A handy dandy chart from DC Nation #2 (2018) (Click to embiggen):

Not to be too harsh, because Josh Williamson is just doing what his editorial masters tell him to. But man, can we at least get our basic facts straight?

Well, no, the H stands for Hercules, guys. Captain Marvel (SHAZAM be damned) gets his speed from Mercury, which is the letter M in the acronym.

I mean, sure, Hermes and Mercury are just (putatively) the same god with different names. But unless you think the SHAZAM name is no longer an acronym, couldn't Williamson or the editors take 3 seconds to get it right?

But no, I'm not really upset about the foul up. Nor about the odd inclusion of Cheetah on this list. Hey, I guess if you're going to be the villain in an upcoming movie, they'll put you somewhere in the rankings.

No, the first thing that makes me said is...

So there's no real point to ever doing another Flash/Superman race, if Kal-El can't even "crack the top three."

Sigh.

But what really makes me sad is that, after all of the bleeting about how Rebirth was all about restoring "history" and "legacy," this list has no Jay Garrick. Or Johnny Quick. Or Jesse Quick. Or Max Mercury. Or Bart Allen. Or...

It's almost as if, two years after Rebirth, it's turned out that "legacy" was just a bit of false marketing to make fans forget exactly how much damage the nu52 did to the DC brand...

Sigh...

As picked by Steve Rogers himself...


Can a "super-villain trade union" succeed in states with a "super-villain right-to-work" law?

I love me some Flag Smasher...

SPOILER ALERT: Sharon didn't really die...

A nihilist? Can we see her fight Flag Smasher? A nihilist vs. an anarchist is the battle America has been waiting for!

Obviously, Batroc should be much higher...

If you'd asked me back in 1976 which of Kirby's new Cap villains would "stick," I wouldn't have picked this guy. Just goes to show, you never know...

The Zemos certainly should be higher...

This is certainly a case of "recency bias," someone being put this high on the list because they've fought Cap recently, not because they deserve to be anywhere near this high.

I would have thought a  little bit of the recency bias here, too, but upon further researching I realized that by 1992 Crossbones was pretty well established (though perhaps not yet justifying a spot this high).

Duh.

I was upset the Hate-Monger wasn't on here, but surprisingly enough, as near as I can tell, Cap never faced HM until 2000! Yeah, I know, crazy!

Of course, the biggest question is, where is this guy on the list?

Oh, Druid, how we miss you...

From Captain America Annual #11 (1992)

Hey, gang, let's reminisce about the Top 10 Embarrassing Moment's In Spider-Man's Career, as told by...


...at least you weren't paid in Bitcoin, Spidey...


Sigh...people still fail to realize that the Spider-Mobile was a brilliant satirical critique of the Batmobile!







This was from Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #12 (1992). As such, it missed a whole plethora of future embarrassing Spidey moments that would surely make the list today:

**The Clone Saga would be good for at least two or three...maybe four or five!

**The costume Tony Stark made for you

**That whole "The Other" business

**The fact that Norman Osborn got it on with your girlfriend more than you ever did, and the result was kids who tried to kill you.

**Radioactive Spider-Semen

**The time Norman Osborn...look, just any story about Osborn after he "came back from death" is pretty much terrible and embarrassing

**Maximum Carnage

**The time Spidey revealed his secret identity to the world for Tony Stark's PR machine. and then was shocked--shocked--that it might put his loved ones in danger!!

**The time Spidey made a deal with THE DEVIL to save Aunt May's life (Meanwhile, ghostly Uncle Ben is grumbling, "What am I, chopped liver? Why no supernatural shenanigans to save me?")

Geez, we haven't even gotten to "had my body stolen by Doc Ock" yet!

Hay, Marvel, we're going to need a longer annual!

OK, OK, I know that you're tired of my ranting about Original Sin and the transformation of Nick Fury into a genocidal douchebag who killed the Watcher for no particular reason and ended up chained to the moon's surface by unexplained parties/means in order to become "The Unseen," doomed to watch Earth forever in Uatu's place.

Yes, it really was that stupid.

As we've discussed previously, the probable motive for this bit of putrid stupidity was to remove older Nick Fury from the scene, so newer-looks-sorta-like-Samuel-L-Jackson Nick Fury can shine on his own (even though Marvel hasn't done a single interesting thing with the character since introducing him, and there seems to be no prospect for that changing in the near future).

Now, I'm no comic book writer--indeed, I'm specifically baneed from writing comics by various international treaties--but even if I agreed with the need to eliminate old Fury, I can come up with a whole lotta better solutions off the top of my head. Lots and lots.

Therefore, in my vary last comment about Original Sin [author's note: kvetching about Dum Dum Dugan is still allowed] allow me to present the following list:

From the home office in Kalamazoo, Michigan:

The Top 10 Ways Marvel Could Have "Gotten Rid" Of The Elder Nick Fury Without Making Him A Genocidal Bastard And Chaining Him To The Moon To Be The "New Watcher":

10. Give him a heroic death. Duh.

9. Nick Fury and The X-Men. Who better to replace Wolverine? Double duh.

8. Loan the character to Lionsgate for Expendables 4. C'mon, you know you'd pay to see it...

7. Instead of killing him, put him in a brand new book with his son--a buddy action/comedy, as old white Nick Fury tries to teach young black Nick Fury how to be a proper super spy in a bunch of rollicking adventures!

6. Have Fury transported to the past, to train George Washington's troop how to fight the British

5. Have Fury transported to the future to help the Guardians Of The Galaxy 3000 fight the Badoon.

4. Have Fury (and all the Howling Commandos) transported to Limbo in order to hold back Ragnarok (yeah, yeah, I know, it's been done)

3. Have Fury become Marvel's version of Astro City's The Old Solider. To quote Wikipedia: "A symbolic, legendary figure clad in martial attire of many eras who manifests in wartime, including 1863, 1898, 1918, 1944, 1959, when he assisted Honor Guard against Shirak, October 1972, when he intervened against U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, and 1975, at the fall of Saigon." Man, that would be too cool...

2. Have him wake up on The Prisoner's island of "retired" spies. ("I'm not a number, I'm Nick freakin' Fury!!") Seriously, this might be the best idea ever...

1. OK, this one is kind of crazy--how about trusting your readers to understand and handle the concept that you can have a father and son alive at the same time, who have the same name? It's not like Marvel is 21st century DC, who is afraid to death of legacy characters, is it? If we can handle Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel at the same time, than maybe--just maybe--we can wrap our tiny brains around Nick Fury and Nick Fury Jr? I'm just sayin'...

So, IGN is running a feature on the "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes," gradually unveiling them through the week (as of this writing, they unveiled #61-100).

Now, I try not to get too bent out of shape of this kind of thing, because a) it's a free country b) any such list is inherently, ridiculously arbitrary and meaningless, so I know any list I produce would be just as questionable c) any list by committee, as this one, is going to produce even more arbitrary and more ridiculous result, and d) it's not going to effect anything, so who cares, really?

Still, I have to note something about this list. The criteria IGN editors used to compare apples to oranges? The heroes are "picked by their cultural impact, character development, social relevance, general cool factor, and importance of storylines."

I would just like to point out that, somehow, those criteria produce a list on which Supergirl (#94) is TEN places behind Ka-Zar (Ka-Zar?!!?!?), whose cool factor and important storylines and cultural impact obviously is far, far ahead of Kara's.

Supergirl is also TWELVE spots behind Ant-Man. Not the Hank Pym Ant-Man; not the Scott Lang Ant-Man. Supergirl is TWELVE spots behind the Eric O'Grady "Irredeemable" Ant-Man. The Hank Pym Ant-Man ranks a mere TWENTY-SEVEN spots ahead of Supergirl.

And Gambit ranks TWELVE spots ahead of Namor.

So, I'm thinking that pretty much says everything you need to know about this list...

No time for a real post today...so here's a couple of links you might enjoy.

Here's the results of fan voting on Marvel's site for the best 100 (Marvel or Timely) covers of the past 70 years. Really? That's #1?!? That wasn't even the best cover of the month it came out, let alone the past 70 years. Sigh, what do you expect...

And here is IGN's list of the top 100 comic villains ever. They don't say how their rankings were compiled, but some thought clearly went into them. Still, as you get near the bottom, your head might explode from some of the comparisons: Electro a better villain than Hunter Rose? The Mandarin ranked below Mirror Master and Sandman???

Have a nice weekend.