Hey everyone! Welcome to top 10 nerd - the channel where we talk about all things nerdy!
I’m your host Kelly Paoli and today we’re jumping back into our series of the top 10
best superheroes - an entirely subjective list put together by the hosts of this channel -
with no overlapping! So none of the heroes featured on the previous part 1 list will
be present on this one. We essentially give our reasons why the ten heroes that appear
on our list deserve credit for being pretty damn awesome. So with that in mind, let’s
jump in!
10 Bucky Barnes Bucky Barnes is a versatile character - he’s
adapted to the times and keeps coming back as a fan favourite. Initially an army brat,
the character was an orphan at the army training camp that his father was accidentally killed
at during training. That’s where he met Steve Rogers, and once he learnt that Rogers
was Captain America, a hero he idolized, he soon became his sidekick. Bucky would go on
all sorts of missions fighting off the evil Axis powers, but towards the end of the war
in 1945, he died in a tragic accident. During a skirmish where Bucky was trying to defuse
a bomb on an airplane, the bomb accidentally detonated, and Cap and the US army assumed
he died in the explosion. For years the character was absent from the comics, and acted as an
intriguing backstory in the later adventures Cap would have. But that wasn’t the end
of Bucky - in 2005, he would reappear as the Winter Solider, giving Cap one hell of a challenge
on the battlefield and quite the psychological mind F. He was essentially a villain, but
later his memory would be restored. This relationship between Bucky and Cap is possibly one of the
most profound superhero/sidekick relationship, along side from Jason Todd & Batman - Cap
lost him, got him back but in a completely nefarious way, and eventually had to help
rehabilitate him back to the Bucky he once knew. Now that’s a character with resilience.
9 Bat Girl Speaking of resilient characters, Barbara
Gordon aka Bat Girl aka Oracle is one of the members of the Bat Family, and the daughter
of Gotham PD Commissioner James Gordon. Barbara has got a lot going on as a character
- a complicated family backstory, a traumatic life event that drastically changed the way
she was written, completely depowered, and then had an inspiring return to the bat suit.
While Bat-Girl initially appeared as the sidekick for Batwoman back in the day, DC editor Julius
Schwartz decided the character needed a revamp since she was outdated. They figured the best
way of doing this, and introducing a new female character to grow female audiences, was to
introduce a new character on the Batman television series - yes, the campy 60’s Adam West show
- except this time, Bat-Girl would be the daughter of Commissioner Gordon. In her civilian
life, she had a PhD in library science, and was the head of the Gotham City Public library.
Then in 1988 in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, the hero was ‘retired’ when she
was shot by the Joker and paralyzed from the waste down. It’s also implied that she was
sexually abused in the attack. Luckily that wasn’t the last of Barbara - she was given
back some agency a year later when Kim Yale and John Ostrander developed her new persona,
Oracle - a character who dug herself out of depression to use her training and aptitude
in information sciences to help fight crime and aid Batman. Then on Gail Simone’s run
for the new 52 Batgirl, we saw her take that to the next step - literally - by gaining
her ability to walk again via the combination of special treatment and a whole lot of will
power.
8 Rorschach Alan Moore’s Watchmen is perhaps the most
celebrated collection of comics. I mean, hey, there are a few other great ones that rub
shoulders with it, but it’s undeniable that Watchmen’s subverted perspective on superheroes
in an alternate 1980s vastly changed the way audiences read comics. It presented a much
darker, satirical and disillusioned way of exploring the genre, tied in with reality
based what-ifs that really forced readers to question, analyse and deconstruct superheroes
in general. Rorschach, the prime vigilante whose goal is to deliver swift, ‘eye for
an eye’ justice, is completely unhinged, and extremely invested and unwavering in his
code of ethics. Also, that mask is dope. Rorschach is a refreshing look at the vigilante superhero
– a character that draws similarities to Batman but is willing to do whatever it takes
to ‘fairly’ avenge those who have been wronged.
7 Scott Pilgrim The first character on our list who doesn’t
fit into the traditional mold of a ‘superhero’, Scott Pilgrim is an anti-hero for the millennial
masses. He’s a regular lazy slacker who lives in a crappy apartment and is dating
all the wrong people in order to get over the woman who broke his heart - and is now
a wildly successful chart topping musician. That’s when he meets Ramona Flowers, the
girl who changes everything for him - sort of - and in order to win her heart, he’s
got to fight her seven evil exes in video game inspired brawls. Scott makes this list
for being hilarious, relatable, and by subverting what we normally consider to be a superhero
comic, leaving us with a story that’s not only massively entertaining, but one filled
with nostalgia, coming of age and life lessons that resonate on many levels. It’s also
Toronto porn, and that’s pretty swell.
6 Black Panther The popularity of his recent feature film
makes this character a dead giveaway on our list. Black Panther aka T’Challa comes from
Wakanda, an advanced African civilization that was never exposed to colonialism, and
thrived after finding deposits of vibranium in their territory. They’re the most technological
superior and intelligent society on Earth, and as many film critics have been quick to
note, the film is revolutionary - as Time magazine called it, it’s more than just
a superhero film - it’s a film about what it means to be black in both America and Africa,
a film about the duality of blackness, and a film that grapples head on with the issues
affecting modern-day black life. It’s about damn time. And Black Panther as a character
is just flat out awesome to boot, combining his own exceptional combat skills, enhanced
strength speed agility and durability, his expertise in science, his high tech vibranium
equipment and his alchemical precognition to make him one hell of a hero and a worthy
adversary.
5 Buffy Summers Buffy isn’t a superhero in the traditional
sense, but she sure does have all the makings and traits of one. From the television
series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy is a young woman - who we start off with in high
school - who is a slayer - a woman chosen by fate to battle evil forces, and is endowed
with super strength, endurance, agility, accelerated healing, intuition and a limited degree of
clairvoyance. She slays vampires and other supernatural creatures threatening to destroy
the world as we know it, and to bring hell on earth. But the thing that really drove
home for a lot of fans was how Buffy, and the show itself, was one of the first really
popular main stream depictions of a bad ass female superhero who wasn’t flying around
in tights. Her story at it’s core was about how all she wants is to be normal, but must
embrace her destiny. Buffy herself was a subversion of the stereotypical female horror film victim,
with her character physically looking like many characters who fall into that archetype,
except she had agency, she had power, and she kicked some serious butt.
4 Bat Woman Batwoman was a Golden age character who first
appeared in Detective Comcis #233 in 1956. Kathy Kane was created as a member of the
Bat Family - one of the characters that were included after Fredric Wertham’s Seduction
of the Innocent book led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Batwoman was suppose
to help balance out Batman and Robin by adding a feminine familial touch to the characters’
world, especially since Wertham had criticized the dynamic duo as being ‘homosexual’.
This meant that Batwoman would add some romance to the mix, and fought crime using a utility
belt that included ‘girl’ gadgets that were secretly weapons, like lipstick, compact
mirrors, and charm bracelets. The irony though is that years later, in 2006, when the character
was revamped and became Kate Kane, who was a lesbian. Despite not being the first lgbtq
character at DC comics at that time, she was the one who got the most hype and press coverage.
When 2010 she got her own series, and writers JH Williams III and W Haden Blackman expanded
Kate’s supporting cast, and created some of the most fantastical, dark and beautifully
crafted stories post crisis and in the new 52, really exploring the boundaries of the
comic form and doing innovative work for a mainstream DC title.
3 Doctor Manhattan To be perfectly honest, Doctor Manhattan is
probably my all-time favourite superhero. The only reason why he doesn’t make the
top spot of this list is because of how important I feel the two numbers coming up are to the
world of comics and pop culture as a whole. That being said, Doctor Manhattan is a parallel
in ways to our number 8 spot, Rorschach – he’s on the other end of the scale – completely
unaffected by human life, being an all-powerful omnipotent being has caused him to lose his
empathy. At least until the final events of the comic, in which witnessing ‘a miracle’
re-instates a semblance of adoration in life. What makes him even more interesting is the
political repercussions a character like Manhattan has raised – there’s literally whole books
devoted to theories behind the text and ideologies its inspired. While Manhattan is literally
a character that can do anything and everything, and can only be diffused by a convoluted plot
like that of conscientious megalomaniac Adrian Veidt’s, it takes some master character
crafting like Alan Moore’s to make him so intriguing and complex in order to resonate
with so many readers.
2 Wonder Woman Perhaps the most transformative character
on this list, Wonder Woman is a figure that started off with some shadier origins back
when she was created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who had invented
to polygraph. Marston wanted to create a female superhero who was the image of that era’s
unconventional liberated woman. Much of her character was inspired by Olive Bryne, a woman
who lived with him and his wife in a polyamorous relationship. Aspects of bondage and submission
also were incorporated into the character, and she was bound to ‘Aphrodite’s Law’,
which made the chaining together of her Bracelets of Submission the way that a man could take
away her Amazonian super strength. So much for liberated, eh? That being said, Woman
Wonder would go through decades of changes - from being weirdly depowered in the 70’s
to now becoming one of the most empowering female characters in main stream pop culture.
Wonder Woman has proven to have staying power – the recent 2017 film speaks volumes of
that. A whole new generation of Wonder Woman fans have rallied around the ideals of feminism
and female strength that she represents. And hey, you gotta admit – it’s pretty awesome
seeing a bunch of young girls running around in Wonder Woman gear unabashedly declaring
that they, too, can be superheroes and they, too, can do anything.
1 Superman I’ll be perfectly honest – I’m really
not a big Superman fan. This is partially due to the stunts that DC has pulled with
the character over the years – including my ALL TIME FAVOURITE 1992 classic story arc,
the Death of Superman. Sorry, by classic, I mean steaming pile of narrative garbage
that forever changed the state of death in comics. But, that’s the thing with Superman
– he’s a character who has changed the face of comics for DECADES now. And will continue
to do so. He’s the character that comes to mind immediately when you think of superhero.
He was the defining archetype of the superhero and the reason why the genre exists in the
first place, with his debut in 1938 changing the game forever. Yes, the man of steel had
predecessors in comics, but he was really the first character who struck a note with
audiences. In addition to that, he’s proven to be resilient – beyond just bad writing.
His popularity dropped significantly after WW2 after certain atrocities committed by
the Nazis came to light on an international scale – people couldn’t bring themselves
to believe it the optimistic ideals he represented. Yet he was a rallying point of patriotism,
a symbol of freedom, during those times. Superman has exceeded just being a character in the
panels of comic book pages – he stands for so much more than that; he represents the
ideals that people have projected onto him over the years. So whether you love him, hate
him, or don’t really care, it’s undeniable that the man of steel represents more than
just a hunky dorey character in tights. He’s an icon, and it’s well deserved.
Alright, there we have it friends! Do you agree with my picks? Let me know your thoughts
in those comments below! As always, if you dug this video, hit that like button, and
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Kelly Paoli and this has been top 10 nerd. Catch you all in the next one!