World’s Most Useless Superheroes #3: Northstar

 

     Why must writer’s ruin my favorite comic books by pandering to the most libertine demograph? 

Alpha Flight was cool, and it was created by my favorite comic artist/writer of all time: John Byrne. Back when it was cool to be a Canadian, the Canadian government established its own superhero team, Alpha Flight, which was constituted of the following heroes: Guardian (cool battle-suit), Sasquatch, Shaman, Puck, Snowbird, Vindicator, Marinna, Aurora (Northstar’s twin sister)…and Nortstar.

For one thing, as I’ve made clear in previous entries for this list, one of the things that I consider of prime importance in being a superhero of legitimate stature is the ability to score chicks. Northstar probably could have had more chicks than any other hero. But he blew it. Both metaphorically and physically.

First of all, Northstar was a down hill skier. Have you seen the woman those guys hang out with? It’s un-fricken-believable. He of course became board with the sport, dusting all of his competition because of his super-powers. Powers that don’t leave me too impressed. He can fly at about Mach 10, and can generate bursts of photons from his body, enabling him to blind his foes.

Wow. He’s a flying Mag-Light.

And he was pompous ass, too. Always walking around with a scowl on his face, sulking in the corner and throwing temper-tantrums.

Why so much existential angst? Why, he was gay, of course.

Of course.

So while Northstar pouted in his bedroom, watching the E Channel,Alpha Flight was off fighting for Canada’s socialized medicine program, crossing the Canadian-American border to buy cigarettes at Wal-Mart and leaving very small tips at diners.

For some reason, every time I see the Northstar character, I think of the song by the B-52s: Loveshack. It’s got to be the lead singer’s overt lisp. Geez, even Freddie Mercury could sing without sounding gay.

It gets better than that, though. After Jim Shooter, Marvel Comic’s Editor in Chief left, Alpha Flight’s writers were allowed to have Northstar come out of the closet. What followed may have been the biggest fiasco to ever be inked and word-ballooned onto paper. In a following issue of the comic book, Northstar was voted Canada’s most eligible bachelor. I can’t make this stuff up, True Believers.

Of course.

Then. Then, Alpha Flight’s writers, who must have all dressed very neatly themselves, had Northstar contract a mysterious disease. I wonder what horrible disease this could be? Had the Skrulls performed expiriments on Northstar as he slept naked on his satin sheets? Had Doctor Doom, while on a fishing trip in the northern wilds, thought it a good joke to send North Star one of those beefcake birthday cards, infected with smallpocks? Oh no. The disease was sooo mysterious, it was never revealed what it actually was.

I’ll leave it to Dana Carvey as The Church Lady, to investigate the nature of Northstar’s sickness:

Could it be....AIDS!?

Of course.

Nope. It was fairy sickness. Really. Northstar wasn’t gay, he was just a fairy. Not a fop–a Fae, with pointy ears. Not Oscar Wilde, but a creature like Oberon. And he was homesick. He wanted to go back to fairy-land. Not The Blue Oyster, but a realm of pastel colored flowers.

About this time, the whole character of Northstar was making me sicker than Boy George at a rifle range. His story is pointless, needlessly prurient. The character never did a thing to actually beat up bad guys, besides maybe offer a couple of one million watt candle-power bitch slaps. He was a whiner, sexually confused, and as this essay has shown–one of the most useless superheroes of all time.

Where’s the World’s Most Useless Superhero list?

Ok, ok…By popular demand, I will continue the WMUSH list. As you know, #1 was Aquaman https://magus71.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/worlds-most-useless-super-heroes-1-aquaman/ #2 was Ant-Man https://magus71.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/worlds-most-useless-super-heroes-2-ant-man/ . #3? I’m not telling yet. It’s in the works though, so be patient. Whomever it is, be assured they’ll be as useless at boobs on a bull.

The Ant-Man entry is my second all-time leading post by hits, right behind, Yes–It’s true. It’s all True. https://magus71.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/yes-its-true-its-all-true/

World’s Most Useless Super Heroes #2 Ant-Man

Normally, when comic legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby worked together, they created masterpieces. In the case of Ant-Man, they created a character with a justifiable inferiority complex.

Some may question my choice of Ant-Man for the #2 slot of my list, and indeed they may have a point if they are considering the word, “Useless” in the list’s title. Perhaps “egregious” or ‘disastrous” would be better.

It seems Kirby and Lee understood their blunder in creating such a weak character, one whose only powers consisted of being able to shrink himself using his “Pym Particle”, so named after Henry Pym, aka: the magnanimously impotent Ant-Man, and to control insects. Kirby and Lee began to write entire story arcs around Ant-Man’s weakness. They made him a founding member of the Avengers. Yeah, those Avengers. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. And with his ability to control insects, seems to me he had a promising career working for Orkin, not fighting power-mongering world-beaters.

Picture this: Your super-power is to shrink–thus making yourself less impressive looking and unable to even drive a car. No chick potential there at all. Supposedly Ant-Man retained his normal strength when in micro-form. So what? Now throw yourself onto a super-team which consists of The Hulk, Iron Man and Thor. To make matters even worse, have your future wife on the team (The Wasp). Here the seeds of envy and strife are sown. Every time Thor lifts a beer to his mouth or checks the time on his wristwatch, you think he’s flexing to impress your woman. You have auditory hallucinations at night, believing your girl is mumbling in her sleep about Iron Man’s possibilities as a knight in shining armor. And maybe there really is something going on between the Hulk and Wasp, because you found a letter, written in Bruce Banner’s handwriting and addressing your spouse: “Take one for the team–Go green!”

Make no mistake about it, Henry Pym had potential. He was a brilliant scientist who decided that making himself itty-bitty would make life more challenging. And he almost did enough to escape this list when he made himself Giant-Man. He finally understood that being able to smash buildings and lift cars was more important in getting things done in this tough world then was the ability to be tea-bagged by hamsters…

But then Pym went nuts.

Distraught and wanting to prove his worth, Pym decided he’d tinker with robotics. The result? Ultron, a robot so powerful that Doctor Doom made it his personal bodyguard in the Secret Wars series. Ultron’s later configuration sported an adamantium shell (indestructible metal) to go along with his passe’ Oedipus Complex and desire to wipe humans from the face of the Earth.

And yet Pym remained with The Mighty Avengers, a government sponsored super-team. Can’t you see it? Captain America walks into the Avenger’s Mansion after a long day of fighting the Red Skull. He notices a twelve-pack torn asunder and 10 empty 12 oz. cans of Schlitz littering the kitchen floor.

Captain America: “Hey, umm, Thor. Sorry to bug you but, where’s Hank Pym?”

Thor: (Watching American Idol) “Dunno. Downstairs in his lab I think.”

Captain America: “Has he been drinking?”

Thor: “I think.”

Captain America: “Dammit! Thor get your ass off the couch. You know what happened last time we let him drink! He started welding cans and rusty bike frames together and Voila!: Indestructible Automaton!

Thor: “Yeah…”

In between building the Avenger’s enemies, recreating himself as the arrogant Yellow Jacket and bouts with psychosis, Pym found the time to start slapping the Wasp around too. Writers tried again and again to make Pym’s character work. They had him revive the heroic android Vision, but then they’d sucker-punch the readers by having Pym get duped by a villain named Egghead. That pretty much says it all.

Regardless of how many times the writers tried to redeem Pym, he will forever be Ant Man to me; a terrible amalgamation of weakness, pride, incompetence and downright perniciousness.

It’s time for a giant can of Raid.

World’s Most Useless Super Heroes: #1 Aquaman

Aquaman

This was such an easy choice for number one. Aquaman offers us nothing. His costume in its original form was bad. In DC comics Golden Age, the creators or superheroes has a penchant for making horrific costumes with gaudy color schemes, or schemes that just make one ill. Aquaman’s costume does the latter. Green and Orange. Yeah.

His powers are a regrettable mix of silly, useless, and restrained to an environment in which no man lives–except for Aquaman. The only thing his powers may be good for is getting chicks, because we all know how women adore dolphins, with their fervent chattering and permanent smiles.

No personality either. I mean, we know what Batman and Superman are all about. But Aquaman is like dry oatmeal.

You know a character has problems when the writers, instead of taking the normal road to rejuvenating a dull character (making him or her dark and brooding), give the character a mullet. That was supposed to make Aquaman hip. They may as well as given him a wallet with a chain leading to his belt and a tattoo that said “Born to Lose.”

Some superheroes just need to die, and DC has chosen to kill off far better characters than Aquaman. The Flash for instance bought the farm in Crisis on Infinite Earth while destroying the Anti-Matter machine created by the Anti-Monitor. But for some reason, the writers at DC love Aquaman.

Actually, what would be better than killing off Aquaman would be to have him go rogue, start jacking cruise liners with armies of Sea Monkeys or destroying the economy of coastal Maine by marching all of the lobsters down to Mexico for spring break. The women he’d score when he marched his horde of lobster onto the shores of Rosarito Beach would boggle the mind. I think Rogue Aquaman would have starfish attached to his belt, that he could toss like shuriken. Only in a pinch of course, otherwise they’d be decorative starfish.

The Justice League comic and cartoon invariably found reasons to include this useless hero in all of the team’s escapades. Superman and Batman would be slugging it out with Solomon Grundy and Bizarro, while Aquaman would be scooping hapless and intoxicated sea-kayakers out of the murky waters of the YMCA swimming pool.

It’s time for Aquaman to go. And if anyone makes a real movie with Aquaman as the lead hero, I’m calling for a revolution. They rarely get superhero movies right in the first place, and to make a movie about the worst hero of them all would be catastrophic. I know what they’d do too. It would have some sort of Broke Back Mountain twist to it. I guarantee it. The only way they’d get people to go the film would be to throw gayness into it and feed off the sliver of people that will do whatever they can to partake of that which is gay.