Young Justice doesn't qualify as A-List? The comic version, not the cartoon version (although I mourn the cancellation of the cartoon)
Well, probably not by my definition of A-List. A-Lister must be the face of the company and headline more than one book and usually also have team-up book or be on a team (or two). A-List for me are characters like Batman, Superman, Captain America, Spider-Man and Wolverine. None of the Young Justice characters compares to that. I mean, DC casually made it that Bart never existed in New 52, they would never do that to an A-Lister. Superboy and Tim might be B-Listers at best, but that’s quite it.
Now I’m curious as to how you’d rank various Teen heroes on the A, B, C, D, Z List scale … or it tempts me to give it a try since my MASSIVE DOCUMENT OF TEEN HEROES does include a spot for ‘number of appearances’.
Well, let me think.
A-List: Nobody of the usual group of characters covered by this blog qualifies. Out of Older characters who were once teen heroes I’d again say Spider-Man and Original Five X-Men.
B-List: Supergirl, Superboy, all male Robins, seeing how they return Barbara Gordon to teen superhero roots she would qualify as well. X-23 is great example of B-Lister in that she is always in something, but her apperances are usually limited to one book at time (NYX -> her minis -> New X-Men -> X-Force -> Her Solo book -> Avengers Academy -> Dennis Hopeless Shitty Fanfic -> All-New X-Men), so is Quentin Quire who doesn’t have his own book but is prominently featured in one series and guest stars a lot. Same with Kate Bishop and Sam Alexander, who were in two books at the same time. Finally, for now at least, Kamala has a strong spot here.
C-List: Pretty much everyone else. Characters who might be popular enough to branch into other books (Cassie in Mighty Avengers), video games (Nico in Avengers Alliance, Pixie in X-Men games) or animation (Surge in Avengers Disc Wars, Armor in X-Men anime, White Tiger in Ultimate Spider-Man) or are in multiple things but can easily drop into limbo (Noh-Varr) can have stronger position than others, but not enough to get them into B-List (and even then levels of “strength” here differs). On DC I suspect Raven and more popular of Teen Titans and Young Justice kids are between this and B-List. Both Cass Cain and Stephanie Brown are here.
D-and lower lists: Pretty much all really, really obscure characters.
I’d say an A-lister is one of those characters that simply don’t go away. Like, they are always in books, not just as background, even when they don’t have their own book (solo or team).
A good example is Stephen Strange. He hasn’t had a book of his own in forever, but he’s in lots of books lots of the time.
Or Nightcrawler. Even while he was dead, he popped up in stories in flashbacks and alternate realities and stuff.
I’d say A-listers always seep back into the universe, no matter how widely utilised they are.
A-lister for me is somebody who is a star, who brings the money on the table, who is pushed everywhere.Who is headlining every event, who shows on multiple comics a month or at least on multiple covers. Somebody who is to comics of his company what John Cena is to WWE. Somebody who is just popular enough to avoid comic book limbo but that’s it is more of a B-List or very strong C-List.
Okay, but by that definition, a lot of high-profile characters fall by the wayside. The original five X-Men, for example, haven't headlined anything for a very long time, with the exception of Cyclops, who really received a push so he could be a believable mutant leader.
Basically, by that definition, that is for Marvel Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Hulk. And the last four only because of the movies.
Actually, by that defintion not even Wonder Woman qualifies. She's got her own book for a long, long time, but she certainly hasn't been pushed everywhere in all the books. Not to the degree of Batman or Superman, for sure.
