After reading the end of the Pulse I am going with D-man

Why does everyone hate Cypher so much?

:(

oh, and worst super hero ever:

Spawn.

Cable. I can't believe no one has mentioned him. His history is so messed up, AND he's a Rob (yes, I DID make a deal with Satan) L. creation. Oh, lord the hair-drier guns...the triangle legs...



...but oddly, I really DO like Cable/Deadpool.

We need him on a card. I'll try to pull some strings. (What team affiliation?)

Spider-Friends, possibly.

Naked Justice. Yeah, I went there.
Don't google that at work, btw. Or at all. I warned you.

:)

I'm surprised no one has brought up the old Daredevil standby.. "So he's a blind guy.. that can see?"

Or wait.. technically since DC and Marvel have collectively trademarked the term "superhero", does that mean we can't choose any non-DC/Marvel hero with super powers?

Its been said before, but I'll say it again...

Don't google Naked Justice.

Especially on Image Search.

I'm going to go and gouge my eyes out now...

EDIT - Oh God! The horror is burned into my retinas.

Robin was originally named for Robin hood, and he was Batman's jovial sidekick and best chum.

Then Batman became badass, and Robin served a new purpose. He was the target. It sounds bad but its works. Everyone went for the brightly colored moron jumping around, ignoring the much deadlier batman and allowing him to kick everyones ass. Even fighting the big timers (like clayface and joker and killer croc) Robin would talk alot of crap and keep the villian distracted long enough for Bats to find the edge he needed to win the fight and save everyone. Nightwing (the first robin for those not keeping score) noticed this when Bats and him fought a stripped down Amazo while chasing the Red Hood aka Jason Todd.

And give the kid a break, he grew up into the badass leader of the Outsiders, NIGHTWING!

I read this thread title and the first name to pop in my head was... Superpro. And after reading all this with arguements made for Aquaman and Wolverine and Superman and I dislike Superman greatly myself... It's still Superpro. Superpro is the worst superhero ever.

Not to be confused with The Pro. Who was awesome and also should not be google'd at most work locations.

-Mike

How can anyone say that Superman is the worst. Ok pre-death maybe, but after his return he has done nothign but go down hill. I mean Bizzaro, Solomon Grundy, and Metallo nearly killed him in Justice and Mongul gave him a nose-bleed. If anything he is one of the weakest one on the JLA. On the worst hero ever Doorbell

I don't remember the characters name, but Marvel came out with a book about a kid who becomes a muscled superhero overnight. He got this way by absorbing the 'radiation' from his collection of glow-in-the-dark figures.

Is that what I meant to say? No, if it was that is what I would have posted. Let me try to explain my dislike of the concept. I see the Ultimate line as Marvel basically exploiting their own characters. They have these characters that are almost universally known, especially to comic collectors, and they have big long back stories from 30+ years of comics. Marvel also has the desire to tell more "modern" stories. So instead of creating all new characters to tell these stories with, the instead create a "parallel universe" filled with all your beloved characters, except now, Marvel can do all sorts of horrible and "edgy things to them without you complaining, because hey, these are not the originals, they just happen to have the same names.

Examples of this can include Ant Man and the Wasp. We will have Ant Man be all insecure and beat his wife. Hey, that has already been done. Oh yeah, well this time not only does he hit her, he tries to kill her. Or perhaps the Hulk, not enough of a mindless machine of destruction, let us make him more mindless and destructive. Oh, but now he has Bruce's intelligence, where have I heard that before? Not happy with that, well how about the X-men. Where now Colossus is gay, Beast is insecure, oops, and dead, and they all hate and distrust one another. But everyone else still hates them too, I mean, they still need to be Marvel's parable for racism.

This is why I dislike the Ultimate line. There is nothing original in it, it is just the same characters in the same situations, but now everything is supposed to be "edgy" and "extreme."

First of all, I want to say that X-Men are not Marvel's parable for racism. Stan Lee has actually claimed in interviews that the mutant-discrimination situation was NOT based on the racist issues facing the nation at that time, even though Malcolm X fits Magneto and MLK fits Prof X so well. Just one of those pet peeves that comes up way too often.

Second, I started reading comics when the Ultimate Spidey was in the mid-20s and Ultimate X-Men was in the late teens. Well, I had taken a full year to start reading comics after thinking about it, and a BIG factor in me starting to read was the fact that I couldn't wrap my head around the backstories of all of these characters.

After all, if there are 30+ years of history behind an entire team worth of characters, and you try to step in there in the middle of it (even if you wait until the end of a storyline), you WILL be lost. It is the nature of comic books, ney, stories in general to represent the past of the characters. Unfortunately, in comic books especially, so much of the past plays such a huge part that it becomes near impossible to read comic books without extensive knowledge of what has happened to the characters beforehand.

Personally, I am extremely grateful for the Ultimate line of comics. Their "edgy" style is exactly the style I prefer for a comic book superhero, making their superheroes a little bit less super and a little bit more man by the very inclusion of major character flaws.

Finally, I find it hard to truly criticize a comic book company for "exploiting their own characters". That's like saying, "I think the bird that's coocoo for cocoa puffs is working so much that he must be in violation of bird labor laws" or "Some times, I think that they have killed off Kenny an unnecessary number of times. I mean, too much is too much". The characters belong to the company. If they aren't exploiting them for money, then I don't understand why the company owns them at all. The goal of the industry is, after all, to make money, just like ANY OTHER INDUSTRY.

Then again, maybe I'm just thinking of this the wrong way. Clearly, we should ask Dr. Pym if he thinks he has been misrepresented by the company that would own his soul if he weren't a comic book character. After all, he'd probably say something like, "I only hit her when she deserved it!"

Now that I think about it, you're right. The ultimate universe is clearly the worst comic book superhero ever. I don't get how anyone can prefer a character with strengths and weaknesses while not needing to know 30+ years worth of background in the comics to understand every little reference made throughout the comic books. Clearly, they were aimed at the hardcore, already existant fanboy base, and not, say, people who were not interested in memorizing every little detail from a character's every single published moment.

Change is for suckers. Given the choice, "adapt or die", real business would be more than willing to die.

Typically, you're not looking at 30+ years of history. Every time a new writer /editor steps in, you get a whole new slew of inconsistencies and re-visionings and retcons.. the sorta thing that causes Crisises.. Crisees.. Crisi? Ugh.

Like Books of Magic. I highly recommend the first 25. The rest of the original series and the spin offs? Well.. let's just mention Highlander 2 briefly and move on.

The only thing the Ultimate line did is make it clear where the new version starts.
..Which I suppose has value for newbies if you're not the type that downloads back issues for free off P2P. ;)

As a side note.. I kinda have to disagree with people calling the Ultimate line "edgy". It really seems more kiddy to me. But then I haven't been too impressed with Marvel in recent years.