#5. Max Mercury

#4. Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy (from Devil Dinosaur, created by Jack Kirby)
If you're a regular reader of my column, then you won't be surprised by this entry. Devil Dinosaur and his pal Moon Boy were two of the last characters "The King" created for Marvel. Unfortunately, like most of those characters during his last run at Marvel, Devil fell victim to low sales and, eventually, obscurity. I'll give Marvel some credit though, they've tried multiple times to bring the two out of "character Hell" and their efforts have fallen, for the most part, on apathetic comic fans. Horribly enough, a one-shot released in 1997 titled The Devil Dinosaur Spring Fling was supposedly one of Marvel's worst-selling titles in recent history.
Fortunately though, the recent Marvel Monsters event of October 2005 successfully brought Devil and Moon Boy back with a one-shot guest-starring the Hulk. Does that mean the future's lookin' up for DD and MB? Possibly (hopefully), at least for another one-shot next October!
You can check out my two articles on Devil's first two issues from 1978 right here and here.

#3. Vanth Dreadstar (from Dreadstar, created by Jim Starlin)
What was it? Seventh? Eighth grade, maybe? My mom had bought one of those big boxes of comics out of a catalogue that was advertised to offer a variety of popular comics, a few of which were guaranteed to be "worth" something (it was the 90’s). It was a gimmicky way for some comic shop to get rid of overstock, for sure, but I'll tell you what, it was a goldmine for me and I love my mom for it.
This particular box came with, I remember, an issue of the original Doug Moench Moon Knight, an issue of The New Mutants, and various other well-known titles. It also came with some stuff I'd never heard of, one of which was Jim Starlin's Dreadstar.
I picked up issue #1, read it, and found myself completely under its spell. Fortunately, the people that packed this box were kind enough to include the next few issues, so I had a pretty good handle of what was going on.
This book, correctly called a "space opera," revolved around the adventures of Vanth Dreadstar and his company of friends, which included a very cool cat-man character by the name of Oedi, and their fight to bring the war between the Monarchy and the Holy Church of the Instrumentality to an end. The whole thing was just fantastic!
Vanth’s adventures eventually deteriorated into some sort of Adam Warlock-like super hero cliché and I’m unsure if he ever made it out of that, because my interest stopped there. Fortunately, most of the original Dreadstar stuff has been released in trade paperback form, which of course, I suggest picking up.

#2. Brother Voodoo (created by Len Wein and Gene Colan)
While Daniel, a voodoo priest and Jericho Drumm's brother, was on his deathbed, he asked Jericho to promise to learn the art of voodoo. Jericho accepted and began learning the age-old practice from Papa Jambo, an aging voodoo priest. After learning as much as possible, Jericho watched as Papa Jambo died, but not before the old man merged Jericho and his dead brother's spirits. The addition of Daniel's spirit enhanced Jericho's already impressive control over the voodoo arts beyond compehension. Soon, taking the name of Brother Voodoo, Jericho became the hero of his people in Haiti.
Sounds a little corny, doesn't it? Yeah, but so does getting bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining the proportional speed and agility of a spider. Anyway, Brother Voodoo, was one of those characters spawned from Marvel's horror comics trend in the 1970's, but he didn't have his own title.
Now, while I'm not sure that BV could support an ongoing, monthly title, I am sure that someone could come along and give this guy a damn good miniseries, possibly under the Marvel Knights banner. But no, he's just another one of those characters that no one cares about.

#1. Terror (Shreck) (from Terror, Inc, created by DG Chichester, Margaret Clark and Klaus Jansen)
Terror has an interesting, but confusing history. The character started out as Shreck in the Epic Comics universe during the Shadowline Saga. Yeah, that means nothing to you, right? I figured as much, so I won't go into too much detail on that, but I will say there came a point when Marvel, the owner of the Epic Comics imprint, decided it would be a good idea to reinvent Shreck for the Marvel Universe.
So what did they do? They changed his name to Terror (not "catfishman" as a friend recently suggested would have been a better name).
That's it? Yup.
According to DG Chichester, the only difference between the two is that Terror "got to develop more of a back story as time
went on." (Referenced from The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe's profile on Terror/Shreck).
So what is it about Terror that puts him at the #1 spot? The FACT (ahem... according to me) that this is the one character that Marvel could do the most with! He's an absolutely original character that doesn't hold onto the old super hero cliché, because, guess what? He's not a super hero. Nope, you could call him something of an anti-hero.
You see, Terror is a mercenary/killer/private investigator-type with a unique… and surprisingly gritty and disgusting power; he has the ability to replace his body parts with those of others and, as a result, gain the specific abilities and memories of the previous owner. Don't understand? Okay, so let's say Terror replaces his arm with a boxer's arm? He would gain the boxer's ability to fight. Or maybe he takes a sniper's eye; he would gain the sniper's ability to shoot a gun.
The character also has a lot of emotional depth to him to. Take for instance his left hand is made of metal, right? Not exactly. You see, after the love of his life died, he took her hand, preserved and encased it in a metal glove so that he might remember (and have her memories) forever.
Terror, given the right writer and story, could shoot his way to the top of the heap in the Marvel Universe. He's the perfect candidate for a MAX title, but I suppose I'll be happy for now that he's reappearing very soon, alongside Darkhawk--see part one of this countdown--in Robert Kirkman's spectacular Marvel Team-Up.
Check out his outstanding profile (linked above) at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe. It goes into more detail about the back-story of Terror/Shreck than I'd ever be able to.

Yeah, so there you have it: my list. I'll admit, the criteria for this list consisted solely of being one of my favorite second-string (third? fourth?) characters. Now, being that I have a ton of those, it was actually pretty hard to order the list, but honestly, Terror was #1 all along.

Agree/Disagree? Drop me a line.
 

Part One: 6 - 10