[Dr Kain]

The final hero of the list was a tough one to make. Not just because there are so many great heroes to choose from, but rather, because I was not sure he was on my list. In fact, until I made this list, I would not have considered him to even be here, but when I looked at my comic collection, I realized he really was. And without further ado, I bring you:



I will say it straight out, there are things about Superman’s personality I do not like. I find him to be way too positive, way too heroic in the sense that he is as Batman calls him, a boy scout. He will do nothing wrong and makes very little mistakes. I normally dislike characters like that. I also do not like how writers can just make up any power they want him to have to suit the plot (like changing time by reversing the rotation of the planet).

However, when this character is written well, he is truly well written. One of my favorite stories of Superman is Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” It brought an incredible light on Superman for me and gave a nice “finale” to the character as if the series was over. That comic can be placed in any time line if you want a definitive ending to your Superman as it goes great. Another one, which is also featured in the hardcover and was adapted into an episode of JLU was “For the Man Who Has Everything.” That one shot story was just down right incredible and gave us an insight to Superman’s persona beyond the happy go lucky façade.

Continuing that, Bruce Timm’s version of Superman is really my definitive version of the character because he was able to do so much with the character and keep his powers streamlined so they did not just go out of control. There was no lifting up a Kryptonite island in his world. There were no super kisses to wipe out memories.

And of course, it helps that Superman has an interesting set of rogues to go with him in the likes of Lex Luthor, Zod, Parasite, Metallo, Bizarro, and of course, Brainiac. However, I definitely felt the minions of Apokolips were also a great set of villains for Superman as they were strong enough to hold their own against him, and in some ways, were better than him. It is nice to see when Superman has to use his brain to defeat Darkseid with his muscles instead of just the muscles. In fact, that is what I meant by when he is well written. There are stories where Superman does just use his muscles to win, and I find that to be boring. I prefer it when he has to outsmart the opponent. That is one of the reasons I love Metallo. The man runs on a piece of Kryptonite, so Superman cannot just attack him with his fists blazing.

Finally, one of the things about the character I never thought of until “Kill Bill” was that Clark Kent is really Superman’s disguise. When you put it into that perspective that also makes the character more interesting.

Now to be fair, I actually like his New 52 costume a lot. I am not a big fan of the red underwear, and while I understand it is iconic, I like the idea of his costume being nanites from Brainiac’s ship a whole lot more than it being made out of a blanket. That must have been one large blanket since he can get his entire costume torn apart and have had more to spare.

So with that said, that is the end of my list of my top ten favorite heroes of the DC universe. I am not completely done, as what better way to compliment my heroes list with my top favorite villains? Not to mention Sept is Villains Month for DC, so it works out great. The only problem is, not all of my favorite villains have made it to toy form, so I’m going to have to find some other images to use for those characters.