Know What I love?

Hmm, I forgot to mention, Friday's post was Reporting on Marvels and Legends 500th post. Good for me.

*savors moment*

That's enough of that. I admit, I was a little worried about having enough material the next few weeks. One book this week, one book next week, two the first week of June, just not a good stretch. Then people started talking about what they love about comics, and I've got myself a Sunday post. Huzzah comicsblogowhatchamafloogle! So, without further ado, here's 50 Things I Love About Comics (in no particular order, emphasis on characters and stories):

1. Sgt. Rock. Of my dad's Silver Age DC, there's stuff I hate (Superman), stuff I like (Atom, The Losers), but only one title I loved, and that's the stories of Easy Co.

2. "The Child Within" (Spectacular Spider-Man #178-183). When I was younger I didn't think much of this story, because they spent an entire issue with Peter under the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, freaking out over abandonment issues. Lame, right? Looking, back it's an awesome story, because it deals with Peter's inner turmoil, as well as setting up the opposing character arcs of Vermin and Harry Osborn.

3. Anderson Gabrych's Batgirl run.

4. Rurouni Kenshin creator's Nobuhiro Watsuki's art. because if you're going to have kickass fights, I want to be able to follow what's going on (a serious problem I had with Trigun Maximum).

5. In the same vein as #4, Mark Bagley's art.

6. Spider-Girl.

7. That Spider-Man can fight the Juggernaut or the Firerlord and win, but also fight Juggy or the Silver Surfer and get trounced. There's a thin line between victory and defeat.

8. John Gaunt, aka GrimJack.

9. The "Munden's Bar" back-up stories in GrimJack that were often an absurdly hilarious counterpoint to the awesome violence of the main story.

10. How Cable and Deadpool play off each other.

11. That Squirrel Girl may be the most fearsome force of good in any universe.

12. Annihilation. All of it.

13. Simonson and Buscema's Balder the Brave mini-series.

14. Thor's armor from the Simonson run. Giving a character an armored costume so rarely works, but this one totally did.

15. Magneto's stint as leader of the X-Men/headmaster of the Xavier Institute. Not that I don't like archfoe Magneto, but it was interesting to read.

16. Obsidian Age. I couldn't make sense of it until the very end, but I was sure it was cool even when I was confused as hell by all the time switching back and forth.

17. The first 25 issues of the original New Warriors series.

18. NextWave.

19. The Cosmic-Powered Spider-Man stories during Acts of Vengeance. C'mon, Spidey punched Mr. Fixit into orbit!

20. Amazing Spider-Man #350, where the first ten pages are basically Doom kicking the crap out of Spidey. It taught me that you should never mess with something related to Doom's mama.

21. Nighthawk. The guy takes a lot of crap, but he was pretty cool in the Busiek/Larsen Defenders series. He was the one holding all the volatile personalities together. Well, him and Hellcat. So let's make this "Nighthawk and Hellcat"

22. Dr. Strange beating people with his bare hands.

23. Ben Grimm.

24. Engelhart's West Coast Avengers, especially that crazy arc from #18-24 that was running in about five different time periods at once.

25. Thor #381, God of Thunder vs. the Midgard Serpent.

26. The fact that if there's something happening I don't like, to a character that I do like, there's always plenty of back issues to read to help me ignore it.

27. The original Armor Wars.

28. Iron Man's red-and-silver armor. It was just so different from every other armor he's had (which is probably why the went back to the red-and-gold in about 30 issues).

29. That Geoff Johns didn't feel the need to kill Kyle Rayner when he brought Hal Jordan back to life.

30. That Power Girl enjoys kicking ass.

31. Jim Aparo drawing Batman punching people (and Chris Sims' reaction to it).

32. Busiek and Perez' "Ultron Unlimited" story.

33. Starfire, animated or comic version. Both have their strong points (one's a little more cutesy and sweet, one's a little more firey and independent).

34. Alucard crashing a specially modified SR-71 into the deck of a vmpire controlled British aircraft carrier, then emerging from the flames, 13mm handgun spitting death (Hellsing).

35. From the pages of Immortal Iron Fist: 'Oh! My name is Daniel Rand. I am Iron Fist and I know kung-fu. Hi-Yahh.'

36. Nova letting Tony Stark in on how a real superhero spends his time, while other people quibble over legislation.

37. The Prankster after that issue of Action Comics Busiek wrote a few months back. He struck me as a delightfully clever fellow, who really just wants to entertain, and be entertained.

38. How Jessica Drew's phermones went from making people not like her, to making people really like her.

39. Spawn's seemingly constant attmepts to be free of the forces trying to control him. It never seemed to work in the end, but he never quit trying (from about #99-130 anyway, which is all I owned).

40. Mary Jane and Felicia Hardy trying to get along for Peter's sake, but not quite able to quit sniping at each other.

41. Night Nurse.

42. Superheroes that have non-superheroic friends.

43. The Ray (Ray Terrill) fighting Doctor Polaris all half-assed, because he thinks it's just another trick of his father's. A valuable lesson to parents about not lying to your kids too often.

44. That weird, smelly cat Howard Mackie introduced at the tail end of his run on Amazing Spider-Man. I always wanted to know why those techno-goons were after it.

45. The Russian.

46. Spidey eating hot dogs on a rooftop with Loki.

47. That the Sinister Syndicate (five mostly second-tier Spidey villains) teamed up, not out of some desire to get revenge on Spider-Man, but because they agreed it would be better for their criminal careers if they worked together. They could take bigger jobs, less chance of getting captured in a group. I miss super-criminals out for financial gain, rather than revenge.

48. Storm leading the X-Men, even though she had lost her mutant powers. That takes a real badass.

49. Stephanie Brown's stubborn insistence to keep fighting crime no matter how many times Batman or the Birds of Prey told her to stop.

50. Thor (with Odin's power) on one side. Iron Man (with armored powered by an energy source created by Thor) on the other. Americans and Russians on the edges watching nervously, with Dr. Doom pushing the whole thing forward. And in the middle? Captain America, keeping the whole thing from blowing up, even if it means fighting Thor himself.