Category Archives: Comic Book Stuff

Aliens, they're everywhere. We might not be any closer to discovering extra-terrestrial life in real life, but in mass media the invasion has already happened. In film you have all manner of blobs, little brown things with glowy fingers and long necks, cockroaches that love sugary water, horrifying monsters with elongated heads and a preference for exploding out of peoples chests and, of course, walking carpets. TV has numerous examples as well, whether it be men in blue boxes that are bigger on the inside, war-loving guys with creases running down the middle of their faces and pseudo-roman centurions that try to kill rabbits with ray guns. And of course comics are no different. Throughout the around 90 years of comic book publication, there have been many examples of aliens in comics, and in todays list I'm going to rank what I believe to be the top 10.

Now, this list will only include aliens from the comics medium, so no beings from other dimensions or parallel worlds (so no Anti-Monitor, Annihilus, Howard The Duck or Mr Mxyzptlk), any beings which are considered aliens in cannons outside of the comics (so no Asgardians here) and no characters that originated in other medium but have appeared in comics (so no Star Wars, Star Trek or Doctor Who characters here, at least none that really matter because there have been numerous minor characters from those series that have debuted in the comics but never mattered in the grand scheme of things). I'm also not including entire races, so you won't see the Oan's, the Kree or the Skrulls on this list, despite their impact on comics (although individuals that belong to these races may appear). And I'm also not going to include more than one member of any particular race, because then you have half the list taken up by one alien race and the other half divided between another 2-3 which is a bit boring. Oh and no symbiotes. Venom and Carnage are great and yes the suits are alien, but there's still a human in there, so it doesn't count.

Anyway, long enough intro I think. On with the show.

Warning: Opinions ahead. If you don't like it, well, things could be worse, you could be getting attacked by a face-hugger or something.

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There are a lot of things that go into making a great superhero. The powers, the costume, the personality, their alter-ego/ secret identity all play a huge role. But what really defines a hero is the villains that they face. Whether it be thwarting would-be world conquerors or sending back alley lunatics back to whatever jail it was they broke out of this time, the villains are a quintessential part of any superhero story. But who has the best collection of villains to face off against? I'm not including The Avengers or the Justice League on this list because, whilst they do have fantastic rogues galleries of their own, often they may end up fighting villains belonging to one of their members rogues galleries (Loki, looking at you here), so they'll be left off so we can keep things simple. Other superhero teams not made up of All-Star line-ups do count though.

Warning: 'Ere be opinions. Beware.

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So, Tony Stark is to be replaced as Iron Man by Riri Williams, a 15 year old African-American student who also happens to be a girl. Apart from the obvious misnomer, this could be either a really inspired move or a cynical shock value based cash grab with allusions to appeasing people who are demanding more heroes of ethnic minorities, and lets be honest, it's probably a bit of both. This also means that within the last 6 years, Marvel have replaced all 6 of their big 6 heroes (Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America, Thor and now Iron Man) with new characters. So what better time to look at some of the heroes that took up the mantel of an already established hero and actually succeeded. As a rule I am going to be excluding characters created during DC's Silver Age revival of the superhero genre (e.g. Barry Allen replacing Jay Garrick or Hal Jordan replacing Alan Scott), as, whilst these characters are probably the definitive versions of of that superhero lineage, these neither character existed in the same universe at the time and as such were not aware of the lineage they were taking on (unless you count Barry Allen reading Flash comics and thinking Jay Garrick was a fictional character).

Warning: Opinions below. You have been warned.

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