Time Magazine has posted a list claiming to be the top 10 oddest characters from Marvel comics.  I disagree with about half their list, and while I think it’s clear that they did their research, I have to ask what their definition of “odd” is.  I’ll give you Ego the Living Planet and Asbestos Lady, but Dazzler?  Yeah, she doesn’t have the coolest mutant power in the world, but she’s been around for a long time and is considered more or less a fine character.  Don’t hold the disco against her.

And I’ve always liked Howard the Duck.  Even the movie.  Their list:

1. Hellcow
2. The Asbestos Lady
3. Lockjaw
4. Spider-Ham
5. The Great Lakes Avengers
6. Puppet Master
7. Howard the Duck
8. Swarm
9. Ego
10. Dazzler

Well, here’s a few that I think should be considered for such a list:

Rocket Raccoon
Paste-Pot Pete
Porcupine
Cloud
Toad
Toad-Thor
Aunt May (well, she HAS survived a freakishly large number of heart attacks)

Don’t forget:
Ernst
No-girl

Dazzler and Howard can be great characters, if written properly. Ego and Lockjaw have recently been used very well, but I guess by design they can be described as odd. Spider-Ham & GLA are supposed to be odd, it is part of the design.  I can’t say I ever heard Asbestos Lady or Hellcow before this article and I mostly recall Swarm from an episode of “Spider-Man & his Amazing Friends”.

My favorite Marvel oddities are the Headmen, particularly Gorilla Man and Ruby Thursday.

Dazzler?  Really?  But not Jubilee? I feel like I’d go for her over Dazzler.

I would certainly think about someone like Beak and Angel and their…horribly disturbing children…before going for either of those two though.

The Stepford Cuckoos have always creeped me out…

any character from the howardverse or spider-hamverse is odd by definition. othen than those I’d mention Skin, Big Bertha, Ruby Thursday, Awesome Andy, Bi-Beast, Kangaroo, Shrunken Bones, No-Girl, Chickenwings and Cable (think about it. he’s the guy born in the present, raised in the future, mothered by a clone but raised by the original, both having had relashionships with his dad. he was saved by his much older baby sister that was never born cause she’s also from the future, but not the same future he lived in, thought she was also there, but from a future she prevented from happening and therefore doesn’t exist. he has an evil clone himself and an alternate reality version that co-existed with him on his reality, but in the present, not the future. sounds odd, doesn’t it?)

oh, and paste-pot-pete is the best villian name ever! love it!

I liked Skin quite a bit.  Yeah, he had a lame power, but I used to be a major Generation X fan, and he was always one of my favorite characters because I think he was well-written.

But if we’re going on oddest characters based on background (as opposed to power), the list would get endless.  I’m thinking Penance, Rachel Summers, maybe Psylocke.  After X2 came out, I was part of a discussion on which mutants should be in the third film.  Someone suggested Psylocke, but someone else shot them down saying it would be too much to handle: “Hi!  I’m Psylocke.  I used to be a British model.  Then I died.  Then I was reborn in the body of an Asian assassin, but I was brainwashed into thinking I really WAS the assassin until I got my memory back, but then the Asian assassin came back in my old body and then…(actresses head explodes).”  Of course, they DID end up putting Psylocke in the third film and got around the background by just giving some random mutant a streak of purple hair and calling her Psylocke.

Allen - 18 June 2010 10:10 PM

Hmmm Boom Boom would make my list.  I know she can charge and blow stuff up but the code name makes me think of that song in the 80’s and hookups.

Maybe that’s why they changed her name to “Time Bomb.”  Paul Lekakis was going to sue.