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#3.
Omar Little from The Wire
If you aren't familiar with Omar or, even worse, aren't familiar with The Wire, shame on you. Stop reading this, you've got some Netflix business to take care of. The Wire is widely considered the best cop show ever in the history of everything.
And on that best cop show ever was probably the best criminal character ever, Omar Little, a Baltimore stickup-man with a badass face scar and a Robin Hood complex that has been named one of USA Today's 20 reasons they still love TV. How We Almost Lost Him: If David Simon, the creator of the show, had executed his original vision, Omar would've been killed off after just seven episodes of the first season. This puts his total number of appearances somewhere between jack and shit. The problem was that Omar, while based on actual stickup men, was very much an exaggerated character, basically an urban cowboy going around robbing drug dealers and stopping just short of riding into town to duel the evil rancher at high noon. For a down to earth police drama, Omar was just too scrotum-uppercutingly awesome.
Who Saved Him? Michael K. Williams. The actor who played Omar brought so much humor and natural charm to the role that producers basically couldn't bring themselves to kill him off. It also helped that the scar on Williams's face is fucking real. It was a gift from a Brooklyn bar patron on Williams's 25th birthday bash. If the guy had given him socks instead, Omar would've been written off like a tax deduction.
#2.
Wolverine
How We Almost Lost Him: First, Wolverine was first envisioned as an actual wolverine, only mutated and somehow a teenager.
Luckily everyone realized how ear-bitingly retarded this was and the character was soon reworked into the one we know today. But even then, Wolverine wallowed in obscurity, and as the comic progressed the creators considered dropping him off the series indefinitely. Who Saved Him? John Byrne. Byrne, who took over as the artist of X-Men in 1977, was presented with a dilemma in that the editors feared that Logan and fellow X-man Thunderbird were too similar.
One of them had to go, so Byrne chose to keep Wolverine because he, like Byrne, was Canadian and let's face it, there's not a whole bunch of Canadian superheroes out there. He dedicated himself to making Wolverine less ridiculous...
...and over time, Wolverine became a regular character in X-Men. Thunderbird, meanwhile, was killed on board an exploding plane, a death that could just as easily have been Wolverine, had the whole Canadian connection not been there. Which to our knowledge is the only example in recorded history where being Canadian actually worked to someone's advantage. #1.
Batman
He's a superhero. You can Google him.
How We Almost Lost Him: We've covered several characters who were nearly killed off early on, but Batman was nearly aborted. It was 1938, when Bob Kane approached the editors over at National Publications and presented them with his idea for a new superhero: "Bat-Man," a no-nonsense crime fighting bat-themed vigilante who didn't mind getting rough with the criminal scum. This is how he envisioned him:
By the way, you can't tell from the drawing, but the costume was to be red. Who Saved Him? No matter how you look at it, Bill Finger is the man who created Batman. Turns out that Bob Kane, the man credited with the birth of The Dark Knight (a term Finger coined in 1940), did about fuck-all with the character. Finger was hired to "even out the wrinkles" in the "Bat-Man" concept (a process we hope he referred to as "Fingerbanging"). His work is the reason Batman became the kind of dark hero who would survive when thousands of brightly-colored cornball heroes came and went. Finger gave the character a bat cowl with ears and a wing-like cape, replaced the red costume with a brooding black and gray combination and slapped a big ole bat symbol right on the chest. This was the end result:
Finger also wrote the parts of Bruce Wayne, Robin, the Riddler and the bulk of the first Batman stories. In the simplest terms, if Finger had not been hired as an assistant to Kane, there may have been a "Bat-Man" character--one we likely would not know about today--but there never would have been a Batman.
The world owes you one, Mr. Finger.
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What about Howlin' Mad Murdock? Execs severely disliked the character in the pilot, deeming him "too over the top" Test audiences, however, showed just how far the execs had their heads up their own arses and the character was saved and went on to inspire entire generations to be completely and utterly bats**t.
Thanks chalkshark, this is how we learn.
John Byrne did, indeed, save Wolverine from obscurity but the details are a little different. Editors didn't kill Thunderbird, the writer, Chris Claremont, did, & he did so almost immediately after the character had been introduced. This happened about two years before John Byrne would become the series regular artist. Thunderbird got axed on account of Claremont feeling he was too stereotypical of a character, & also that his abilities were mirrored by Wolverine. Of course, as writer, Claremont could have addressed these issues & either retooled Thunderbird a bit, or Wolverine, or both, or just figured out ways to stress their differences. Granted, a quick death was easier to write. Despite the scene stealing Thunderbird's absence, Wolverine continued to languish in the X-Men, basically just overlaying all the a*****e qualities of Thunderbird over the barebones of his own cipher of a character. Apparently, Claremont was content to let the artist dictate who the stand out member of the team would be, so, while Dave Cockrum was drawing the book, Nightcrawler got to do all the really cool things. When John Byrne replaced Cockrum, he switched the focus to Wolverine, out of a sense of National pride, & slowly but surely moved Wolverine from the back of the pack, to the middle, to the lead. Oddly enough, Claremont would recreate Thunderbird, years later, this time in the form his brother, again write only one story featuring the character & then, basically abandon him. At least he left him alive, this time, so that, on the off chance that one of the... oh... dozen or so other writers working for Marvel had an idea... or 10... for Thunderbird, they could still do something with him.
I'm calling B.S. on the Wolverine post. He never "wallowed in obscurity." I am ninety percent sure that he was popular from the start and even if he wasn't, he joined the X-Men within a year of his appearance in Hulk. The "highly evolved wolverine" was just a proposed origin. (albeit a stupid one) And Thunderbird sucked. No one anyone would give him the axe over Wolverine.
Rambo doesn't kill in the first movie...which is kinda hilarious because he killed EEEEVERYone in the book. So his death might've been a little bit of an overreaction.
I think the Gym teacher at my old high school was named Bill Finger....
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I wonder why they never killed off Aquaman?
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The Omar story is a myth perpetuated by a misunderstanding between Michael K. Williams and the producers. They told him he'd be in seven episodes in Season 1. He misunderstood them to mean that he'd be killed off. David Simon discredited it in an interview with Alan Sepinwall; look it up. Also, Whitney was one of the toughest names we had back in the 1940's.
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That's not the only time being Canadian worked to someone's advantage. It's pretty well known that in many countries Canadians are treated with respect and dignity where-as Americans are lucky to get out alive. My advice if you're an American and you go over seas, get some Tim Horton's stickers for your stuff and carry a Tim Horton's coffee mug. You'll have a much happier trip. :)
Is that Brock Samson as the Bat-Man?
I don't want to unsee it!
I probably would've swapped out Jack for Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer... then again, he might only be an icon to Whedon fanatics like me.
Bill Finger was one of the most talented and influential writers in DC's history. He not only co-created Batman, he also co-created Green Lantern, and a couple others. Unfortunately The Kane Estate has a deathgrip on the overall credit for creating Batman. He died broke and without respect. Only now does he get the respect he deserves.
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Dude, Finger had a lot to do with Batman, but to imply that Bob Kane was basically a f**k-nut lackey is a bit of a stretch. If those two men didn't work TOGETHER Batman would never have become what he is today
Dude, Finger had a lot to do with Batman, but to imply that Bob Kane was basically a f**k-nut lackey is a bit of a stretch. If those two men didn't work TOGETHER Batman would never have become what he is today
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