Friday, February 12, 2016

Musing on a Poll

I was looking over Comics Should Be Good's master list from their Top Marvel and DC Characters poll, since Brian Cronin expanded the list to show the top 100 votegetters from each universe. That added 3 characters from my DC list, on top of the 4 that landed in the top 50. It brought in 2 from the Marvel side as well, on top of the 5 that were in the Top 50.

Although only one of my DC characters was in the top 30 (Tim Drake), Marvel had 4 (which I'm being vague about because I still haven't unveiled that modified favorite characters list, and look, some of the images I tried to get didn't come out as well as I hoped, so there's some delays. Get off my back, man!). Which doesn't exactly surprise me. I've recognized for awhile that my favorite characters from DC are not the iconic ones. More frequently they're the second-stringers, which is fine, but it also means they can go through long stretches of inactivity, or get really bogged down by just a couple of bad stories, since there are so many fewer comics featuring them to wash it out.

It's interesting watching the shift in where characters place over time. I was surprised to see that Richard Rider (Nova) is still making the top 40, even though he's been dead since late 2010. He really hasn't dropped that much from his placement in the mid-20s back in 2007's poll. Rocket Raccoon, has jumped almost 100 spots from 2007 to 2015. I'm more surprised he didn't make the top 50 than that he's climbed that far. Starfire jumped about 30 spots from 2011 to 2015, but all my other DC characters in the top 50 slipped around 10-15 spots. But Tim's not even calling himself Robin anymore, he's wearing a lousy costume, and mostly relegated to Titans' books. I feel like the reception to a lot of Power Girl's appearances since the new 52 haven't exactly been glowing, and Stephanie Brown was absent entirely for the first 3 years of the new 52, which doesn't help.

I'm a little disappointed Arcade can't get in the top 100. I shouldn't be; he finished in a tie with a bunch of other characters for 430th place back in 2007 (when we got to see every character that got even one 10th place vote), so it wasn't likely he'd surge that far, but I guess I figured more people liked him than that. Even Ben Reilly managed to finish in the top 100, although not as high as he did in 2011..

2 comments:

SallyP said...

It's a funny thing with favorite characters. Most of mine are B-Listers as well. But because they don't carry as heavy a burden as say Superman or Spider-Man, it is possible for them to actually achieve genuine growth.

CalvinPitt said...

That's a good way to think of it.