Jim Lemoine
Feb 23, 2003, 09:51 pm
<img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/logos/dittol_logo.jpg" align=left width=115 height=100 border=0 alt="Did I Think That Out Loud?!? logo">By Jim Lemoine, darkkelf@earthlink.net
Once upon a time, there was a guy who worked at Marvel Comics named Bill. This particular Bill wasn't President of Marvel Comics: I'd venture to guess that he had too much writing ability and not enough of an obnoxious edge to qualify for that position. Instead, our Bill had the enviable job of coming up with neat marketing gimmicks and new ways to make Marvel cool, fun, and accessible for its readers. One of Bill's many creative ideas was a concept called "100 Greatest Marvels," in which fans all over the world got the chance to vote on which Marvel comic books throughout the company's long history deserved the honor of being called "The Greatest." Once the votes were in, said Bill, those best of the best would be reprinted for everyone to read and enjoy.
It was a great concept, but in some fans' opinions, it had poor follow-through. What was meant to be an exhibition of Marvel's greatest stories and art became little more than a listing of origin appearances and creator takeovers. Judging from the final results, people didn't vote for an issue based on how good the story was; they voted for it based on the fact that it was the first appearance of a neat concept or a favored character. I was a bit disappointed that only one of the books I supported made it onto the final 100 Greatest Marvels list, so I did a bit of research and ran some numbers. When I took a good look at Marvel's final list of what their fans thought was the best, I was convinced that we totally missed the boat on finding the real Greatest Marvels.
Of those Hundred Greatest Marvels as voted in by fans, over half (52) contained the first appearance of a character or team. Another ten were tied to a certain creator's first (or featured, #1 issue) work on a title, and nine more were death or wedding issues. Do the math, and that leaves just 29 of the Hundred Greatest Marvels to actually rely on great stories and art, just 29 that weren't dependent on a certain character or creator's first appearance. Of those 29, a whopping 19 were issues of the various mutant titles, mostly X-Men and Uncanny X-Men.
Being one of those rare Marvel fans that believes there's more to great Marvel storytelling than just X-Men stories, I have to take issue with these results. I simply can't rationalize several of the picks on the list... for instance, according to the voters, one of the 100 Greatest Marvels ever was Fantastic Four #18. Why? Because it was the first appearance of the Super-Skrull.
Ummm... hello? The Super-Skrull?
Now, I've read Fantastic Four #18, and while it was a decent story, can anybody here honestly tell me that it was a better read than, say, the Harry Osborn drug issues of Amazing Spider-Man? Or the court-martial of Yellowjacket in Avengers? Or the alcoholism storyline in Iron Man? The only reason I can think of why Fantastic Four #18 could possibly make the list would be because the Super-Skrull, if memory serves me, had recently had an appearance in the pages of Captain Marvel. I could be wrong, though.
The first appearance of the Vision made it onto the list as well. Again, the Vision is a good character, but that issue in and of itself really wasn't anything spectactular. No less mundane were other nominated books such as the first appearances of Bishop, Sabretooth, or even Thor or Dr. Doom! (don't get me wrong, I love Doom as a character, but his first appearance in Fantastic Four #5 was really a fairly terrible story) Second issues like Uncanny X-Men #2 and Amazing Spider-Man #2 each received high spots on the list, even though they featured fairly forgettable characters: the Vanisher and the Vulture, respectively. These books obviously didn't make the list because of their inherent quality. They're there because they were the second issues of two series we all love. In my opinion, the mere presence of a title and a number two on the cover shouldn't be enough to honor a book as one of the greatest of all time.
In far too many instances, it seems, all the way up to the #1 book on the list (Amazing Fantasy #15, Spidey's first appearance), we voted for books based on the concepts they started, based on what they represented, more than on how good the story and art actually were. While Spider-Man's first appearance was a great story with good art, if I were to judge the issue by itself, there are several issues of Excalibur or Avengers that I'd easily rank higher.
The 100 Greatest Marvels have bugged me for years, not because of what they were, but because of what they could have been. As a loyal fan of the company, I wanted to see some truly great books recognized for what they were. Those books may have been recognized, were it not for relatively low-quality books like X-Force #1 and Incredible Hulk #181 taking spots that could have gone to better titles (and yes, I know Hulk #181 was Wolverine's first appearance. Have you ever actually read it?). There were some fantastic stories on the list that didn't have first appearances to boost their votes, like X-Factor #87 and Iron Man #225, and those were the kinds of books that I wanted to see more of.
Of course, this is just my opinion. You personally might believe that X-Force #1 had one of the most compelling stories of all time, or that the first appearance of the Blob in Uncanny X-Men #3 was one of comics' greatest moments. You might think that sales say it all, and because of that, Claremont and Lee's X-Men #1 deserved its extremely high ranking (and to be honest, it really was a great book... I'm just concerned that its marketability overrode its quality in vote decisions). And if so, hey, more power to you, my opinion certainly doesn't invalidate yours and that final list must have been your cup of tea. But there are many people who feel that lots of Marvel's greatest works were completely ignored in the 100 Greatest Marvels event... thanks to a lack of first appearances, deaths, weddings, big-name creators, and X's in the title. What about Squadron Supreme, G.I.Joe, Transformers, New Warriors, Thunderbolts, Inhumans, or any of Marvel's horror or western titles from the seventies? While we're at it, let me go out on a limb and ask: what about Spider-Ham?
I can't pretend to speak for Marvel fans, Marvel critics, long-time readers, or even for this website; I can only speak for myself. And for myself, the True 100 Greatest Marvels are very different from the list Marvel gave us. Thus, I give you, dear readers, Another Hundred Greatest Marvels. Books you might never have read, but are definitely worth the trip to the back-issue bins. In this column, and several more down the road, we'll be placing the spotlight on some of these nearly forgotten gems.
The Greatest Costumed Hero Story
About six months ago, somebody asked me what was, in my opinion, the Greatest Costumed Hero Story ever. Most people had answered with the usual suspects: Marvels, Kingdom Come, Dark Knight Returns, and Watchmen. And then, of course, there were some who said that nothing was better than Jim Lee's X-Men and Liefeld's X-Force. Well, to each their own. After ruling out Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen from consideration (because, as good as they are, they're not truly costumed superhero stories), I picked a title that everybody else had forgotten, and several people had never heard of.
It was a Marvel series called Slingers.
For those not in the know, Slingers was a short-lived Spider-Man spinoff book that debuted in 1998 and lasted a grand total of 13 issues. It was about a team of four costumed heroes whose costumes just happened to identically match the ones used by the Web-spinner himself in his recent Identity Crisis storyline. I would go into detail in explaining the Identity Crisis crossover and its connection to Slingers, except for the fact that it was written during a time when the Spider-Man books were painfully bad. Since I don't want to relive those issues, let me give you the short version: four kids showed up in New York with costume designs and powers that Spidey himself had used, and he wanted to find out how they got his designs and duplicated those costumes.
Unfortunately, since fan interest in Spidey was relatively low back then, fan interest in a series that spun out of a horrible Spider-Man crossover was even lower. Despite an impressive marketing push by Marvel, the series was doomed before it even saw print. What with the cavalcade of low-caliber series we'd been subjected to in the nineties, many people saw the demise of yet another Marvel book as some kind of poetic justice. And yet, there was one problem with that mindset where Slingers was concerned: thanks to the awesome writing of Joseph Harris, Slingers was actually good.
Slingers was a tale of four college students who gained super-powers and costumes through, unbeknownst to them, a literal deal with the devil. They didn't become "super-heroes" for the standard reasons of 'wanting to do the right thing' or 'with power comes responsibility' or anything like that. One of them did it to hide his genetic mutation, another did it to overcome his handicap, one did it because he wanted to be adored, and the last did it because... well... because all of the others were doing it. This wasn't your standard 'good guy vs. bad guy' book, and there were no secret headquarters, communicators... heck, their team never even got a name!
One thing that always irritated me about Marvel was that they didn't have a Guy Gardner; they didn't have a jerk. Let's be honest: with the hundreds of superheroes we've seen roaming through Marvel New York, aren't the odds pretty good that at least a few of them would be disagreeable? Unlikable? Haughty and difficult to deal with? And yet, how often do we get to see simple, realistic character flaws in books like X-Men or Avengers? Northstar exhibits these traits, perhaps, and Iron Man, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Wolverine, the Human Torch, and the Thing all used to. How many jerks do you know in real life? Lots? Yup, me too. Now how many jerks do we know in the Marvel Universe?
Prodigy of the Slingers was a total jerk. This guy didn't care about his teammates, and he didn't usually care about helping people. All he cared about was his holy mission, to be a hero, to be the best. He wanted praise and adulation and yet, conversely, he wanted to be a feared Batman-type figure for the criminal element. In the fantastic arc of Slingers #0-#5, Prodigy not only constantly belittled his teammates, but he also ignored them, abandoned them, and nearly killed several of them. He was anything but your standard classic superhero; he was the guy you loved to hate. And yet, at the end of the day, he was still one of the good guys... at least, you thought he was one of the good guys. The shaky ethics and manic psychology of Prodigy made for a special kind of fascinating reading that I've been unable to find in any other comic book since (although X-Statix comes close).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hornet was a nice guy. A really, really nice guy who wore his heart on his sleeve. In the Hornet, writer Joe Harris gave us an amazing look at what it feels like to be handicapped in a world where image, appearance, and physical prowess dominate social standings. My early favorite in the book, Hornet had some truly amazing lines, not spoken but in the captions that often showed us his thoughts. I've always maintained that the Hornet's inner dialog was one of the most realistic looks at a teenage mind that we've ever seen in comic format. His attraction to Dusk was handled perfectly: there was none of the usual mutual attraction, and no happy endings. In true Spider-Man style, Dusk had the hots for somebody else and barely seemed to notice poor Hornet.
Dusk herself was something of an enigma throughout the entire book. When I first saw the previews that said that Dusk would be "mysterious," I rolled my eyes to the sky and suppressed an inner groan. The Marvel Comics of the nineties wase very, very good at presenting us with look-alike "dark, mysterious" characters with convenient Logan-esque memory lapses and brooding natures. The last thing I wanted to see was more of the same, and happily Harris surprised me with Dusk. The mystery wasn't in her identity or where her memories went, but instead, how did she survive a fatal fall from a tall building? The mystery wasn't in who she was, it was in what she'd become. Harris used Dusk as an analogy for suddenly waking up in a different place, in a different world, as a different person. Would someone coping with new and fantastic powers have thoughts and doubts like the ones Dusk had? Absolutely. Dusk questioned herself and the world in ways I've never seen the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or X-Men even consider.
And then there was Ricochet, the team's mutant (and thus for you fanboys out there, the "X" connection) who was scared to death of what he was. The book wasn't really about Ricochet, though, it was about a young man named Johnny who hated his father, couldn't concentrate in school, and was having major trouble with his girlfriend. This was the story of how a young man named Johnny, afraid of being outed as a mutant, took to patrolling the night in bright spandex to hide his dirty little secret. It was also a great buddy story, as the interplay between Hornet and Ricochet was some of the best person-to-person interplay I've ever seen in a Marvel comic. Sometimes they were friendly, sometimes they were cheesy, sometimes they were sappy, and sometimes they were scared senseless. Through it all, their friendship was so tangible it almost radiated out from the page.
People often give me an odd look when I say it, but I consider Slingers to be the best costumed hero story I've ever read. This has nothing to do with the fact that one of the members was a mutant, or that there was a cute goth chick, or that they had a Spider-Man connection. Instead, it has everything to do with the fantastic writing of Joseph Harris (whose work on other books has oddly failed to appeal to me) and the outstanding stylings of ChrisCross (and the handful of other artists that took over the book as its end approached). With Slingers we had a story of four young heroes with less than pristine motives who didn't work together well at all. No badges, no training rooms, no communicators... just a desire to get out there and play hero while having no idea what the heck they were doing. And unlike most superhero books, the Slingers paid the price for that arrogance many, many times.
The heroes of Slingers didn't bravely face down danger; they were terrified of it. They didn't appoint a team leader and adapt battle strategy; they usually blindly charged in. They didn't often win the day untarnished; it wasn't rare to see them lose, sometimes with horrific results. I thought it was fantastic to read a superhero book where people failed, where heroes were visibly frightened (instead of tossing off a witty one-liner), where team members acted like imperfect human beings instead of immortal legends. Hornet, Prodigy, Ricochet, and Dusk never fought supervilliains, either; most of their time in the Slingers book dealt with their attempts to come to terms with their powers, their new identities, and each other.
Slingers was met with wide critical success, but a low enough level of sales that Marvel was forced to cancel the book prematurely at issue #12. As I mentioned earlier, Slingers was the recipient of a major marketing push from Marvel, so you can't blame the company for not trying. Personally, I tend to believe that the emphasis on Spider-man in the promotional materials was part of the book's downfall; Spidey just didn't drive sales the way he once did or does now. The Spider-Man titles were still reeling from the aftermath of the clone saga, and most of Spidey's fans hadn't worked their way back to the books yet. It was a bad time to be a Spider-tie-in.
Five years later, the four members of the Slingers are all but forgotten in Marvel lore, even though at least two of the members' futures are left decidedly open in the book's final issue. It's unfortunate that Harris isn't writing for Marvel anymore and that these characters are doomed to languish in Limbo, as they're four of the most realistic, well-thought-out, and interesting characters to be created in the entire decade. One of my biggest fanboy dreams (admit it, we all have them) is to see a Slingers series one more time. Although I do not now nor have I ever had the slightest ambition to become a comic-book writer, last year I sketched out a plot for a new 12-issue Slingers limited series, again focusing not on superheroics, but on real people dealing with the powers and concepts of heroism. The characters and situations are just too good to let go, and I had to see what happened next even if they only lived again in my own mind.
If you take a halfway decent look, back-issues of Slingers aren't hard to find, and there's literally no superhero book I'd recommend higher. I even suggest you search out all four different cover versions of Slingers #1, not because of collectibility or holofoil or anything like that, but because in a totally unique move (especially for the time) Marvel put different, extra story pages in each of the four different versions. It actually was worth the reader's money to buy all four versions. Imagine: a variant comic book that actually gives you something extra to read instead of a different pretty picture on the cover. Amazing.
If I had my own 100 Greatest Marvels, Slingers #0-#5, their first story arc, would be a shoe-in for inclusion (and the next five issues would be possibles as well). Costumed superheroing simply doesn't get any better than this.
Jim Lemoine (who owns a rather large collection of Slingers artwork but has no memorabilia from X-Force #1) has worked as a disc jockey, a video game designer, and a leadership consultant. He's been reading comics for 18 years, and he's been thinking too much for a while before that.
Once upon a time, there was a guy who worked at Marvel Comics named Bill. This particular Bill wasn't President of Marvel Comics: I'd venture to guess that he had too much writing ability and not enough of an obnoxious edge to qualify for that position. Instead, our Bill had the enviable job of coming up with neat marketing gimmicks and new ways to make Marvel cool, fun, and accessible for its readers. One of Bill's many creative ideas was a concept called "100 Greatest Marvels," in which fans all over the world got the chance to vote on which Marvel comic books throughout the company's long history deserved the honor of being called "The Greatest." Once the votes were in, said Bill, those best of the best would be reprinted for everyone to read and enjoy.
It was a great concept, but in some fans' opinions, it had poor follow-through. What was meant to be an exhibition of Marvel's greatest stories and art became little more than a listing of origin appearances and creator takeovers. Judging from the final results, people didn't vote for an issue based on how good the story was; they voted for it based on the fact that it was the first appearance of a neat concept or a favored character. I was a bit disappointed that only one of the books I supported made it onto the final 100 Greatest Marvels list, so I did a bit of research and ran some numbers. When I took a good look at Marvel's final list of what their fans thought was the best, I was convinced that we totally missed the boat on finding the real Greatest Marvels.
Of those Hundred Greatest Marvels as voted in by fans, over half (52) contained the first appearance of a character or team. Another ten were tied to a certain creator's first (or featured, #1 issue) work on a title, and nine more were death or wedding issues. Do the math, and that leaves just 29 of the Hundred Greatest Marvels to actually rely on great stories and art, just 29 that weren't dependent on a certain character or creator's first appearance. Of those 29, a whopping 19 were issues of the various mutant titles, mostly X-Men and Uncanny X-Men.
Being one of those rare Marvel fans that believes there's more to great Marvel storytelling than just X-Men stories, I have to take issue with these results. I simply can't rationalize several of the picks on the list... for instance, according to the voters, one of the 100 Greatest Marvels ever was Fantastic Four #18. Why? Because it was the first appearance of the Super-Skrull.
Ummm... hello? The Super-Skrull?
Now, I've read Fantastic Four #18, and while it was a decent story, can anybody here honestly tell me that it was a better read than, say, the Harry Osborn drug issues of Amazing Spider-Man? Or the court-martial of Yellowjacket in Avengers? Or the alcoholism storyline in Iron Man? The only reason I can think of why Fantastic Four #18 could possibly make the list would be because the Super-Skrull, if memory serves me, had recently had an appearance in the pages of Captain Marvel. I could be wrong, though.
The first appearance of the Vision made it onto the list as well. Again, the Vision is a good character, but that issue in and of itself really wasn't anything spectactular. No less mundane were other nominated books such as the first appearances of Bishop, Sabretooth, or even Thor or Dr. Doom! (don't get me wrong, I love Doom as a character, but his first appearance in Fantastic Four #5 was really a fairly terrible story) Second issues like Uncanny X-Men #2 and Amazing Spider-Man #2 each received high spots on the list, even though they featured fairly forgettable characters: the Vanisher and the Vulture, respectively. These books obviously didn't make the list because of their inherent quality. They're there because they were the second issues of two series we all love. In my opinion, the mere presence of a title and a number two on the cover shouldn't be enough to honor a book as one of the greatest of all time.
In far too many instances, it seems, all the way up to the #1 book on the list (Amazing Fantasy #15, Spidey's first appearance), we voted for books based on the concepts they started, based on what they represented, more than on how good the story and art actually were. While Spider-Man's first appearance was a great story with good art, if I were to judge the issue by itself, there are several issues of Excalibur or Avengers that I'd easily rank higher.
The 100 Greatest Marvels have bugged me for years, not because of what they were, but because of what they could have been. As a loyal fan of the company, I wanted to see some truly great books recognized for what they were. Those books may have been recognized, were it not for relatively low-quality books like X-Force #1 and Incredible Hulk #181 taking spots that could have gone to better titles (and yes, I know Hulk #181 was Wolverine's first appearance. Have you ever actually read it?). There were some fantastic stories on the list that didn't have first appearances to boost their votes, like X-Factor #87 and Iron Man #225, and those were the kinds of books that I wanted to see more of.
Of course, this is just my opinion. You personally might believe that X-Force #1 had one of the most compelling stories of all time, or that the first appearance of the Blob in Uncanny X-Men #3 was one of comics' greatest moments. You might think that sales say it all, and because of that, Claremont and Lee's X-Men #1 deserved its extremely high ranking (and to be honest, it really was a great book... I'm just concerned that its marketability overrode its quality in vote decisions). And if so, hey, more power to you, my opinion certainly doesn't invalidate yours and that final list must have been your cup of tea. But there are many people who feel that lots of Marvel's greatest works were completely ignored in the 100 Greatest Marvels event... thanks to a lack of first appearances, deaths, weddings, big-name creators, and X's in the title. What about Squadron Supreme, G.I.Joe, Transformers, New Warriors, Thunderbolts, Inhumans, or any of Marvel's horror or western titles from the seventies? While we're at it, let me go out on a limb and ask: what about Spider-Ham?
I can't pretend to speak for Marvel fans, Marvel critics, long-time readers, or even for this website; I can only speak for myself. And for myself, the True 100 Greatest Marvels are very different from the list Marvel gave us. Thus, I give you, dear readers, Another Hundred Greatest Marvels. Books you might never have read, but are definitely worth the trip to the back-issue bins. In this column, and several more down the road, we'll be placing the spotlight on some of these nearly forgotten gems.
The Greatest Costumed Hero Story
About six months ago, somebody asked me what was, in my opinion, the Greatest Costumed Hero Story ever. Most people had answered with the usual suspects: Marvels, Kingdom Come, Dark Knight Returns, and Watchmen. And then, of course, there were some who said that nothing was better than Jim Lee's X-Men and Liefeld's X-Force. Well, to each their own. After ruling out Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen from consideration (because, as good as they are, they're not truly costumed superhero stories), I picked a title that everybody else had forgotten, and several people had never heard of.
It was a Marvel series called Slingers.
For those not in the know, Slingers was a short-lived Spider-Man spinoff book that debuted in 1998 and lasted a grand total of 13 issues. It was about a team of four costumed heroes whose costumes just happened to identically match the ones used by the Web-spinner himself in his recent Identity Crisis storyline. I would go into detail in explaining the Identity Crisis crossover and its connection to Slingers, except for the fact that it was written during a time when the Spider-Man books were painfully bad. Since I don't want to relive those issues, let me give you the short version: four kids showed up in New York with costume designs and powers that Spidey himself had used, and he wanted to find out how they got his designs and duplicated those costumes.
Unfortunately, since fan interest in Spidey was relatively low back then, fan interest in a series that spun out of a horrible Spider-Man crossover was even lower. Despite an impressive marketing push by Marvel, the series was doomed before it even saw print. What with the cavalcade of low-caliber series we'd been subjected to in the nineties, many people saw the demise of yet another Marvel book as some kind of poetic justice. And yet, there was one problem with that mindset where Slingers was concerned: thanks to the awesome writing of Joseph Harris, Slingers was actually good.
Slingers was a tale of four college students who gained super-powers and costumes through, unbeknownst to them, a literal deal with the devil. They didn't become "super-heroes" for the standard reasons of 'wanting to do the right thing' or 'with power comes responsibility' or anything like that. One of them did it to hide his genetic mutation, another did it to overcome his handicap, one did it because he wanted to be adored, and the last did it because... well... because all of the others were doing it. This wasn't your standard 'good guy vs. bad guy' book, and there were no secret headquarters, communicators... heck, their team never even got a name!
One thing that always irritated me about Marvel was that they didn't have a Guy Gardner; they didn't have a jerk. Let's be honest: with the hundreds of superheroes we've seen roaming through Marvel New York, aren't the odds pretty good that at least a few of them would be disagreeable? Unlikable? Haughty and difficult to deal with? And yet, how often do we get to see simple, realistic character flaws in books like X-Men or Avengers? Northstar exhibits these traits, perhaps, and Iron Man, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Wolverine, the Human Torch, and the Thing all used to. How many jerks do you know in real life? Lots? Yup, me too. Now how many jerks do we know in the Marvel Universe?
Prodigy of the Slingers was a total jerk. This guy didn't care about his teammates, and he didn't usually care about helping people. All he cared about was his holy mission, to be a hero, to be the best. He wanted praise and adulation and yet, conversely, he wanted to be a feared Batman-type figure for the criminal element. In the fantastic arc of Slingers #0-#5, Prodigy not only constantly belittled his teammates, but he also ignored them, abandoned them, and nearly killed several of them. He was anything but your standard classic superhero; he was the guy you loved to hate. And yet, at the end of the day, he was still one of the good guys... at least, you thought he was one of the good guys. The shaky ethics and manic psychology of Prodigy made for a special kind of fascinating reading that I've been unable to find in any other comic book since (although X-Statix comes close).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hornet was a nice guy. A really, really nice guy who wore his heart on his sleeve. In the Hornet, writer Joe Harris gave us an amazing look at what it feels like to be handicapped in a world where image, appearance, and physical prowess dominate social standings. My early favorite in the book, Hornet had some truly amazing lines, not spoken but in the captions that often showed us his thoughts. I've always maintained that the Hornet's inner dialog was one of the most realistic looks at a teenage mind that we've ever seen in comic format. His attraction to Dusk was handled perfectly: there was none of the usual mutual attraction, and no happy endings. In true Spider-Man style, Dusk had the hots for somebody else and barely seemed to notice poor Hornet.
Dusk herself was something of an enigma throughout the entire book. When I first saw the previews that said that Dusk would be "mysterious," I rolled my eyes to the sky and suppressed an inner groan. The Marvel Comics of the nineties wase very, very good at presenting us with look-alike "dark, mysterious" characters with convenient Logan-esque memory lapses and brooding natures. The last thing I wanted to see was more of the same, and happily Harris surprised me with Dusk. The mystery wasn't in her identity or where her memories went, but instead, how did she survive a fatal fall from a tall building? The mystery wasn't in who she was, it was in what she'd become. Harris used Dusk as an analogy for suddenly waking up in a different place, in a different world, as a different person. Would someone coping with new and fantastic powers have thoughts and doubts like the ones Dusk had? Absolutely. Dusk questioned herself and the world in ways I've never seen the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or X-Men even consider.
And then there was Ricochet, the team's mutant (and thus for you fanboys out there, the "X" connection) who was scared to death of what he was. The book wasn't really about Ricochet, though, it was about a young man named Johnny who hated his father, couldn't concentrate in school, and was having major trouble with his girlfriend. This was the story of how a young man named Johnny, afraid of being outed as a mutant, took to patrolling the night in bright spandex to hide his dirty little secret. It was also a great buddy story, as the interplay between Hornet and Ricochet was some of the best person-to-person interplay I've ever seen in a Marvel comic. Sometimes they were friendly, sometimes they were cheesy, sometimes they were sappy, and sometimes they were scared senseless. Through it all, their friendship was so tangible it almost radiated out from the page.
People often give me an odd look when I say it, but I consider Slingers to be the best costumed hero story I've ever read. This has nothing to do with the fact that one of the members was a mutant, or that there was a cute goth chick, or that they had a Spider-Man connection. Instead, it has everything to do with the fantastic writing of Joseph Harris (whose work on other books has oddly failed to appeal to me) and the outstanding stylings of ChrisCross (and the handful of other artists that took over the book as its end approached). With Slingers we had a story of four young heroes with less than pristine motives who didn't work together well at all. No badges, no training rooms, no communicators... just a desire to get out there and play hero while having no idea what the heck they were doing. And unlike most superhero books, the Slingers paid the price for that arrogance many, many times.
The heroes of Slingers didn't bravely face down danger; they were terrified of it. They didn't appoint a team leader and adapt battle strategy; they usually blindly charged in. They didn't often win the day untarnished; it wasn't rare to see them lose, sometimes with horrific results. I thought it was fantastic to read a superhero book where people failed, where heroes were visibly frightened (instead of tossing off a witty one-liner), where team members acted like imperfect human beings instead of immortal legends. Hornet, Prodigy, Ricochet, and Dusk never fought supervilliains, either; most of their time in the Slingers book dealt with their attempts to come to terms with their powers, their new identities, and each other.
Slingers was met with wide critical success, but a low enough level of sales that Marvel was forced to cancel the book prematurely at issue #12. As I mentioned earlier, Slingers was the recipient of a major marketing push from Marvel, so you can't blame the company for not trying. Personally, I tend to believe that the emphasis on Spider-man in the promotional materials was part of the book's downfall; Spidey just didn't drive sales the way he once did or does now. The Spider-Man titles were still reeling from the aftermath of the clone saga, and most of Spidey's fans hadn't worked their way back to the books yet. It was a bad time to be a Spider-tie-in.
Five years later, the four members of the Slingers are all but forgotten in Marvel lore, even though at least two of the members' futures are left decidedly open in the book's final issue. It's unfortunate that Harris isn't writing for Marvel anymore and that these characters are doomed to languish in Limbo, as they're four of the most realistic, well-thought-out, and interesting characters to be created in the entire decade. One of my biggest fanboy dreams (admit it, we all have them) is to see a Slingers series one more time. Although I do not now nor have I ever had the slightest ambition to become a comic-book writer, last year I sketched out a plot for a new 12-issue Slingers limited series, again focusing not on superheroics, but on real people dealing with the powers and concepts of heroism. The characters and situations are just too good to let go, and I had to see what happened next even if they only lived again in my own mind.
If you take a halfway decent look, back-issues of Slingers aren't hard to find, and there's literally no superhero book I'd recommend higher. I even suggest you search out all four different cover versions of Slingers #1, not because of collectibility or holofoil or anything like that, but because in a totally unique move (especially for the time) Marvel put different, extra story pages in each of the four different versions. It actually was worth the reader's money to buy all four versions. Imagine: a variant comic book that actually gives you something extra to read instead of a different pretty picture on the cover. Amazing.
If I had my own 100 Greatest Marvels, Slingers #0-#5, their first story arc, would be a shoe-in for inclusion (and the next five issues would be possibles as well). Costumed superheroing simply doesn't get any better than this.
Jim Lemoine (who owns a rather large collection of Slingers artwork but has no memorabilia from X-Force #1) has worked as a disc jockey, a video game designer, and a leadership consultant. He's been reading comics for 18 years, and he's been thinking too much for a while before that.