Hey there, true believers!
Thanks for coming back for part 2 of our look at some of the coolest moments from Marvel’s biggest event ever (at least when it was published), Civil War! Be sure to go back and check out part 1 if you haven’t already, and then read on!
Everyone knows nothing makes a good hero like a great villain. Sherlock Holmes needed Moriarty, G.I. Joe needed Cobra, the rebels needed Darth Vader, etc. Nothing makes a story better quite like an interesting, intriguing, and yet hated adversary. Readers tend to flock to the villains they love to hate. The best villains bring something out of the hero that nobody else does, or force the hero to push themselves further than before to find a way to win.
We wanted to make a top 10 list, but that’s impossible. There are just too many good choices, and we couldn’t agree on any of it. So we increased the list, and increased it, and increased it (honestly we probably could have kept going, too). So, before it gets too out of hand, here are our choices for the 100 best villains in comics.
(Click here for our Top 100 Heroes List!)
(Also click here for parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of our list so far!)
Marvel tends to have a lot of ‘event’ stories. It’s true. It’s a thing.
These stories are typically team-up or vs books, and often take place in their own mini-series with tie-ins occurring in the regular monthly books (and often additional mini-series, as well). Often big, status quo changing stories that feature some of the top writers and artists in the industry, some people are sick to death of them, and others can’t get enough of them. Personally, I tend to fall towards the latter, but I think even the most jaded fan would agree that, as far as Marvel event stories go, Civil War is the big daddy of them all (the only other argument I will listen to is 2015’s Secret Wars).
Written by Mark Millar with art by Steve McNiven (huge shout out to Dexter Vines and Morry Hollowell for their inking and coloring) this story is chock full of crazy. There are 7 issues and each one is packed full of big moments and jaw-dropping action. These event books are often marketed as ‘nothing will ever be the same!’, and for a while, at least, that was certainly the case here.
Picking only 5 moments of awesome from Civil War is really, really hard. So, because I’m a total fraud, I decided to split this list into 2 parts and do 5 moments in each part. Here are the first 5 coolest moments from Marvel’s Civil War.
“Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything.” – Marv
Erik rides solo for a deep dive into the corrupt, blood soaked, streets of Basin City with a review of Frank Miller’s “Sin City” graphic novels, and how they compare / contrast to the Robert Rodriguez movie adaptation, and it’s sequel, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For”…
Click here for Erik’s original reviews of the Sin City comics for visual references:
Check out our blog at ComicZombie.net for more!
And you can buy Erik’s new sci-fi / noir novella, “2299” here!
(Episode edited by Erik Slader)
Comic books are filled with rivalries. Some are friendly, like Archie and Jughead, and some are… not so friendly. While the friendly ones are fine, and can often inject plenty of drama into stories, it’s the really vitriolic ones that grab our attention and are typically the ones we remember the most fondly. With that in mind, below are my top 15 rivalries in comics. Plenty of these rivalries have had backstories fleshed out after the first time we saw them, like our first entry, but for ‘first altercation’ I’m going with the first published fight or confrontation between them, and not the backstories that were later filled in.
Who makes up your favorite rivalry? Did they place on the list? Let us know!
Everyone knows nothing makes a good hero like a great villain. Sherlock Holmes needed Moriarty, G.I. Joe needed Cobra, the rebels needed Darth Vader, etc. Nothing makes a story better quite like an interesting, intriguing, and yet hated adversary. Readers tend to flock to the villains they love to hate. The best villains bring something out of the hero that nobody else does, or force the hero to push themselves further than before to find a way to win.
We wanted to make a top 10 list, but that’s impossible. There are just too many good choices, and we couldn’t agree on any of it. So we increased the list, and increased it, and increased it (honestly, we probably could have kept going, too). So, before it gets too out of hand, here are our choices for the 100 best villains in comics.
(Click here for our Top 100 Heroes List!)
(And be sure to check out Parts 1, 2, and 3 of our countdown!)
Marvel Studios is about to release Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, which will be the 971st part of their massive mega saga. Meanwhile, DC is… doing stuff. They’re still going to release The Flash, despite its star being straight up coo-coo for coacoa puffs, Batgirl got cancelled, but Blue Beetle, Flash, Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2 are still coming to theaters despite the… reboot?… coming soon now that James Gunn and Peter Safran are running things in an attempt to duplicate what Kevin Feige has done at Marvel. While there’s no denying we have goten some quality out of DC’s attempt at the MCU, and may still with the remaining slate of films, they just have been completely unable to capture the “IT” factor that has defined Marvel Studios since “Iron Man”.
In fact, even though DC/Warner Bros has been at this whole ‘making studio films out of our comic book properties’ game than Marvel has, all that has really amounted to is a handful of really good movies, a couple of great ones, and a long, long list of terrible movies going back decades that shows that maybe, just maybe, they’ve NEVER known how to really do this whole thing right. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 59 times, shame on me.
For every Batman, Superman: The Movie, or Dark Knight there are… these. The worst of the worst.
Man, the Infinity Gauntlet was awesome. The story of the mad Titan, Thanos, combining the power of the six infinity stones and obtaining complete power over the universe and the desperate, doomed attempts of the Marvel heroes and cosmic beings to do anything and everything they can to stop him, the only reason I haven’t done one of these for it yet is that, really, it’s quite difficult to narrow the awesome down to 5 moments, so really a ton of great stuff will be lumped together so this isn’t a 25 Coolest Things From…
Without further ado, 5 of the coolest moments from the pure 90’s goodness that is one of the best Marvel comics ever published, the Infinity Gauntlet.
There have been a TON of Avengers over the years. Some of them have been great additions to the team and have added to the mythos of the franchise, and others… not so much. Thankfully, for every Deathcry there’s a Black Panther, which is why the Avengers have endured for so many decades. While the core members are mostly now common household names thanks to the MCU, they aren’t the only ones that make the Avengers Earth’s mightiest heroes.
“Hulk Smash Freddie Prinze Junior!” – The Ultimate Hulk (The Ultimates #4)
Chris and Erik review the “Ultimate Marvel” Comics Line (2000-2015) – including: Ultimate Spider-man, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, The Ultimates, and Ultimatum…
Also On This Episode:
Check out our blog at ComicZombie.net for more!
And buy Erik’s new sci-fi / noir novella, “2299” here!
(Episode edited by Erik Slader)
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