50 Best DC Characters? You Tell Us!

Now that Andrew Wheeler has compiled a list of Marvel's 50 Best Characters, we here at the Curve want your input on DC's best fifty.

We should probably establish a couple of ground rules, owing to the (shall we say) flexible nature of DC's history:

1. For purposes of this survey, retcons, reboots, and multiversal duplicates count as the same character, unless the differences are pretty significant. Thus, a vote for "Lex Luthor" includes Earth-1 Purple Jumpsuit Luthor and Red-Haired Post-Crisis Luthor, but not Earth-3 Hero Luthor. Likewise, a vote for Kara Zor-El is not a vote for Peter David's Linda Danvers.

2. To keep things simple, please vote only for characters who have appeared in the mainstream DC books. This includes DC books that later became Vertigo titles (Doom Patrol, Sandman, Swamp Thing, etc.). Basically, if a character could have appeared in Crisis On Infinite Earths or Infinite Crisis, he/she/it qualifies.

3. You don't have to come up with fifty characters, but more entries means a more diverse final list. I will try to include an "others receiving votes" category.

4. Entries should be e-mailed to me at brainallgone at prodigy dot net. Please put "50 DC Characters" in the subject line. Please identify characters by codename and real name, where applicable.

5. As much as I value the wit and wisdom of the blogosphere (really!), please do not include comments with your entries. I would want to include too many of them in the follow-up post, and that would make it too long.

6. Please rank the characters in your entry from 1 to 50. The #1 character gets 50 points, the #2 gets 49, and so on.

7. Deadline for entries is Tuesday, May 23, at 11:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. [The original deadline was Friday, May 19, but I realized it might take a weekend to come up with a good list.]

8. This is only an exhibition, this is not a competition, so please -- no wagering.

Have fun!