The GCE’s Favorite Heroes
April 16, 2014Our writing team gets together to talk about some of their favorite comic heroes.
Every comic book fan and fan of superheroes in general always has that one favourite that stands above all else. The one that you truly make that connection with, whether it be the way the characters personality strikes you, the way that they fight for justice, or their their approach to the world, everyone is different with how they perceive these characters and everyone sees something different. Here at the GCE, we’ve have compiled our personal favourite heroes from across comics and why they have become our favourite above all others. The great thing that we found that when we put this together is that no one writer on our team had the same answer, nor the same favourite hero as anyone else.
Dan
Batman. He has no powers or gimic, just wits. He’s the richest man on the planet and uses it to help others. Everything in life is a fight, right down to something as simple as getting out of bed in the morning. Through Batman you learn that willpower and intelligence can do more damage than fists and gadgets.
Drew
I’ve always been drawn to the comic books characters that have issues fitting in with regular society. I’m sure that has every thing to do with me growing up as a nerd and a bit of an outcast. My favourite team of heroes have always been the X-Men, specifically the characters that couldn’t hide in plain sight like Beast or Nightcrawler. Their struggle to fit in and be normal in this world really hit home for me.
Lex
Hal Jordan as Green Lantern makes the top of my list. It’s partially through him that I learned bravery isn’t about not feeling fear, but about acknowledging it and moving past it. He doesn’t let his fears shape his life. I also love how in depth the Green Lantern storyline is between covering the entire universe and the differences in the ring colours and capabilities. My favourite example is that Blue for Hope is one of the most powerful colours but is quite weak without Green as Hope means little without the Will to act.
Michael
My favourite character is not necessarily classified as a hero; Venom is more of an anti-hero. While he is a villain when it comes to Spider-Man and his rogues gallery, it comes with good reason Eddie Brock lost his job and his livelihood because of Spider-Man. Then he comes across the symbiote which also harboured resentment for Spider-Man and granted Brock the knowledge of his secret identity. However, Venom never killed anyone he deemed an innocent and even had his own spinoff series where he was a hero, not a villain. He even had a short stint as a part of the Avengers! Eddie Brock was a character who really showed that anything can happen when you hit rock bottom, and in the Maximum Carnage series he vindicated himself with the help of the symbiote in defeating Carnage with Spider-Man. Venom is the perfect example of a character that operates in that gray area as life is not always black and white.
Scott
When I was a kid I liked the Punisher, mostly because he had no special powers and he was kind of an anti-hero. He was considered a “good guy” but killed without remorse. I believe he made people think about revenge and their consequences.
Sean
Green Arrow. He has no super powers, survived on a island alone for five years then comes back to do right and clean up his city.
Steph
I’m going to go with Dredd on this one. While he’s a relatively new pick of mine, I like the world that Dredd lives in. It’s not just the character and how hollow and emotionless he can be sometimes– it’s what you don’t know and what you speculate about him that can be interesting. “Judge Dredd Origins” have gotten into his time as a cadet and it’s interesting to see how he evolves into the Judge that I know and love today. He is human (albeit a clone), and he relies on his training and skills to get him through the days in Mega City One. He sleeps for ten minutes a day and then it’s out on the streets again. He lives and breathes justice and there’s no crime he’ll turn a blind eye to. While people in Mega City One turn a blind eye or even hate the mutants, Dredd can still find sympathy for even them. He’s seen as a cold and calculated individual with little to no interest in anything but upholding the law, but there have been other sides to him that have been revealed that make him an incredibly interesting character to read.
Stephen T.
Superman is my favorite. He was the first hero I saw as a kid from the Christopher Reeve movie. I also used to watch reruns of the old George Reeves show. It was old fashioned good versus evil. I like how he has evolved over the years and writers have made him more human than alien as a character. Sometimes you can forget he’s from another planet. And who wouldn’t want any one of his powers?
Stephen G.
Mine was Spider-Man growing up. Even though I knew it was Peter Parker behind the mask, I always envisioned that anyone could have been behind the mask. As Parker, he was an easy character to relate to, and one I sympathized with.
See all articles by Stephen G.
We want to know who your favorite hero is, please leave your thoughts in the comments below!
