List Depot

5. Celeste

I don’t find difficult games fun. I can understand and appreciate people who enjoy the challenge and I’m not afraid to dive into something hard as long as its balanced right but more often than not, I find it purely frustrating and the result often gives me a headache. Celeste is... a hard video game. There are moments in the game where I had to put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again before dying a bunch more times on a single screen. But never once did I feel frustrated as I often do with games that are difficult. Because that’s what Celeste is about.

Madeline, the protagonist, is just coming off of what’s implied to be a big mental breakdown and her bad brains and anxiety-riddled feelings feel the best way to defeat it is to climb Celeste Mountain. Despite warnings from others, and offers of help from fellow climbers, Madeline is determined to make it on her own. She has to do it by herself. And soon her determination is taunted by her own internal monologue, manifested on his mysterious mountain by a spectre-like mirror vision of herself.

But Madeline never stops. And despite my occasionally need to put the game down, neither did I. The game at no point pulls a dirty trick, even during the vastly more difficult B-side challenges it provides. Its pure pattern recognition. So every so often I would put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again. Because I was as determined to control my frustration as Madeline was to conquer her fears. The headaches I often get with hard games never manifested. Sure, my hands hurt after every level from gripping the controller but, in the end, I had felt satisfied, even proud, to have scaled Celeste Mountain along with Madeline. Even if well... take a look

16 hours and 3000 deaths and it was fully worth it.

4. Cuphead

I remember it fairly vividly. A quick cut of indie games for the Xbox One back in 2013 at E3. Just a sizzle reel of the games coming and I saw Cuphead. I believe my exact reaction on Twitter was “HEY WAIT WHAT WAS THAT HOLD ON” or something similar. 

As someone passionate about animation history, it stood out strong for all the reasons everyone loved it. The bouncing rubber hose animation (fully hand drawn and digitized), the echoes of Fleischer Studios and extremely early Warner Bros, the intensely jazzy soundtrack full of washed out audio. But what made Cuphead really unique to me was it wasn’t just a tribute to one old form of media.

Sure, of course, the 30s animation style was my big draw, but as more stuff came out about it, I noticed it was essentially just Gunstar Heroes, Treasure’s incredible frantic run and gunner for the Sega Genesis. With that element, Cuphead transformed for me from a game that looks pretty and has a fun concept to a game I knew I would love. And, despite waiting 6 years for it to come out on a platform I could actually play it on, I absolutely did love it.

Unlike Celeste, I did eventually put down the punishingly difficult ode to old school cartoons, but I know its there waiting for me to pick it up again and marvel at every focused enemy encounter and every lushly animated boss fights and stages. 

3. What Remains of Edith Finch

Annapurna Films came out swinging hard in 2017 with their game publishing branch Annapurna Interactive by releasing Unfinished Swan creator Giant Sparrow’s follow up game, a simple “walking simulator” focused on familial lineage.

Edith Finch returns to her old family home located off the coast of Washington. A large estate full of locked doors full of rooms frozen in time, preserved as shrines. You see, the Finches are, in a way, unfortunately cursed, forever plagued with dying in often odd circumstances. As you explore this home and Edith’s narration guides the player. Each room lets you experience a minigame of sorts, a vignette of that very death, told often from the perspective of that very Finch, each one interpreted in its own way.

As morose as that sounds, and there are plenty of sad moments (you play as a damn baby who drowns in a bathtub for crying out loud), its a game who’s whimsy and gallows humor is proudly worn on its sleeve. One story has you playing as a hermit Finch who lives in the home’s basement, desperate to avoid the curse, as you open cans of food over the years. That’s it. That’s the gameplay. And as soon as that Finch feels confident to have survived the curse, he walks out through a hole in his bunker, only to find himself on the railroad tracks with a train approaching.

And in a lot of ways, that’s what Edith Finch is about. Its a game that exists to be about the absurdity and peculiarities of death, what makes it sad, what makes it often funny and how it affects those who love those who have died. Edith Finch is like playing an interactive eulogy to a family that never existed and there are multiple moments that gave me a good laugh and plenty that made me tear up. 

2. Undertale

I don’t have anything to say about Undertale. Its an insanely popular video game and for good reason. A story full of heart and a weird sense of humor, a game that subverts traditional RPG mechanics by not only letting you whether to fight or spare your enemies but turns an enemy’s attack into an always cool bullet hell sequence. 

Its a game who’s characters are well known, its lines are repeated often, its soundtrack has been turned into memes and is intensely beautiful constantly.

I have nothing to say about Undertale because Undertale speaks for itself. It is an independent underdog game that blasted into the stratosphere of video games. Its good. Play it sometime.

1. Frog Fractions

I wish I could even begin to describe what Frog Fractions is but I can’t begin to express my love for this free weird browser game. Ostensibly a parody of edutainment games, you play as a frog eating bugs to keep them away from fruit and those fruits you collect go toward upgrades. Its fairly simple until, uh... it isn’t.

The ultimate joke of the game is that this fraction game about frogs is barely about frogs and, of course, never about fractions. The only fractions that you actually see are the weird points you gain when eating the bugs. And then that edutainment game becomes a shoot-em-up, which becomes a maze, which becomes a text adventure, then a DDR-like, then it just keeps going on like this until it just suddenly ends. Frog Fractions just kinda never stops until it very quickly does.

What makes Frog Fractions incredible to me is there aren’t many other games that came out this decade that, despite the vast connection between people that now exists with social media and chat platforms like Skype and Discord, elicited such a strong “Hey you gotta check this thing out” reaction as Frog Fraction did in my circle. I remember there being a lot of talk about both not spoiling what happens in it and helping each other try to solve that goddamn text adventure section where you’re fixing a spaceship.

Boy oh boy, video games sure did happen this decade, huh? A lot of stuff with a whole lot of video games and, most importantly, the independent game scene became far more pronounced, previously just confined to PC, the increasing presence of the online marketplace on consoles has greatly expanded the scope to which indie games reach players, putting these games on the same level as AAA. Anyway this is 10 of this games that I liked this year.

An honorable mention goes out to Firewatch because I still don’t know what is Firewatch.

10. Stacking

Double Fine are undoubtedly my favorite game company. Tim Schaefer’s company has not only created my favorite game of all time (Psychonauts), but all their games have such a fun creativity to them. Whether its a turn-based RPG where children fight based on their Halloween costumes or an action/strategy game set in a world based on hard rock and metal, Double Fine have proven to be such a company that embraces fun and whimsy, that Sesame Street of all people let them develop their most recent game.

Stacking, as you can tell from the screenshot, is a world populated by matroyshka stacking dolls, and you play as Charlie Blackmore, the smallest of all the stacking dolls, who sets out on an adventure to stop an evil Industrial Age baron called The Baron, who has enslaved his siblings. To do that, he stacks into other dolls, only able to go up in size one at a time. Most characters have their own unique abilities and Charlie uses those abilities to solve adventure game puzzles. And that’s where Stacking gets really cool.

Every single puzzle in the game has multiple solutions, if you can’t figure out one version of how to do it, there’s usually two more solutions. While you only HAVE to do one, the puzzles reset once you finish them, letting you take your time trying to figure the others. Its an adventure game that forgoes classic tropes of that genre, also replacing your standard point and click with the quick to pick up stacking mechanic that lets you pick and choose how you want to do things. Its a game that combines interesting ideas with an anticapitalist story and visually is both early 1900s set design while those sets are comprised of everyday household items. Its like playing a diorama from 1915. Not a lot of games are like that.

9. The Stanley Parable

The story of The Stanley Parable is simple. A narrative-driven walking simulator, you control Stanley, a boring office drone that’s tasked with monitoring data on a computer, pressing buttons and not asking questions. One day, that monitor goes blank and Stanley goes to fix it, suddenly discovering the office he works in is completely empty.

But that’s not the real story of The Stanley Parable. The narrator that describes Stanley’s actions, storybook-style, doesn’t control Stanley’s narrative. You do. And you have every opportunity, every step of the story, to go against the grain of what you’re told happens.

The Stanley Parable is a game that, as soon as you do anything it doesn’t want you to, begs you to continue following the path laid out for you then berates you for not following that path then continues to just complain to you, trying to regain control of the story. Every variation of Stanley’s story is maybe 10 - 15 minutes long but each one is a fun and weird surprise and Kevan Brighting’s soft friendly British narrator is an all time great voice acting role. One so good, Valve’s DOTA 2 MOBA game features an announcer pack that fully replaces the game’s announcer with Brighting’s narrator. DIGITAL SPORTS.

8. Observer

A digital plague called a nanophage has infected and claimed the lives of countless augmented people in this cyberpunk hellscape of Krakow, leading to war and rampant drug use. The Chiron Corporation stepped in soon after and took control, turning Poland into even more of a nightmare than it had been, condemning those on the lower rung of society to poorly kept together tenement buildings, while also creating a police force known as Observers, detectives given free reign to hack the minds of citizens. Its 2084 and you are Daniel Lazarski, an Observer who receives a message from his estranged son Adam to come to a tenement, where he discovers Adam’s body, dead from long before the call was made. And that’s when things get weird.

The more I think about it, the more I think Bloober Team’s more recent horror game, Layers of Fear 2, should take the place on the list. The only issue is I only played Layers 2 a month ago and, no matter how much I love it, my first exposure to this company was through Observer, and more than that, this was a game I did not stop thinking about for like a year and a half. While Layers 2 plays with color and black & white in a game about the early days of film, Observer is clearly influenced by classic works of cyberpunk (the most obvious being Blade Runner), the bright neon buzzing endlessly in this dark, miserable nightmare. 

Even the real stars of this game, the minds of the dead you dive into as you solve this murder mystery, embrace that look as your setting is warped around you constantly. Rooms that look normal start stretching endlessly, doors open into other memories. And as Dan gets deeper into the mystery, the line between the real of the world around him and the memories of those he’s probing begin to blend until his own memories get mixed up among them, showing what lead to the current sad life he lives. Its a game that oozes misery even as it tries to jumpscare you around every corner. And its why it still keeps showing up in my thoughts.

7. Gone Home

What exactly is a walking simulator? Dumb, that’s what. The idea that a game isn’t a game simply because it follows more of an adventure game aesthetic without any real challenges is absurd and, frankly, a childish view of what a game can be. And no game broke gamers’ brains more than the “walking simulator” Gone Home.

In 1995, Katie Greenbriar returns from a trip overseas on a stormy night to find her family home completely abandoned, moving boxes still unpacked. The unnerving quiet of the house mixed with the constant rain and occasional thunder feels like something out of a Resident Evil game. But instead of horror, the game uses this to make you feel confused, something to make you want to solve what happened. And it turns out its not a horror story, but a love story.

As Katie progresses through her house, she finds plenty of objects she can interact with, many that often unlock other areas in this large rural Oregon home. Along with many of those unlockables comes narration from Katie’s sister Sam, who details the awkwardness of moving into this new house, frequently thought to be haunted, and her life in a new school where she can’t connect with too many other people. Until she meets Lonnie. The two young women bond and fall in love. And the more you explore the home, the more this story gets fleshed out. Gone Home is a pure delight of a video game and one that not only spawned the pejorative term of “walking simulator” but became a gold standard for them, a term that the gaming industry has since embraced. There is no shame in using interactive media to simply tell a story, and Gone Home knows it.

6. Jazzpunk

Its the late 1950s in the country of Japanada and Agent Polyblank must-  I’m going to be honest with you guys. I don’t know what Jazzpunk is. I’m not entirely sure what its about. I’ve played it multiple times and loved every moment of it but I’m not going to pretend its a game that makes any sense. And that’s just what it wants to be.

Heavily adopting the style of mid-century spy and cyberpunk fiction, Jazzpunk is a game that overly prefers making you laugh over any qualitative form of actual gameplay. Sure there are puzzles to solve to move the story along, but those puzzles task you with collecting giant spiders that are better rendered than anything else in this game, or hacking into a Soviet consulate which involves using a telephone to dial “Kremlin 2: The New Batch”. 

And the puzzles that make up the story stuff isn’t even 1/5th of the general dumb garbage you can do in this game. Jazzpunk exists for gags like the wedding cake that opens into a console that lets you play the multiplayer wedding-based FPS Wedding Qake. Jazzpunk exists to make you help a woman swat down flies in her store of very expensive vases. Jazzpunk will make you suddenly stop what you’re doing to do a first person version of the car bonus stage from Street Fighter 2, or suddenly put you into a cyberpunk heist in a Blade Runner-like city. 

5. The Marvel Family

A team of particularly do-goody do-gooders, the Marvel Family are the offshoot of Captain Marvel, the alter ego of child reporter Billy Batson. A team of people mainly granted the power of the amoral yet morally convicted wizard Shazam (he needs an avatar to fight the forces of evil and puts the onus of it all onto a 7 year old), the Marvel Family includes Billy’s sister Mary Batson as Mary Marvel and his friend Freddy Freeman, who sheds his disabilities when he becomes Captain Marvel Jr.

There’s also the Lieutenant Marvels (Tall Billy, Fat Billy and Hill Billy, three men who share Billy Batson’s name) and Uncle Dudley, a dumpy old man without powers who believes he’s the Uncle Marvel, who the Marvels took a liking to. There’s also Tawky Tawny who is quite literally a talking tiger who often wears a tweed suit. Its great. He’s great.

The Marvel Family, similar to Superman’s family, is part of that general “idea” of ideal superheroes. Just... weirder. That’s what makes them great. Its what makes Captain Marvel wonderful. “Superman but a little weirder” works wonders for this character and his team.

4. Justice League Dark

When Metallo is rampaging through Metropolis, you call Superman. When Sinestro or Atrocitus are attacking planets, you call the Green Lantern Corps. These basic villains are often easy solutions when matched with their respective heroes. But what do you do when eldritch creatures from dimensions in between space and time invisibly swarm the planet? Will the Justice League stop that? Or do you need a Darker Justice League?

That’s where Justice League Dark (get it) comes into play. DC’s supernatural side is, I believe, their greatest strength overall. And with a team staffed by, among others, magician Zatanna, magician/conman John Constantine, actual ghost Deadman, avatar of nature and protector from horrors Swamp Thing, and chimp detective Detective Chimp, these creatures certainly have a reason to shake in their boots.

The forces of Heaven and Hell, the occult, the reemergence of Vertigo characters into the main DC canon. Justice League Dark deals in all of these themes, creating a heavy, interesting series of constant world-threatening events within the pages of their comics.

3. Agents of Atlas

A spy, a spaceman, a siren, a mermaid, a robot, a gorilla. One of Marvel’s oddest teams have nothing in common except for a single IRL connection: all six of them first appeared (and then mostly disappeared) in Marvel’s early years during the 40s and 50s, back when the company was known as Atlas.

In the canon, ATLAS was formed by the FBI to rescue President Eisenhower from the forces of the Yellow Claw. Claw’s archenemy Agent Jimmy Woo recruited the Venusian Marvel Boy and siren Venus, before also fixing the mute “Human Robot” M-11 and gaining the aid of Gorilla-Man, a soldier of fortune CURSED TO LIVE FOREVER IN THE BODY OF A GORILLA UNTIL SOMEONE KILLS HIM which is an idea that is incredibly stupid and part of the reason I love this garbage. Also not soon after, the Atlantean Namora (who had refused to help Woo initially) joins the team as well.

Inheriting the Claw’s Atlas Foundation front, the team works mostly in the dark, fighting the forces of evil. Most recently, (2009, they don’t get used often enough, basically) this espionage team has opted to take on the identity of “supervillains” as resistance against Norman Osborn’s regime as head of SHIELD. Again, this was 2009. They need to get out more.

2. X-Statix

Marvel, for some reason beyond my understanding but that I won’t question for reasons you’ll soon find out, decided to hand over the X-Force title to Peter Milligan and Mike Allred. X-Force was a comic known for both portraying a gritty. more aggressive form of X-Men and for being the most Rob Liefeld thing prior to him creating characters with names like DEATHSTRYKE and KILLBLOOD or whatever for his own comics label. Peter Milligan, meanwhile, was known for his mind-bending postmodernist works like Shade the Changing Man and Mike Allred’s pop art sensibilities seemed like the furthest possible artistic style from Liefeld’s grimacing over muscled footless monsters.

And when X-Force #116 premiered, it was not only incredibly different, but it introduced a whole new team of vapid, self-obsessed superheroes. An early 00s take on celebrity through a superhero vein, the original issue takes a turn when the last page features the collective death of all but 3 of the new team, immediately setting up a whole OTHER new team to remember after being introduced to the interpersonal relationships of this ego-driven team of mutants.

Its smart and pretty sharp and the constant retooling in the book itself by scummy mentor and amoral super rich investor creates an odd reality TV aspect of these strange heroes with their constantly shifting, often dying team (even Dead Girl, a mutant whose power is she’s already a ghost/zombie and can return to near-life after dying), all ready to be filmed, in moments of heroism or tragedy by their cameraman, Doop, a character I refuse to go into any more detail for because you should experience Doop for yourself. Just Google Image Search Doop thanks.

There’s a LOT to say about X-Force, who eventually changed their name to X-Statix due to the negative reaction from the 00s comics crowd, which sorta proves they were totally before their time, and, truthfully, its the best to just check it out on your own. There aren’t a lot of runs that I’d tell you to just hey look it up but hey

Look up X-Statix. Its really good.

1. Doom Patrol

The Doom Patrol can, perhaps, best be described by their classic original tagline: “THE WORLD’S STRANGEST HEROES” and hoo boy does that apply. Founded by Niles Caulder, the Doom Patrol features actress Rita Farr aka the size changing Elastigirl (eat it, Pixar), test pilot Larry Trainor aka the radioactive Negative Man, and race car driver Cliff Steele aka Robotman, a robot man.

And things were fairly odd for a while for the Patrol, up to and including the Doom Patrol’s presumed deaths at the hands of General Zahl while saving the small town of Codsville, Maine.

Then Grant Morrison happened.

Grant Morrison never met a comic book convention he didn’t love to openly embrace while also flipping it into some metatextual nonsense (and I can’t help but love it every time). Morrison took the Doom Patrol and created a comic based around Dadaist art and literature, William S Burroughs-esque cut and paste writing and just general absurdity. Negative Man Trainor merges his Negative Spirit with Dr. Eleanor Poole, becoming a multiracial, divine intersex radioactive being who refers to themself as Rebis. New characters were introduced like Kay Challis aka Crazy Jane, a woman with multiple personalities, each of which have different superpowers, and Danny the Street, a street. An actual sentient street. Who is also a drag queen. Its better than it sounds I swear.

The Doom Patrol soon became well... strange. Stranger than the strange they used to be. Their only recurring enemy was a 2 dimensional supervillain named Mr. Nobody who founded the Brotherhood of Dada, a team less about world domination or getting rich, and more about just like... idk? They don’t really recognize good or evil as simplistic concepts and prefer to just mess around like a bunch of dickheads, really.

Soon came Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol. Pollack, a trans woman, used the Doom Patrol’s debut in the Vertigo imprint. to discuss issues like identity, bisexuality, Judaism, creating an equally intelligent and mature comic, just on a separate level than Morrison’s. And a decade later, after a few changes in guards all around, Keith Giffen had a Doom Patrol run, letting the team go through a more humorous bent, notably featuring the inclusion of the fouth wall-adjacent comedy hero Ambush Bug. Most recently, Gerard Way (yeah, the dude from My Chemical Romance) has been creating his own Doom Patrol for DC’s Young Animal imprint, a mix of his own ideas and the classic Dadaist Doom Patrol that Morrison created.

I haven’t and also probably will never read Secret Empire for obvious reasons so that’s not showing up just fyi.

5. Ultimatum

4. Maximum Carnage

3. Secret Wars II

2. Civil War

I don’t think you ever have but this shit is my damn will forte.

Non-parody:5. Mr. Popeil4. Dog Eat Dog3. Skipper Dan2. One More Minute1. Dare to be Stupid

5. Winner’s Proof (Honorary Dumbest Looking Keyblade Award)

4. Spellbinder

3. Mysterious Abyss

2. Photon Debugger

Real Name: Victor Von Doom. Yes, Von Doom is a family name. His mother was Cynthia Von Doom. First Appearance: The Fantastic Four #5, July 1962 Powers: Genius, sorcerer, master hand-to-hand combatant. Commands an army of technologically advanced Doombots. Wears armor that grants him energy manipulation (including energy blasts) and force field generation.

Victor Von Doom’s life has been plagued by tragedy. Born to a tribe of Latverian Romani people, Victor lost his mother Cynthia at a very young age to Mephisto, an actual demon from literal Hell. When his father Werner was accused of killing the wife of a Latverian baron, the patriarch fled with his boy to the mountains, where he himself died from exposure while giving Victor his clothes to protect him from the cold. 

Angered and bent on revenge, the young Victor returned to his tribe, gathered his mother’s occult instruments and began combining them with technology, where for years he used them to protect his people from the baron’s forces. His brilliance and ingenuity became the stuff of legend, eventually reaching the dean of New York’s Empire State University, who invited Victor to study in America. And that’s where the crazy stuff really begins

While there, Victor began a rivalry with friggin Reed Richards, who he took an immediate disliking to, partly because he hated meeting his intellectual equal and partly because Reed Richards is a dillweed turd and you can just immediately sense he’s a piece of crap. Having devised a machine that could speak to the dead, Von Doom denied any problems with it when Richards pointed out minor flaws in both the machine and his calculations and, when putting it to use, had it explode in his face, damaging him to a degree that is...contestable. 

Some stories claim that it caused horrific damage to his once beautiful face, while Jack Kirby liked to believe that Doom’s own arrogance and egotism lead him to believe that a minor scar on his cheek made him inferior to others due to a slight imperfection (perhaps because slight imperfections caused the explosion in the first place). My personal favorite among these though is John Byrne’s interpretation where Doom’s overreaction to his scar caused him to frantically craft his infamous mask and donning it before it had fully cooled, burning him and thus truly ravaging his face into something that he can only show to his Doombots.

Regardless of the story, Von Doom was expelled from ESU and soon masked his face, forged technologically-advanced armor and full-on conquered his home country of Latveria, holing up in his castle as partly a ruthless dictator and partly an altruistic ruler (depending on who writes him), and once again swore revenge, this time on those he viewed as responsible for the explosion, namely Reed Richards. And from there, Doctor Doom was born.

Doom is, perhaps, the greatest of all of Marvel’s villains. He’s made more appearances than literally any other baddie in the company’s history. He’s a megalomaniacal master of both magic and technology whose lust for power is so great that he’s stolen the Power Cosmic from the Silver Surfer as well as the powers of the omnipotent Beyonder on two separate occasions. As such, he’s willing to take on and can almost easily best nearly every superhero possible. In fact, when DC and Marvel decided to create a create a sequel to a crossover of a comic where Spider-Man fought Superman, they opted to have “DC’s greatest hero” Superman against “Marvel’s greatest villain” and very quickly decided on using Doom for his star quality.

Yet, despite his ruthlessness and egotism, Doom is a man of honor. He will fight to protect his land and has rebuilt it following times of crisis because a flaw of Latveria is a flaw of Doom. He will mostly admit when he was bested. He will cry when the Twin Towers fell okay I’m sorry I need to show you this. Just look at this. Look at how dumb this is.

That’s literally Doctor Doom in tears from a Marvel comic book dedicated to 9/11 and while I like totally get why Doom would “mourn the random deaths of innocents”, he’s still Doctor Doom and this is still super poorly done and hamhanded. Okay anyway back to my article.

Doom is, as far as he’d like to believe, a man without flaws. He is without flaws because flaws killed his parents, flaws got him kicked out of Empire State University while Reed Richards succeeded, flaws blew up in his face, causing flaws to his handsome features. He has tinkered and experimented and forced any flaws out of him, creating a perfect ruler, a perfect scientist, a perfect magician, a perfect man. But there’s one glaring mistake Doom has never noticed. One big glaring problem known as Reed Richards. His obsession for revenge has consumed his life, seeking to crush the Fantastic Four and any who ally with them (aka pretty much literally every Marvel superhero). His world domination plans would be far more successful if he just focused on anything other than Richards.

Here, let me put it like this. Recently, the Multiverse was destroyed thanks to the collision of Marvel’s main Earth and its Ultimate Earth. Realizing this would happen early on, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange and Molecule Man allied to harness the power of the Beyonders to create Battleworld, a patchwork planet comprised of realms across the Multiverse. Strange had reservations of handling all the power and allowed Doom to assume the role of a literal God Emperor. In Battleworld, God Doom is married to Richard’s wife Sue Storm, their children Franklin and Valeria are Doom’s children, Human Torch Johnny Storm fuels the planet as their sun, and The Thing Ben Grimm separates the monstrous outer realms of Battleworld as The Shield, a mountainous wall keeping the citizens of the world protected. Multiple variations of many characters exist across Battleworld (there’s like eight Wolverines, its ridiculous) but there are no other Fantastic Fours than the ones I mentioned. And there’s literally no Reed Richards.

But out in the Battleworld, a pod remained for three years that suddenly opened, containing some of Earth-616′s greatest heroes who survived the collision and destruction. Lead by Reed Richards, those heroes created the complete collapse in Battleworld. Three years of a recreated Earth, ruled by Doctor Doom, and the minor flaw of Richards was enough to bring it all down. When recreating the Multiverse, Richards, having been gifted the Beyonder’s powers, sought to make it exactly as it was for the most part (give or take a few errant remnants of other Earths now suddenly on 616), but with one major change.

Real Name: Princess Diana of Themyscira/Diana Prince First Appearance: All-Star Comics #8, December 1941 Powers: Superhuman strength/speed/etc, skilled hand-to-hand combatant, flight sometimes(or she has an invisible jet otherwise????) , indestructible bracelets and a Lasso of Truth which does exactly what it says on the tin.

William Moulton Marston created a device that measured blood pressure. By charting the way blood pressure rises and falls in certain moments, he aided in the invention of the polygraph lie detector, ushering in a new way to detect when a person was telling the truth. Truth, honesty, in many ways, dictated Marston’s second life following an interview where he discussed the unfulfilled potential in comic books in 1940 which lead to Max Gaines, owner for comics companies that would merge into DC, to request Marston to join in the company as a consultant.

At the behest of his wife Elizabeth and his own peaceful and feminist views, Marston created a female superhero, ideologically designed to be “psychological propaganda of the women that should rule the world”, which sounds like some MRA redpill garbage but is Marston’s real actual words about this character he created. Physically, Marston and his wife based the character on Olive Byrne, the live-in girlfriend of both of them. Marston also happened to believe that BDSM was a “respectable and noble practice”. So in case you wondered why Wonder Woman has a lasso that makes people weak and tell the truth. well, there you go.

While devised as an Amazonian princess from the start, Wonder Woman’s more Hellenistic origins weren’t really fleshed out until around the Silver Age of Comics. Formed from clay and blessed by the gods on the island of Themyscira, Princess Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, was raised on the island surrounded by her fellow Amazons. When the gods decreed that the women needed an ambassador to the world of man, a contest was held and while Hippolyta forbade her daughter from entering, Diana, stubborn as she was, donned a disguise and won the contest. Blessed with armor, a Lasso of Truth and the Sandals of Hermes, Diana emerged in our world as a symbol of honesty and compassion, an alternative to the more brute strength approaches of male contemporaries like Batman and Superman.

Wonder Woman has been a founding member of both the Golden Age Justice Society (as a secretary, which made Marston really mad) and a founding member of the Justice League of America, joining the team in fighting major villains while also taking on numerous bad guys of her own like Cheetah, Doctor Psycho, and Ares.  

Real Name: Prince Uxas First Appearance: Okay so like I need to tell you a story. Meet me down at the body of this article when you finish reading about his powers Powers: Super strength, etc., telekinesis, teleportation, omnipotence, energy manipulation, possesses Omega powers including the Omega beams which are eye lasers that fire like that Windows screensaver with the pipes and disintegrates its victims

Okay so Darkseid’s first appearance. Following the departure of Jack Kirby from Marvel in the early 70s over frustration at not having copyright or creative control over characters he created, Kirby watched as newsstand sales of comics entered a slump and somehow accurately predicted that comics would need to depends on more legitimate venue to peddle their wares and thus devised a serialized finite tale known as the Fouth World saga, a sprawling epic of an ancient battle of good and evil between technologically advanced New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips (Get it?). With DC wanting to pick up a writer/artist as skilled and revered as “King” Kirby, Jack agreed on the condition that they stick him on the worst performing comic book they have, so he can have the freedom to just do whatever the hell he wanted.

And that, my friends, is how Jack Kirby’s magnum opus debuted with a cameo from the story’s antagonist, the impossibly cruel, incredibly evil New God Darkseid who seeks subjugation of all life through a formula known as the Anti-Life Equation, in November 1970′s SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #134.

Darkseid (pronounced dark side. Kirby was an amazing writer but he was never subtle) is in many ways the ultimate evil of the DC Universe. A jackbooted fascist who believes the entire planet that he rules is an extension of himself and thus the state. A man who entered a truce with the Highfather of New Genesis by trading sons??? Anyway both those sons are superheroes now (Orion and Mister Miracle) and both really really hate Darkseid as I imagine anyone would. 

More than anything though, the blood of Darkseid’s evil runs thick through the heart of Apokolips, primarily in part due to the company he’s kept. For one, Darkseid controls the Parademons, Apokolips’ shock troops trained from the most sadistic of the planet’s citizens of which there are MANY. Despite their heightened strength, advanced New God weaponry, and undying loyalty and willingness to die for Darkseid, the Parademons’ true skill lies in their sheer numbers which can easily overwhelm even the toughest heroes.

Darkseid also holds power over every aspect of life in Apokolips thanks to his Elite, Darkseid’s inner circle of manipulators and brutes that keep the denizens of the planet in line. From Granny Goodness, who indoctrinates children in the planet’s terrible orphanages, to Glorious Godfrey whose propaganda praises the glory of Darkseid on a regular basis, to Desaad, the hooded torturer. Darkseid allows his Elite to control the people while he spends his time plotting to control New Genesis, Earth and any other planet with the mysterious Anti-Life Equation, an equation that gives the user complete control over the thoughts and emotions of all living beings in the universe which is a pretty insane concept.

Real Name: Peter Parker First Appearance: Amazing Fantasy #15, August 1962 Powers: Proportional speed and strength of a spider, ability to cling to walls, precognitive danger sense (a Spider Sense, if you will), can fire extra-strength adhesive webbing of his own design from wrist-mounted web shooters.

Do I really need to tell you Spider-Man’s origin story? He’s literally one of the most popular superheroes of all time. It goes Superman, Batman, Spider-Man. That’s the list. Haven’t you monsters seen and heard Uncle Ben die enough times to satisfy your bloodlust? Fine. Here we go.

Midtown High’s shy nerd Peter Parker ends up being bitten by a radioactive spider, granting him amazing abilities that are vaguely metaphoric for puberty. Attempting to capitalize on his newfound superpowers and the web shooters he built, he becomes a novelty celebrity before his apathy towards stopping a criminal leads to the karmic death of his uncle and adopted guardian Ben Parker. Catching and subduing the thief soon after, Peter learns a lesson that will stay with him the rest of his life, that with great power, must also come great responsibility.

“Must also come” is an important part of that sentence. Power and responsibility go hand in hand but to understand it you must put the responsibility before the power. To have the responsibility to handle your power keeps you humbled, keeps you on the right path. Its what makes Superman such an effective character too, the understanding that living with abilities no other human has (well, in Spidey’s case, there are multiple Spider-People including Jessica Drew and Miles Morales, but the point still stands) means you’re being held to a greater standard. Its those three simple words “Must also come” that drives a fine line between superhero and supervillain.

But yeah hey Peter! Following the death of his uncle, Spider-Man became a superhero but a superhero plagued by guilt and shame, a superhero with anxiety issues, neuroses, identity problems (More than just that time he was cloned which was a Bad Time for all). So how does a guy solve anxiety problems when he’s swinging 50 feet in the air above Manhattan in red and blue spandex? By being glib as hell all the time. Perhaps one of the most defining aspects of Spider-Man aside from his neighborhood friendliness is his sense of humor, something he himself has admitted often that is used to disarm both his enemies and to reassure him that he’s probably most likely not going to die from his heroics.

And despite his previously mentioned friendly status among the citizens of NYC, Spider-Man is very often an unwanted figure, thanks in no part to the late Captain George Stacy (father of Peter’s equally late girlfriend Gwen) who believes Spidey’s vigilantism is understandably dangerous to both himself and others, and Peter’s boss at the Daily Bugle, flattopped, Hitler mustached, cigar chomping dillweed J. Jonah Jameson who hates Spider-Man for various reasons depending on who is writing him, including overshadowing his own hero son, possibly endangering youths who would want to emulate his heroics, and for just being a vigilante menace who can drive up sales of his paper. Regardless of his reasons, Jameson’s one-man media war has often convinced the gullible citizens of New York to turn against the hero.

Very often I’ve expressed before in this list and others, how much I love characters who are “just dudes”. Characters who, despite their powers or statuses or the like, are just down to earth and go through crap like anyone else even if they can climb walls or whatever. Its what made Spider-Man so popular in the first place. He’s an infinitely relatable character, which is something Stan Lee and Steve Ditko planned from the beginning and while the soap opera elements of Ditko’s years gave us a character who was fresh, John Romita’s tenure right after Ditko departed to make whatever libertarian garbage characters he wanted is what really launched the character into the stratosphere. 

Real Name: Quentin Beck First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #13, June 1964 Powers: Master of illusion, magician, skilled hypnotist and hand-to-hand combatant.

Magic is real in comic books. How else to explain the powers of Marvel’s Doctor Strange and DC’s Doctor Fate and Amalgam’s Doctor Strangefate other than them being tapped into some innate mystical force that vibrates across dimensions. Magic exists in these worlds and there are fights existing in magical realms that the merest of mortals could never understand. But this isn’t about those heroes and villains of might and magic. This is about an idiot who’s good at illusions.

Quentin Beck was a skilled Hollywood effects artist but found it was beneath him, deeming SFX work a dead-end job, he tried to get into acting which was met with, like, laughably poor reception. So he did what any good failed actor with background work in illusions would do: Become a supervillain. If we’re gauging supervillains by their main goal in life, Mysterio is perhaps one of the most successful considering his primary goal is to just make Spider-Man’s life suck after he foiled the guy’s first robbery attempt.

Since vowing to mess up Spider-Man’s life, he has:

Almost made Spider-Man unmask himself live on TV

Invented a gas that shorts out Spidey’s Spider-Sense

Convinced Spider-Man he was 6 inches tall (nice shrink kink, weirdo)

Faking Aunt May’s death

Mysterio though ended up with a brain tumor and lung cancer and, deducing Spider-Man was a clone (long story. long, terrible story), decides to focus on making Daredevil’s life suck instead. He convinces Karen Page she’s contracted HIV and convinces Foggy Nelson to carry on an affair and then framing him for murder. He also literally manipulates Matt Murdock into almost killing a baby which like, come on dude. Dial it back a little.

Real Name: Steve Rogers First Appearance: Captain America Comics #1, March 1941 Powers: Enhanced physical and mental abilities, master physical combatant, incredibly skilled strategist. Also he has a shield made of Vibranium and that stuff is nuts.

God, I mean, what can I say about Captain America that can’t be shown in that picture I used. There are few covers more iconic than Cap’s debut. He came crashing onto the scene at a time when America hadn’t joined the fight in World War 2, a time when enough people in the US supported Nazi Germany that Jack Kirby and Joe Simon got death threats and had to have police protection, and here comes Steve Rogers, announcing his desire throw a punch right in Der Fuhrer’s Face.

Rogers wasn’t always the strapping star spangled man you see in the comics though. Born in the Lower East Side in the 20s, Steve Rogers was a scrawny art student who tried to enlist in the army but was deemed to frail. Yet his determination to help fight in the war catches the eye of the scientists and military men working on Project Rebirth and soon Rogers is the first in a long line of people irrevocably changed by the soon to be Weapon Plus program.

In fact, Weapon Plus began because Steve Rogers was the only recipient of the Super-Soldier serum. Rogers was only the test subject for what was to be a line of super soldiers for the front line but Dr. Abraham Erskine, the creator of the serum, was assassinated mere moments after Roger’s transformation. As the one and only Captain America, Rogers was sent to fight as a counter-intelligence agent to Germany’s Red Skull. Armed with his wits, a Vibranium shield, and a side arm (?????) Cap and his sidekick, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, fought Hitler’s greatest weapons including Red Skull, Baron Zemo and Arnim Zola. They fought hard and they won every time, until an airplane rigged to blow gets destroyed with them on it, leaving them for dead.

Or did it? It did not. By some comic book-esque miracle, Steve Rogers was propelled by the explosion into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Frozen in suspended animation, Steve was revived years later by the Avengers literally because Namor the Sub-Mariner got into a pissy snit about a tribe of Inuits worshiping the frozen Cap so he threw it back into the ocean. Since his revival, Captain America has often been a full-time Avenger and an Agent of SHIELD on and off as well.

Captain America, despite what many will tell you (and despite his actions in the current comics), is not a purely American character. He does not support every action America takes. When Watergate happened, Marvel wrote a story revealing that even the President (heavily implied to actually be Nixon) was an a HYDRA agent, disillusioning Cap to the point that he shed his costume and became Nomad, a man without a country. He is America as the ideal, not as it is or as it was or as it ever will be. He is about the dream of unity and about all people, no matter their color or creed, being exceptional.

Real Names: Leonard Snart, Mick Rory, Mark Mardon, James Jesse, Sam Scudder, Digger Harkness, etc etc First Appearance: The Flash #155, September 1965 Powers: In order: Cold gun, heat gun, a wand that can control weather, an assortment of deadly gags and tricks, a mirror gun, actual literal boomerangs for some reason.

Yeah, yeah. I hear you out there. “Alex, come on, man. This is cheating. That’s so many villains. What are you thinking?” I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. Shut up. And also the Rogues as a team are perhaps the greatest Flash villains ever (disclaimer: there are still more flash villains on this list).

A loose assortment of petty criminals with various weird weapons initially brought together by a superintelligent gorilla as a means for a distraction isn’t usually how friendships are formed but somehow this squad of outsiders (but not THE outsiders)  made the most out of the strangest, most Silver Age meet cute imaginable, becoming a nearly inseparable team of a-holes with only a goal to kick the Flash’s ass and to make money.

That’s what rules about the Rogues. They’re not Lex Luthor or Darkseid or the Joker, they’re just a bunch of dudes with dumb guns and wands and boomerangs who want to continue robbing banks and sometimes be successful against Barry Allen or Wally West or whatever fast dude is in Central City at that time.

And despite their status as lawless criminals, they still have their rules. No harming women and children, no inheriting a Rogue’s legacy while they still live, the need to prove oneself to join the Rogues (simply having their gear isn’t enough). Perhaps most importantly though, is the rule of no killing speedsters, which seems contradictory to what the Rogues are about because they’re, like, the only people that ever stand in their way of achieving the goal of getting rich.

Yet, there’s a bizarre mutual respect between the Flash and his enemies (at least the non-speedster and non-gorilla ones). One that doesn’t occur with a lot of other hero/villain dynamics. But that’s partly what makes the Flash and the Rogues such special characters. There’s an inherent understanding between them that in a world full of crazy stuff like this, the only thing we truly have in the end is each other. Which is a weird thing to talk about with regards to a bunch of bank robbers but the Flash does honestly care about them in a weird way and they him. 

Real Name: Matt Murdock, Attorney at Law First Appearance: Daredevil #1, April 1964 Powers: Highly skilled acrobat with radar sense and superhuman senses.

Hey okay so Frank Miller sucks, right? He sucks really bad. He’s wicked gross, a terrible writer, a racist, misogynist. He’s just like all around bad. He’s a bad dude and he sucks. THAT BEING SAID, the one bright marker he has made on comics is his contributions to Daredevil that brought him from relative obscurity to one of Marvel’s best.

As a child, Matt Murdock was blinded by radioactive waste while saving a man’s life from a speeding truck. But because this is comic books, instead of just simply blinding him, they give him a weird radar sense like a bat. Like some kind of bat man. So naturally, when he grows up and needs a costume to strike fear into the heart of his enemies as criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, he dresses like a latex demon.

Not that a latex demon isn’t a sound choice considering Murdock is a devout Catholic. Yeah, the demon guy loves the big man upstairs (Clarence Clemons) meaning its time for yet another Religious Comic Book Character. Considering he’s also literally a lawyer and an illegal vigilante at the same time, there’s something to be said about Matthew Murdock being a man of contradictions.

But back to Frank Miller. Prior to the 80s, Daredevil was a bit of an...odd character, I guess? Stan Lee had him fight villains like Stilt-Man and gave him a second secret identity of his fictional brother Mike Murdock, used to distract from theories that Matt was the Daredevil. Gerry Conway meanwhile started incorporating high-tech futuristic weaponry and moved Daredevil to California for some goddamn reason. Frank Miller made Daredevil actually what he looks like: a demon fighting for good. And like other demons that fight for good, Daredevil suddenly became a man without fear for really physically harming criminals.

Granted, his Daredevil run still has all the makings of a Frank Miller comic. Needless grit, violence, misogyny, ninjas. Its still all there and it still all sucks, but Miller still changed the tone of Daredevil. And when Ann Nocenti picked up where Miller left off, she changed that tone for the better. Still gritty, still a mature superhero story about a dude in red leather, but lacking the anger in Miller’s voice. Now Daredevil became even more complicated. A man on the verge of disaster, unleashing his anger in disguise while attempting to find his happiness.

Its Daredevil at his finest. A man filled with righteous fury and passion, attempting to make things right in his city, both on the street and in the courtroom, as well as making things right in his life. Matt Murdock, beyond the anger and beyond  the suit and beyond the dumb billy club, is an intelligent man and a man who deserves happiness. No matter how gritty he gets. Besides, its not like he’s the Punisher.

Real Name: Depending on who you ask, Edward Nashton or Edward Nigma. Do you get the name? Do you get what his name means? Okay you get it. Cool. Thank you. Okay. First Appearance:  Detective Comics #140 (Oct. 1948) Powers: Genius-level intellect, expert strategist, criminal mastermind, really good at riddles. Like, just crazy good at them.

I have said this many times in the past: The Riddler should not work as a villain. He is a guy who is famous for pushing pun-laden question/answer nonsense on a hero who bears the moniker of World’s Greatest Detective. Even in the world of heroes winning over villains almost every time, there’s literally no way that that would end with anything other than the Riddler just eating it every single time. But Edward Nigma’s arrogance and ego prove to be his best friend.

A brilliant mind even at a young age, Nigma excelled at challenges of the mind (usually with a little cheating added), eventually becoming a carnival employee who conned customers out of their money with complex riddles and puzzles. But with a mind like his, he soon became bored with these minor thrills and wanted something just as complex but granting an even better payout. Gone was Edward Nigma, conman, and in his place was The Riddler, master criminal.

Despite what he would tell you, the Riddler has...some problems. His high intellect and normally calm and collected personality barely mask an extreme narcissism and egomania, as well as an obsessive-compulsive need to commit riddle-based crimes. As in, like, he literally cannot do a crime without riddles. He’s tried and he couldn’t do it otherwise.  But most importantly though, Riddler has a desire to be right 100% of the time. He’s meant to be right, whether through mental acuity or brute force. And he will go into a complete rage, usually at Batman, when he is proven wrong 

The Riddler’s greatest moment came probably when Nigma was dying of cancer, which is usually rare to hear, but when Lazarus Pits exist, its hard to argue. Taking advantage of the brief bout of insanity that follows the revitalization process, Nigma managed to deduce not only that Bruce Wayne was Batman but that Jason Todd was Robin and had returned to life. Teamed up with Dr. Thomas Elliott AKA Hush, a sociopathic childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, the Riddler embarked on a plot that manipulated virtually every major Batman villain into the fray as well as the Caped Crusader himself.

Real Name: Clint Barton First Appearance:  Tales of Suspense #57 (Sept. 1964) Powers: Expert marksman with a variety of trick arr- hey wait a minute we’ve done this before

Okay... This looks bad. I know it seems weird to you and it’s certainly a little weird to me. Hawkeye, the dude with the arrows in the Avengers? The guy on a team with the Hulk and a human who’s literally the greatest soldier who ever lived and all he can do is fire arrows? The guy who even after ditching the blue and purple cartoonish costume, still wears black and purple to every fight against supervillains and aliens? The guy who’s greatest claims to fame are shooting arrows and sometimes turning giant and dying that one time? How did Green Arrow go so low and how did Hawkeye go so high?

Because Hawkeye is the ultimate Everyman.

A former circus performer and criminal, Clint Barton had a knack for marksmanship, specifically archery, and, after saving Avengers butler Edwin Jarvis and his mother from a mugger, found himself becoming a full time superhero. And things almost immediately went bad. Barton’s hot-headed nature often lead him to clashing with and leaving the Avengers, if only for a short while.

He’s done a lot in his time as a weird arrow man too, he’s been an Avenger, a New Avenger, a Secret Avenger, a Defender, he was a ninja and became the new Giant-Man, he’s been in relationships with Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, he’s been a “””“mentor”””” (not really but he’s got seniority, I guess) to Young Avenger Kate Bishop, also known as Hawkeye. And yet, he’s just a dude. He’s just one dude with no superpowers.

And that’s what makes Hawkeye great. He’s this lone sane voice in a team of people with amazing powers or talents. He doesn’t have the brains of Tony Stark, he’s not a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he’s not magic or a mutant or a robot or a God. He’s just Clint Barton, archer and kinda acrobat sometimes. He’s a man who is sure in his skills and he’ll sometimes play dumber than he lets on just to have the upper hand, even with his teammates.