Our Poll Position this week is a special sub-set of the "Whose sidekick do you want to be" question:
Junior super-heroes have a long history, from Kid Flash to Speedy (Green Arrow's buddy) to Aqualad and too many more to mention in between. They're mostly a legacy of the Silver Age, particularly the "Boy" and "Girl" versions. Even though Batman has arguably the best known sidekick, at least he's not "Bat Boy", which in addition to being silly would draw unwelcome comparisons to baseball flunkies.
The worst offender was DC, particularly with Aqualad and Wonder Girl. My theory is they just ran out of ideas and so had to resort to this, ultimately culminating in an entire team of Lads and Lasses with the Legion of Super-Heroes.
But let's say you have the chance to be a Mini-Me version of a popular character, with a cute little matching outfit (possibly with a different color scheme) and matching powers. Who would you rather Lad or Lass for?
- Cyclops: What amuses me most about this is Scott Summers' sunny disposition trying to deal with a youngster tagging along, crimping his moody, glowering style with the super-babes. I also like to think that they'd do away with "Cyclops Boy" and just go with "Squinty", but that wouldn't be in keeping with the rules here.
- Green Lantern: Before you say "even a kid with a power ring would be a full Green Lantern and not a sidekick," let me just say that the biggest selling title in the stable right now for DC is "Zombie Green Lanterns". So don't get all up in my face with your "That makes no sense" jive, you hep cat, because history has shown nothing if not that there is no "too silly to do" when it comes to Green Lantern.
- Hawkeye: I don't quite know how you'd pull off this name. Hawkeye Boy? Hawkboy? Boy Eye? Regardless, a small child running around in purple spandex is not something we should embrace.
- Hawkman: Hawkboy has a certain ring. He's sure as hell kick Aqualad's squishy rump.
- Hulk: Given the recent trends in Hulkery, he'd have to be Purple Hulk Boy or Red Hulk Lad or whatever, a tiny, mightily-muscled brat with rage issues. Sounds like every two year old I ever met.
- Spider-Man: I actually think some sort of Spider-Lad could work. Peter could teach him how to mope, how to not make a living despite awesome powers, how to lose hot babes, and how to serve as a whipping boy for your boss.
- Storm: Storm Girl, or Storm Lass, either works from just the sound of the name. And given Ororo's history (or at least, her history as of the last time I paid attention to the X-Men, which was an awfully long time ago), adopting an orphan makes a lot of sense.
So if I look at this from a comics reader's perspective, I'd probably go with Storm, because I think there are actually some interesting plot angles to take there. If I'm looking at it from the point of view of the question, which is "which one would I want to actually be", I'd probably go with Green Lantern. Partly because those rings are kick-ass (even if, in keeping with the tradition, my ability with it would not be the equal of a full GL), partly because going into space would rock, and partly because Hal Jordan's a man's man and could teach me how to wear a leather jacket without looking like a pansy.
Which would you rather be?
Jeff, one of the big reason sidekicks came along during that time was the Big Brother, Big Sister thing. After WW2 there were a lot of kids without fathers so the comics wanted to help out the Big Brother program by showing kids that it was alright to look up to other adults as parent figures. Which in the way times are now I don’t know if it would work or not. To many perverts that just want to hurt kids now.
Word up, Hammerknight. Which is why I choose Hawkeye, in total affront to Green Arrow and Speedy, cuz… they’re so cool! And the caliber is not the same. Let’s see… Dead-Eye… Eyesore… Bullse- HA! Nevermind. š Crossbolt!
Green Lantern Zombies? Seriously? I’m almost glad I don’t get out to ye olde comic shoppe as much these days.
Green lantern needs a sidekick.Turn the corps into the jedi order, and we get a lantern in the titans finally.
I have to choose Green Lantern, and apparently that’s the popular vote. Since he can shape anything he wants, GL Junior, with a child’s imagination, could probably teach the old dog new tricks, not to mention when he decides who he is, he could be a big political mover and shaker- it’d be a green world in no time. What say, everybody? Can I get a bite on this one.
bite on this one?* Sorry, roomie’s baking gingerbread, hard to focus with that aroma.
Which Green Lantern, or more precisely, which Ring? Alan Scott is still active in the DCU, and while it’s a similar set of powers, the different weakness from the Corps might be interesting. If it is the Corps, before or after the ‘Yellow Mellow’ resulting from Parallax? (The Yellow weakness can now be overcome; prior to Parallax escaping the Battery, it apparently could not.)
And for the record, for about 1/2 – 2/3 of an issue, there was a Junior Green Lantern of sorts. Jordan/Allen team up, one of the Flash’s old enemies stripped Wally West’s Flash powers from him and Jordan turned him into a Green Lantern Lite to compensate. Naturally it got reset by the end of the issue.
Don’t know why — but my mind went here when I read this.
http://forums.ugo.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=62173&d=1252963196
Sorry to post this here, but I thought it may be my best bet.
So Jeff, what are you working on right now? Iād love for some medieval boots, and gloves, when you get a chance. Iām currently working on a few classics. I need some items for my version of Thor
Hercules – http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m189/acebase_2006/Hero%20Forum/Hercules.jpg
Atlas – http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m189/acebase_2006/Hero%20Forum/Atlas.jpg
kingmonkey, they’re not exactly Zombies, but you really don’t want me to tell you all about “Darkest Night”…
You can look up all the sad, twisted details on Wikipedia, if you want to!
I voted Spider-Man, for the comedic potential of Peter having a young side-kick who believes that having great power means having great parties.
…and marketing potential!
I agree with GL needing the sidekick, call him/her the Green Flashlight or something ;D. My question though to follow this up, is which GL needs a sidekick the most (and I assume that we’re going with the human GLs)? There have been so many to choose from Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Alan Scott.
Let’s see: Cyclops is out, because I already don’t like wearing glasses. Wearing even bigger ones’d be uncomfortable, not to mention all those times I’d blow my own fingers of when trying to wipe my eyes in the morning, plus Cyclops is a major stiff.
Hawkeye…a regular guy with a bow, whose not Robin Hood, no thanks. Also if that Hawkeye used to be Bullseye, I’d have to constantly watch out getting stabbed with pens, sticks, arrows, carrots etc…
Hawkman, a bird suited bird brain…no. Just that hat with wings on it, I couldn’t wear that and walk/fly in public.
Hulk, well Hulk’s power set is nice and I’d get to do lots of violence, but being next to Hulk that smash, most of the time Hulk’d smash me…pass.
Spider-man is kinda cool character. With him I’d get lots of adventure and his powerset is well rounded, but being next to that weirdo 24/7’d drive me mad. When he’s wearing mask he won’t shut up with stupid jokes and when he’s not joking its all about world class angst whining. I seriously cannot imagine tolerating that guy for longer than 1 day without attacking him.
Green lantern, well his powers are good, when its working. Being vulnerable to yellow and being dependant on a trinket that needs constant recharge doesn’t appeal to me. More so joining a military organisation that goes seeking trouble is not for me.
Storm is the winner. I’m just a sucker for flying and lightning, plus I’d spend a lots of time with a beautiful woman. She’s the winner.
Forgot one thing, although Storm is my choice from this list, I’d rather sidekick for Doctor Strange. I’m a sucker for flying, lightning and a hot woman that wears leather, but I’m even more of a sucker for raw magic. And an added bonus I wouldn’t have endure constant persecution from anti-mutant people.
That’s one more angle to look at things. Cyclops and Storm are target for mutant pigotry, Hulk is target for army, Hawkman gets targeted by anyone with sense of fashion and Spider-man is target for just about everyone. Green lanterns aren’t targets as such, but they go searching for people who then target them.
Kalkin just brought up an interesting idea. Just how does Cyclops sleep? Does he have soft frames like toddler sunglasses?
I suppose it’s never a good idea to think about this too much.
Cyke’s eyelids can keep the beams in as well. Presumably, sleeping is only a problem if something startles him awake.
Well, since so many chose Green Lantern, I whipped up a Silver Age sidekick for him (back before the notion of a Red Lantern, let alone a corps of them, meant anything): Li’L Red.
Doing it, I found that playing with scaling was close enough to working to be a bit frustrating. Going into headshot mode or saving as PNG cause scaling to change. Differential horizontal and vertical scaling had its problems, but body versus head scaling is pretty close.
http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/Comics/Lil-Red.png
Brons
What about his fingers? Whiping eyes with fingers’d end up with a hospital trip if the rest of his body ain’t immune to his beams as well. And if that was the case, how come he hasn’t used his hands to block his eye beams all those times someone steals his visor in combat and his fellow X-men get hit by accident, especially since usually he has plenty of time to give a half page monologue about the subject?
Further questions about Cyclops: 1. Why hasn’t he gotten himself regular eye transplants? That’d cut down on all that inconvenience he must suffer. 2. Why none of those super villains that has captured him have never plucked out his eyes and made rayguns out of them? That’d make him harmless and villain’d get cool eyegun. 3. Why does he bother with those visors and glasses, when he could get an eye surgery to install a ruby lenses into the iris’? 4. Why hasn’t he lost his eyes by now? Presumably under that visor his eyes keep on pumping the beam constantly, so his eyes cannot be treated for any kinds of injuries nor infections. With all those fights its a miracle he hasn’t gotten any dirt in them and developed an infection – even with the visor. With untreatable infection one’d quickly lose the eye, but still it hasn’t happened to Cyclops. 5. Why does he bother keeping that visor in the first place and make such a big deal about losing them? He could simply move to Utah and live his life blowing up everything he sees. No loss there.
I seem to recall X-Men issues showing Cyclops using something like swim goggles to sleep with, and his entire body is immune to his own optic blasts. As far as dirt in his eyes, his beams are concussive force. Ever try to stick anything into a running fire hose? Same thing. His glasses don’t get blown off because ruby quartz acts more as a filter than a hard obstacle.
Also, his eyes just direct and focus his energy. It is some kind of brain injury that keeps them on all the time, instead of just firing when he wants them to.
How come his eyes don’t dry up? If that constant beam pushes everything away from his eyes, what about water? Even with his eyes closed the water’d get pushed against the eyelids – right through them now that I think about it – so none of the moister should ever reach his eyeball.
One more thing: from which part of his eyeball does the beam come from? Is it the whole surface area of the eyeball or just the iris area? If it was the latter, he could still get dirt on his eyes on the part of the eyeball that wasn’t pushing beam.
Every time I’ve seen him depicted without his glasses, the beam comes from the entire eye. And since he can cry normally, his tears are apparently unaffected.
As cavalier said, it’s never a good idea to think about this stuff too much. Every superhero in comics can be nit-picked to death by people who dislike them; even the ones that purport to be regular people don’t obey the laws of physics much of the time.
Cyclops- Only if I wanted to be taught by a stuck-up douche.
Green Lantern- Eh,I’d kinda like to have powers that weren’t dictated by an object.
Hawkeye- How would this in any way be different then Speedy? Unless we were talking about the Ronin version of Hawkeye,then no thanks
Hawkman- Pfft,hell no. Just no.
Hulk- As awe-inspiring as Hulks powers are,technically you wouldn’t be the one in control of the power.
Spiderman- This appeals to me the most. The sheer freedom you could get from all the web-slinging and wall-crawling would be brilliant IMO.
Storm- I’d prefer to stay as far from the X-men as possible.