Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Your Top 10 Favorite Marvel Heroines!

I personally think Marvel has the more interesting heroines ...

(in no order)

1. Carol Danvers - she's had a long wild ride and I've liked her in every incarnation.

2. Jessica Drew - She's been written poorly lately but she has such great potential as a crime lord trying to use the criminal network to do good.

3. Kitty Pryde - basically the standard other characters should be judged by, the Donna Troy of the MU ... everyone's crush and/or best friend. And super smart! Intangibility comes second with this one.

4. She Hulk - when written well she comes alive.

5. The Wasp - Janet Van Dyne, classy and holding the Avengers together, tough as nails. being written SO BAD in Uncanny Avengers now though.

6. Storm - she's also had a long strange ride and i've liked most of it except when she was the Black Panther's wife .. and in the Avengers ... she is not a back seat character!

7. Hell Cat - Patsy Walker. I liked her unique personality in the recent books she's been in.

8. Rachel Summers - actually should be about number one for me.

9. Gertrude of the Runaways.

10. Monica Rambeau

Honorable mentions: Ultimate Crystal, Dazzler, Pre body swap Psylocke, Kate Bishop, Dani Moonstar (should probably be high on the list) and Illyana Rasputin.

It's interesting to see that a number on the list have had plenty of ups and downs. As you note, it's when they are "written well". A number of them seem to have had "long, wild rides."

1. Earth-616 Crystal
2. Sersi
3. Earth-616 Kitty Pryde
4. She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters; I hate Betty Banner as She-Hulk)
5. Dani Moonstar
6. Magma
7. Rachel Summers
8. Earth-616 Black Widow
9. Patsy Walker
10. Monet St. Croix

all good ones, so many great characters, I love Monet.

I used to like Emma Frost before she became Cyclop's bimbo.

Thundra, Sersi, Meggan, Clea, Sage (!) ... all interesting.

Monet was my favorite of the female characters from PAD's second X-Factor run, but, really, they all shined thanks to PAD: Theresa, Layla, Rahne, Lorna...

Why the "Earth-616" qualifications for three characters, Fickles? The only one I can think of a really good reason for distinction is maybe Natasha because of the Avengers movie and Iron Man 2. I don't think anyone would naturally think of, say, the Ultimate versions of any of these characters first.

The Women

1.Storm
2.Rouge
3.Wasp
4.She-Hulk
5.Tigra
6.Crystal
7.Medusa
8.Valkyrie
9.Ms.Marvel
10.Marvel Girl

And just for fun, the Men

1.Beast
2.Cannonball
3.Captain America
4.Hank Pym
5.Hulk
6.Nightcrawler
7.Spider-Man
8.Thing
9.Vision
10.Wonder Man

1. Moondragon. She's all Persis Khambatta hot, with that bald look, she's got telekinesis that has stopped Thor's hammer in mid-swing *as her secondary power,* and telepathy sufficient to have read Galactus' mind and mind-controlled an entire planet. She's also a martial artist trained by aliens. And a stone wench, when she wants to be, who has created multiple super-villains in an attempt to make expendable jobbers to keep Thanos busy! She's pretty much everything Mantis never was.

2. Sersi. Easily the toughest Avenger to ever Avenge. Super-strength, flight, telekinesis, telepathy, can create illusions with incredible sophistication, immortal, nearly invulnerable, can produce energy blasts, and, her signature power, to transform pretty much anything into anything else with a wave of her hand. In JLA/Avengers, where the Avengers were laughably outclassed on almost every front by the much more powerful JLA, Sersi is the one Avenger they couldn't really use, because she'd have messed with that formula (having her only perform one stunt, while not even appearing 'on screen,' with a JLA member asking who just wiped out an entire panel full of super-villains, and an Avenger replying 'Sersi'). Even if she wasn't incredibly powerful, she's got a great fun-loving personality, being an eternal hedonist, and nicely contrasting grimmer more serious heroes, when written well.

3. Snowbird. I've always loved Snowbird. She's been messed up by some poor storylines, post-Byrne, I think, with the whole giving birth to evil and dying and Walter Langowski using her corpse for awhile to replace his own dead body (WTF?), but her combination of aloofness and occasional naivette made for a great character. Ice queen, demigoddess, stranger in a strange land, she did it all.

4. Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane. Great character. My favorite of the New Mutants. She managed to have real life difficulties (resolving her faith and upbringing with her nature), without falling into the cliché of being weak-willed or a drunk or a perpetual victim of her own bad choices (which, unfortunately, both Siryn and Carol Danvers got saddled with). Her powers are clear and easy to grok and visually fun (when she has an artist able to draw an animal, which not all comic book artists can seem to do...), unlike her teammate and 'soulmate' Dani, who, at any given time, may or may not have any of three different mutant powersets, and some Asgardian stuff tacked on.

5. Finesse. From the Avengers Academy. Her formative struggles with understanding her teammates, and the nature of heroism and villainy, and her eventual aligning along those lines, combined with her amazing friendship with X-23 (who had similar issues, reconciling her nature with her goals), led to some great deep characterization for a character who is marked by her 'low affect' or *lack* of strong characterization.

6. Monica Rambeau/Captain Marvel 2/Photon/Pulsar/Spectrum! At this point, her name changes are kind of a running gag, and I like that! For a woman whose life has gone through some amazing transitions, from a position of leadership, to a rookie super-hero, back to leadership again (whether of the Avengers, briefly, or of the fractious Nextwave crew), the constant name changes sort of symbolize how she doesn't always fit into this life and is sort of trying things out to see what sticks. I love her powers (alternate form powers are great, and turning to energy, whether it be Lazon or Black Vulcan, has always been a favorite), but her characterizations have also been fun (whether it be the more hopeful take charge earlier presentation, or the more ascerbic, but still take charge Nextwave characterization).

7. Emma Frost. Jean Grey, particularly when Scott, Warren, Wolvie *and* the Professor were all visibly pining for her, began to seem more like an object than a person. Emma, dark history intact, seemed far more like a deep powerful character, and not 'the token X-girl that all the X-boys lust after.' She's come such a long way since we met her trying to recruit Kitty to her Massachusett's Academy, and, playing off of a terrible nogood storyline that's been otherwise forgotten (one of Bishop's enemies killing her Hellions to do something that was pretty much undone and dealt with *that same issue*) she evolved into a new position, determining that Xavier was just doing a flat-out better job of protecting his mutant charges, and that her previous choices, no matter how smug she's felt about them at the time, had proven itself a failure. And so she switched sides, without abandoning any of her preconceived notions or ideals or hard-headed pragmatism. She's not a 'superhero' because she's a good person, she's a superhero because she's been a supervillain, and has noticed what we readers all notice, that the heroes are the ones that win at the end of the story. As for her replacing Jean in Scott's bed, just as I don't think Jean ever was 'property' of any of the men who desired her, I don't think Scott is Jean's property either.

8. Krystalin, from X-Men 2099. She's the 'Kole' of Marvel, being a mutant who generates crystal constructs from thin air, but has the added distinction of a better costume, and being part of a crazy future Marvel universe, in which there is a church of Thor-worshippers (and she wears a Mjolnir pendant, as a member) and an African-American political party based off of Wakandan ideals (which her family is a prominent part of, even if she wants none of it). Combined with a friendship with resident wise-cracking computer-programmer mutant speedster Meanstreak (one of the rare examples of a cross-gender super character *friendship* that never turned into a romance), she was a great character on an entire team of great characters. (If I hadn't picked her, I could as easily have picked team bruiser and villain-turned-hero, La Lunatica!)

9. Frankie Raye / Human Torch 2 / Supernova. What a character evolution. Johnny Storm's pyrophobic girlfriend. Relative of the man who created the WW2 era robot Human Torch. Joins the Fantastic Four as a second Human Torch, and becomes a *Herald of Galactus!* Goes on to be responsible for the destruction of the Skrull homeworld, which has repercussions decades later (leading to Kree-Skrull wars, an invasion of Earth, and tying into present-day characters like Hulkling). Lots of comics will tell you that 'this event changes everything' or 'the repercussions of this story blah blah oh, it's been a month and nobody remembers that entire summer event...' but the destruction of the Skrull homeworld has continued to provide story fodder, and so remains relevant.

10. Valkyrie. I was a huge Defenders fan, back in the day, but their 'non-team' was always all over the map. Folks like Nighthawk and Hellcat were running around with folks like the Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange. Yes, Captain America and Batman can hang with Thor and Superman, but Nighthawk was no Batman or Captain America, yanno? 'Val,' on the other hand, may not have been punching in Namor or the Hulk's weight, but she had the strength of a (relatively minor) god, and a magic sword too boot. Tough, fearless, decisive, no-nonsense. She had the physicality of Thundra, without the sometimes awkward feminism-caricaturizing commentary.

There are tons of others who could be on this list. She-Hulk, Tigra and Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel/Warbird would be, if they hadn't been recently (in Civil War) portrayed so badly.

The Scarlet Witch is head and shoulders above the rest, *potentially*, but has still not recovered from the endless meteor storm of crap that Byrne dropped on her in West Coast Avengers (even if Children's Crusade *tried* to undo it by divorcing her from the all-powerful reality-manipulating McGuffin, only to have that undone mere months later, when the new Avengers writers decided that she still had those powers).

The Invisible Woman would be on the list, but I ran out of numbers. She'd be 11, on a list of 1-11, with the order being only the order in which I thought of them, and not the amount which I love them!

The Wasp/Janet van Dyne, IMO, has really not had her day. I want so much more for her than I have seen. She kind of got dumped on during her leadership tenure (not quite as badly as Phantom Girl did, but still...). I want to love her character, even more than I already do, but the writing hasn't done her as many favors as some of the ones on my list, IMO.

Looking over my list, if there's a theme, it's female characters who have not been defined by being 'so and so's girlfriend.' Some of them are seeing people (Emma), but had long histories before that, others may have indeed started out as 'the girlfriend' (Frankie Raye) but evolved so far past that as to leave it a mere footnote in the life of the character.

At the top of this thread, Peebs nominated Ultimate Crystal as one of his favorites, and I like Earth-616 Crystal much better than Ultimate Crystal, so I felt the distinction was necessarry, and then I thought, if I made that distinction for Crystal, I might as well do it for others who have Ultimate counterparts.

I didn't even know there IS an "Ultimate" Crystal! Probably because I never touched Ultimate FF. (Seeing solicits referring to Doom as "Victor Van Damme" (iirc) probably didn't help.... )

We should totally have a 'top 10 independent heroines thread,' for characters like Diviner and Blazer from the Justice Machine or Kristen and Connie from the Southern Knights or Fathom and Morningstar from the Elementals.

Or the dozens of Image heroines who didn't get absorbed by DC with the acquisition of Wildstorm, like Ballistic, Cyblade and Velocity (of Cyberforce) or Vogue, Riptide and Masada (of Youngblood), plus solo heroines like the Witchblade or Fathom or the Magdalena.

Lately I keep thinking she has been so overlooked as a major marvel character ... how is she not a member of the Avengers Legion or at least Mighty Avengers .... she was made for it.

they even had that knock on the Avengers for a while.

I personally really liked her very very little used cop alias ... I can imagine her making bizarre random comments that might creep people out ... like how she is actually only 3 or 4 years old. ha!

do it. do it.


My favorite female character now is the porno bot from the Killjoys ... yes even over Alana of Saga ... and the Mom from Saga .. but Y the Last Man had awesome female characters for days!!!!

I think if we had a top ten all comics ... the independent women or men would triumph ... so many good stories by image and others in the past and now.

Yeah, the "Van Damme" thing was annoying for sure. Mike Carey's first couple UFF arcs were good, though -- it didn't hurt that they were drawn by Pascual Ferry. I think they're trades volume number 7 and 8 if you're ever curious and if your library or a friend has them.

Ultimate Crystal was introduced by Mark Millar, and I swear that has nothing to do with my dislike for her. The reason I like Earth-616 Crystal better is that she wanted to transcend the selfish, superficial "spoiled princess" side of her that had hurt people, whereas Ultimate Crystal was just cruel (from what I remember at least, it's been a few years.)

Crystal
Polaris
Valkyrie
Magma
Darkstar
Dani Moonstar
Hellcat
Medusa
Invisible Girl
Thundra


Cloud 9, Veil, Mantis. Sif, Miss America, Storm, Oracle, Astra, Hepzibah, Delphyne Gorgon, Snowbird, Clea

Deadly Nightshade, Dragonfly, Madame Masque, Tanaje, Catseye,

Monica Rambeau

Valkyrie

Karma

Kitty Pryde

Snowbird

Darkstar

Polaris

Umm, can't think of any more I like really. I don't have enough experience with Marvel.

I don't have much experience with Marvel either, but the ff appeal to me based on my limited experience (based mostly on character bios I've read online and a handful of actual issues!);

Storm
Jean Grey
Sage
Jubilee
Miss Marvel
Monica Rambeau
Invisible Woman
Scarlet Witch
Polaris
She-Hulk
Crystal
Karma
Moonstar
Wasp
Mockingbird
Kitty Pryde
Meggan
Siryn/Banshee
Firebird
Julia Carpenter
Marrina
Firestar

Ah, you picked Julia Carpenter over Jessica Drew! That's awesome!

Also, Marrina! Woo!

I've actually read comics with Julia in them, but only one or two issues with Jessica. I have a vague impression that Julia seems less like a female Spider-man than Jessica, but then... I am not the best person to judge

(all this discussion makes me wonder who would win an X-Men or Avengers Idol game here!)

And yes, Marrina! Most of what I know about her I read in her bio over on Uncanny X-Men.net but what I've seen makes me think I would have enjoyed reading issues with her

Mine has always been, and will always be ... Mantis!

Runner up is Patsy Walker aka: Hellcat.

I thought I was the only who remembered the Southern Knights.

Gotta love a team that has an actual dragon on it! The team was also neat in that it only had one 'traditional' super-hero in it, with costume and code-name, as the others didn't really go out for that sort of thing, and wore normal clothing and used their own names.

Side-character(s) Synergy were my favorite. Love the idea of five psychically linked acrobat/martial artist sisters, all moving and fighting in synch.

Edsel, from Mage: The Hero Discovered, is another favorite Independent 'super-heroine.'

I remember getting the first issues of many independent comics in the early 80's, mostly super-teams.

My top 10

1.Vampirella (Warren)
2.Miraclewoman (Eclipse)
3.Flygirl (Archie)
4.Blackcat (Harvey)
5.Iron Maiden (Tower)
6.Mantra (Malibu)
7.Ms. Mystic (Pacific)
8.Fanthom and Morningstar from Elementals (First)
9.Connie and Kristen from Southern Knights (Guild)
10.Cimarron and Burnout from Liberty Project, Amber and Rainbow from DNAgents (Eclipse)

From TV
1.Isis, Microwoman, Manta, Webwoman, Astrea (Filmation)
2.Electro Woman and Dyna Girl
3.American Maid from the Tick cartoon
4.Princess (Battle of the Planets)
5.Gravity Girl, Elektra, Birdgirl, Tara, Ariel (Hanna Barbara)

Even though she didn't make my Top 10, I do like her a lot, and The Celestial Madonna Saga is one of my favorite Avengers epics.

America Chavez, Jubilee, Loa, Magma, Gothic Lolita, Sage, Dazzler, Gertrude Yorkes, Molly Hayes, Dust