Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 19

Every Tuesday I post excerpts from best selling at not selling super blog, Playing Favorites.

The Midnighter(Warren Ellis/Mark Millar)
Jenny Sparks(Warren Eillis/Mark Millar)
The Batman
Booster Gold (Geoff Johns)
Damian Wayne (Grant Morrison)
Steve Rogers(Ultimates Vol 1 & 2)
Cloud 9 (Dan Slott)
Superman(All-Star Superman)
Rorschach
Deadpool (Cable & Deadpool)

I guess that's it. It's strange that it’s these guys. There are a lot of other characters out there that are great and have some really good books, but fundamentally, these are the characters I like reading about. They're a motley crew--well, less motley than my original list. One homosexual, two females, two non-Americans (if Damian counts, even though I'm sure he would be an American citizen if Bruce Wayne is on his birth certificate), an alien, a time-traveler, six different tax brackets and two effective amnesiacs, but it is a whole loaf of white bread. Guess I can blame the comics industry for that. Sounds convenient.

That said, with the exception of All-Star Superman and Rorschach, most of these characters have a compatible feel to them that would let them interact in some way. I mean, you'd have the killing versus no killing sides, which would be Batman versus...well everyone but Booster Gold, I guess.

Though I would read the hell out of a Batman/Booster Gold team-up versus a Jenny Sparks lead Authority consisting of Midnighter, Deadpool, Cloud 9, Ultimate Cap, and Damian Wayne.

As you might have guessed, these aren't the best heroes by a long shot. The fact that a balance of these guys are actually killers of one brand of another and that another most of them are only on the list because they aren't very good heroes is a tip-off.

Thus begins our section on heroics.
Image courtesy of The Initiative. It's awesome.

Of course, Batman, Superman, and Jenny Sparks are great heroes—three of the best, bar none—but the rest can get marked right off in terms of quality.

It's hard to construct a case for why a hero would be objectively great. You have to establish a lot of ground rules. The subjectiveness of enjoyability or even great stories don't count at all. The gold standard would probably be The Big Three: Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. Note that Superman once has his consciousness subsumed by a planet-killing doomsday weapon that buried whole planets in despair and fought his way out (emotionally). Batman was once hurtled through time as a doomsday weapon for a dead god of evil and not only deduced the designs of an enemy not bound by the confines of death and time, but he managed to thwart his plan without more than a single scene of exposition. Spider-Man...

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