Saturday, August 11, 2007

Comicbabe battle Round 1 : My X - Babes

After all this seriousness about the JLA and all the hard work on my computer it´s time again for some fun. So I decided to do that thing where you rate the female comic heroines according to their hotness. It´s one of the most talked about things on message boards and judging from the posts on german comic message boards alone also the most popular.


Before I begin I want to add that this list is totally subjective and based solely on my own definition of hotness. And this is not a complete list. Not by far. Because that is enough material for a separate website. The women I picked are totally random and if you think I should include another woman ( or if you want to comment on my ranking ) send me some comments. I really like to get some feedback.

So when I had collected all the pics for this theme I began to arrange them in groups and after finishing with that I realized that I had too many in the Marvel section. To keep the posts short I wanted to keep it at 10 participants. A Top 5 ( or Top 10 if it has to be ) and up to 5 runners up. But when I came to the Marvel section I had much more than that. So I decided to give the women of the different X - books their own category. The only requirement is that they have to be mutants and have to have appeared in a Marvel comic.


So let´s get right to the meat and potatoes. The first category is the runners up which means any comic babes for which I could not come up with a ranking in the Top Five for any reasons.

First runner up : Mystique


Now I really like the painted tribeswoman look she had going in the 80s when I started to read X - Men but being a villain I never was sure where she falls in the hotness category. Also being a shapeshifter you never know how much is real and how much is just shape. It is just too difficult and makes my head hurt. Hotness suffers when it gets too complicated. So Mystique did not make it to my list of mutant mamacitas.

Second runner up : Emma Frost


I know she´s a favorite for a lot of readers but while there´s no denying her hotness I really never liked the character. To start off she was a bad girl and while that my be enough for some readers in this instance it was not enough for me.


She got the whole leather sado / maso - outfit thing down to a t in her first appearances but somehow she never had this " Oh, Mama ! " effect on me.


During Grant Morrison´s run she got a different outfit which should accentuate her physique. But after Frank Quietely´s " asian hooker " cover of her in this outfit that´s all I relate this outfit to. So no matter how hot she is drawn the picture of Emma looking like a drunk asian prostitute is burned into my brain.

In the current issues of Astonishing X - Men she seems to play the part of " good gal " but I suspect she has a secret agenda. Deep down she´s still evil. So I´m not sure where to put her and left her out.

Third runner up : Jean Grey


Another x - woman who was romantically involved with Cyclops. She´s the Ying to Emma Frost´s Yang, the good to her evil. Except when she´s Dark Phoenix.

Also a telepath this one has been dead and back more than any other Marvel character. She was one of the premiere x - chicks but since she was mostly involved with Scott ( when she wasn´t dead ) she never registered on my hotness radar.


Kind of the " married woman " syndrome for me. And I also have to say that some of her outfits were just hard to look at. And not in a good way. Remember the " pouches " look the X - Men had in the 90s ?


Reminds me of Tim Taylor´s tooltime belt. The many resurrections destroyed the character for me so I just can´t get a solid approach to her.

Fourth runner up : Blink


By all rights Blink should be in the Top Five since she is not only a kick - ass tough chick but she also has the looks. She first appeared in the Phallanx storyline were she made such a lasting impression on the comic readers that she was brought back in AGE OF APOKALYPSE were she really turned into a megastar and fan - favorite.


The reason why she is not in one of the top spots is that Marvel in their infinite wisdom has decided not to cash in with her popularity. Despite all x - fans clamoring for a series starring Blink ( and Morph ) it took them years to churn up a half - asssed BLINK miniseries that really sucked.


And after that they buried the character in the peripheral EXILES series onto which no superstar creator wandered. If not for the intervention of Tony Bedard and Paul Pelletier I myself would never have checked out the title. Don´t get me wrong, it´s a good run, in fact I think it´s a terrific run but in my opinion something´s wrong with a book if the best run starts in the 70s numbers.


So while blink is one of my favorite characters which I would put on my x - team ( if you remember one of my earliest posts ) I just don´t know where to rank her due to lack of exposure.

Poor Blink, we barely knew her.

So let´s get to the x - babes that made the cut ( and it´s about time too ).

X - Babe Number 5 : Rogue


Everybody´s favorite Southern Belle is in the number five spot. When I started reading UNCANNY back in the eighties a lot of the lure was the new all - different line up that included some mysterious women. One of them was Rogue and she was the hottest one. She really stole the spotlight in the Marc Silvestri issues and later in the Jim Lee run when she wore her jungle outfit. I mean even Magneto fell for her. So who am I to argue with the master of magnetism ?


The reason why she is not higher on the list is that the writers ruined her character. I mean why does she still have the handicap that she can´t touch other people ? It seems that whenever the X - Men run into some two - bit mutant menace he has some device that robs them of their power - including Rogue.


You think that in one of the instances Rogue would pocket one of those power - sapping gizmos for her " home entertainment ". Hell, I bet Forge or Tony Stark could come up with a portable device for it. I mean, anyone remember the image inducer ? I mean that thing was smaller than an ipod and Kurt was using it the whole time but they couldn´t whip up something for Rogue ?


And what´s the whole deal with Gambit ? He really sucks and it´s about time Rogue dumps him. I just hope that if Gambit ever shows up in a X - Men movie Rogue stays away from him since her movie counterpart is underage ( who the hell knows why ). So due to bad writing and bad taste in men Rogue is on position five.

X - Babe Number 4 : Storm


The next spot is occupied by the X - Men´s african princess and now the newly crowned queen of Wakanda. Not only is she another kickass x - chick who beat Cyclops without her powers but she is just oozing hotness.


From her black costume during the Byrne run ( you know which one I mean ) to her later ones that mostly included skintight black leather she really emphasized that black IS beautiful. Not to mention that she doesn´t like to wear bathing suits which we learned in the SAVAGE LAND adventure.


She has been a member of the X - Men longer than Rogue and she has been treated better by the writers. I still don´t understand why Marvel felt the need to alter her continuity with Black Panther retroactively. I understand that Marvel wanted to make a little money and cash in on the whole " marriage of the century " thing but wouldn´t it have been easier and more cost efficient for Marvel to put together a trade with all the Storm / Black Panther stories they already had ?


The whole miniseries was a total waste of time since Ororo already had enough history with T´Challa in the Marvel Universe. In every meeting between the two sparks were flying but apparently that was not enough for Marvel.


I guess they were afraid that only comic geeks and the usual weirdos knew it and they wanted to make it believable to those guys who don´t usually read comics. You know, those guys Marvel writes most comics for nowadays - the people who are NOT their customers. Hmm, I wonder why comics don´t sell so good anymore.


Anyway Storm deserves this rank because even hollywood agreed that she was so hot only bootylicious Halle Berry could believable portray the bodacious mutant goddess.


They changed her costume in the movie but we got our payback for it with her costume in CATWOMAN. I always thought of Storm more as a Janet Jackson type and when it was announced that Halle may not return for part 3 I had my hopes up. Well, it didn´t happen but who knows what can happen in the next x - movies ?


I´m keeping the faith.

X - Babe Number 3 : Psylocke


Now she wears bathing suits and she makes them shine. She´s the third telepath on this list who had a relationship with Cyclops who is not only one of the coolest X - Men ever and their best team leader but it also seems he gets the most mutie booty.


Like Rogue I first encountered her when I started reading the american original issues but she really jumped from the " also ran x - babe " category to the " mega hot mutant bunny " when she turned from british hottie to asian assasin.


Like Phoenix she has been resurrected ( but not quite so often ) and it seems Chris Claremont is especially fond of her since he put her in his EXILES story arc. Not that I can blame him.


She got this whole " deadly assasin with a body to die for " thing going for her.


And all the best assasins ( and the hottest too ) in comics are asians : Shiva, Madame Viper even the girl from Ghost in the Shell .... whose name I forgot.


And you just can´t go wrong with supersexy ninjababes. So she has the skills and the looks.

X - Babe Number 2 : Namorita


Yup, I know she´s not REALLY an x - babe but since I put this category up for all the mutant chicks I kind of smuggled her in. She is in the X - Men team I would pick so that kind of qualifies. Yes, I didn´t put the Scarlett Witch into this category but it´s crowded enough without her and I always saw her more of an Avenger anyway.


Growing up in the deepest depths Namorita developed the set of lungs that go with it. So her voluptuous chest has more to do with simple survival than with overachieving artists. Sadly she also had to suffer at the hands of writers who turned her skin blue and gave her more of an barracuda look.


Right now they killed her off before CIVIL WAR but I wouldn´t mind it if they brought her back. I mean they brought Jason Todd, Bucky and even Uncle Ben back. Why not someone who clearly deserves it ?

But please, if Marvel decides to bring her back ( and put an artist on the book who´s good at drawing hot women for a change ) not with the blue skin. Or at least with this as her new costume.


You know you want it. And if it´s too much to draw you can even draw the seashells smaller. I wouldn´t mind.

X - Babe Number 1 : Boom Boom


Now a lot of this ranking is no surprise to anyone who has read my post about my X - team . So it should be no surprise that on the number one spot of the hottest of them all is the girl with the stripper name. Really, there could be no other as the number one contender. To quote myself :

Tabitha Smith, a.k.a. Boom Boom is the Power Girl of the New Mutants ( and later X-Force ) and I´m sure one of the guys on the team suggested her codename when she hit puberty and her mutant powers were not the only things that developed tremendously.


I can just picture her thinking : " I wonder why all the boys just call me Boom Boom even when I´m not in costume. Maybe Tabitha really IS difficult to remember. " I don´t think any of her teammates digressed.

You just have to love a girl with the name of a stripper who also happens to have the booming body ( and sometimes the wardrobe ) to go with it.


It´s all about the boom booms. Even the insufferable Deadpool said the only reason there were cameras in every room of X-Force´s headquarters was that Cable was getting off on watching Tabitha putting her uncovered giant boom booms on the glass in the shower. And who could blame him ?

Lately she has only appeared in NEXTWAVE where she sadly didn´t strut her assets like using her boom booms to distract the bad guys. And that´s almost the end because there is one last contestant I have to add.

Honorary mentioned X - Babe : Jubilee


Another one of my favorite x - characters Jubilee entered the spotlight when she saved Wolvie´s life after a vicious attack by the Marauders. Sporting a robin - like outfit that could have gotten Marvel their biggest lawsuit yet she was Logan´s partner for quite some time till Professor X decided she belonged to Generation X and that it was too dangerous for her in the X - Men. After she helped save the universe on a few occassions.


Who knows what the real reason was for that. Maybe she was stealing his thunder. Anyway Jubilee is spunky, smart - assed and her bite is definitely worse than her bark. However there is a hottie hiding under the raw exterior. Judging from these pics she has developed real good in the meantime but since I have no idea where these are from I can´t really tell.

Edit : the pictures are from the series NEW WARRIORS that followed CIVIL WAR. In the book she featured her huge gazongas that earned her the nickname " Boobilee ".



After HOUSE OF M she lost her powers but maybe she will get a bit more of exposure ( no pun intended ) now that Marvel is dusting off the characters they haven´t used in quite some time. She doesn´t have to get her own title but maybe she could be in one of the team books.


So for this roundup she has to sit on the sidelines but maybe in a year or so she can be in the top list. And that´s the end of the x - section of the Marvel universe ( not to be confused with the xxx - section ) and the next will be the rest of the Marvel Mamacitas.





New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

1) Namorita? You put Namorita in the top five X-babes. Why not just put Polaris in the Top Five Avenger Women while you're at it?
2) If you are seriously wishing for Halle Berry to be Storm again . . . well, I hate to say this, but you need to die. In a fire.
3) The Jubilee pics you just put up are from her recent post-House of M appearance in New Warriors. It may not reach the glory of Bedard's Exiles run - what with the cockroach people running the crystal palace and all - but you might enjoy it. Then again, maybe not.
4) Seriously? Namorita? The fuck, man?

SUBZERO said...

Wow. Nice to get some comments.

1 ) I might think about it. No, seriously, Polaris is not even on the list. What can I say.....I´m crazy sometimes.

2 ) Nope. I wish to see Jamet Jackson or Beyonce as Storm in the next X - Men movie. ( I don´t care if she can act )

3 ) Thanks for the info. It seems I have to checl those issues out.

4 ) Let it rest man. I was just kidding.

By the way any suggestion for the rest of the Marvel Universe ? I´m curious how you like my next installment that´s going to be the Avenger women ( but without Polaris ).