He's indestructible and has superhuman strength ~ but not superhuman strength that is outlandish. As supermen go, he's a realistic one.
Spider-Man
Besides Wolverine and the next guy featured, who is a magnificent villain or antihero depending on one's perspective, Spider-Man is one of the major players in the Marvel comic book universe. He's beloved.
What's been tiresome the past couple of decades though is that the Marvel cinematic universe keeps churning out Spider-Man movies to the extent that I'm getting tired of Spider-Man, which is unfortunate. But I have heard good things about the animated movie that came out recently.
He's a great character who captured the imaginations of many young readers because Peter Parker represents the insecurities and issues teens were having. And it's an iconic story.
Magneto
If Professor X is the MLK of mutant-human conflict, Magneto is Malcolm X.
Considering how the Marvel universe depicts how humans try to destroy mutants, it's hard for me to see him as an extreme villain. Sure, in some comic books, he's pretty evil, but to a degree he's fighting for his "race."
There is good in him I believe, and the recent series done by Bunn, Walta, et al. presents a more sympathetic portrait of this powerful mutant.
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