MISTER MIRACLE

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. While Valentine's Day maybe behind us for another year, love is still in the air and to celebrate the seasons, we're counting down the best couples in all of comics.

When Jack Kirby came to DC Comics, darkness followed after him. He arrived ready to build his own mythology, the interlocking Fourth World, a saga of gods locked in an eternal interplanetary war, with Earth caught in the middle. And Kirby wasted no time introducing the villain of that saga, a gray-skinned god of evil named Darkseid. What Kirby didn't see coming was that he'd created such a great villain that he would grow larger than Kirby's saga and become perhaps the most important villain of the DC Universe.

Valentine's Day weekend is upon us, and love, bad chocolate, and expensive restaurant reservations are everywhere you look. To mark the occasion, we've compiled a list of the 30 greatest couples in comics. These are the romantic pairings whose stories inspire us to believe in the power of love, and whose devotion to each other may provide a model for how to woo your own beloved when they're cloned, or possessed by evil forces, or you forget their birthday or whatever.

Q: What are the best Die Hard tributes or knockoffs in comics? -- @chudleycannons A: Considering how common it is for action movies to try to re-create the feeling of Die Hard, you'd probably be surprised at how little that actually happens in comics. I mean, it makes sense that it would be that way --- despite starting out life as a novel with the amazing title of Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard is pretty inextricably tied to being an action movie, and it's difficult to recreate what makes it work so well in another medium. The closest thing we'd have to that in comics is the massive number of characters that were created as homages or knockoffs of Superman. But if you're looking for a story that operates on those same principles --- a single hero trapped in a confined space, dealing with limited resources and overwhelming odds --- then there are definitely a few stories that fit the bill.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week we’re returning to Jack Kirby‘s Fourth World, for a movie based on one of the King's most successful DC Comics creations, Mister Miracle.

If you've been keeping up with DC's Justice League, then you probably already know that we're barreling towards the book's next big event, "Darkseid War." Set to launch in the next issue, the storyline features characters from Jack Kirby's Fourth World Saga taking on the Anti-Monitor, and while one also assumes that the actual Justice League will also be in somewhere, we now know at least one of the characters who's going to be involved: Mister Miracle, sporting a brand new costume design from artist Jason Fabok.

Costume design is one of the great strengths of the superhero genre, a way to establish distinctive visual shorthand for a character and reveal key details about concept, purpose, and personality. But which is the best superhero costume of all time? This month, we're asking you to decide, by voting up your favorites and voting down the rest. When we have your votes, we'll compile a list of the greatest super-costumes of all time. This week we're looking at some quintessential costume designs decade-by-decade. Today it's five costumes from the 1970s. While Jack Kirby was creating his own unique and peculiar gods for distant worlds, other artists created street-level heroes inspired by contemporary culture. But were any of these costumes designed in ways that still look great today?

Last week we polled you on some of comics' most celebrated couples. Rather than pitting them head to head, we offered a straight vote between 'True Love' and 'Bad Romance,' and as a result, we have a list of twenty couples rated for greatness, with Harley Quinn and Joker down at the bottom, and the perhaps surprising choice of Wally West and Linda Park at #1. But a lot of famous couples are missing from the list, and even though Valentine's Day is behind us, we've not yet had our fill of love. So here's your opportunity to nominate the other couples that need to be voted on to come up with the definitive list of comics' greatest romantic couples. Wally and Linda are the current king and queen, but can another couple claim their crowns?

Q: Mister Miracle and Big Barda: great superhero romance or greatest superhero romance? --@ReverendMagnett A: You know, Reverend, ComicsAlliance is having a poll right this very minute to determine what our readers think is the greatest superhero romance, but as we all know, polls deal in opinion, while Ask Chris deals entirely in facts. Sure, they might appear to just be opinions with a lot of exclamation points thrown in, but trust me, it'll save us all a lot of time if we just agree that they're facts and move on.

Unleash your OTPs! As lovers everywhere get ready for a Valentine's Day weekend full of romance and passion, and as everyone else updates their Netflix lists and wonders if they're finally desperate enough to check out Hemlock Grove, it's time to ask you, the big-hearted ComicsAlliance readers, to rate some of the greatest romances in comics history to determine which of these legendary pairings is comics' greatest love story! Over the next three days we'll present you with a selection of the most celebrated couples in comics. All you have to do is say if their love is built to last or doomed to fail. If you think a couple should be together forever, through all the reboots and break-ups that a cruel god can throw at them, vote 'True Love'. If you think that the couple aren't really right together and maybe ought to reconsider everything their relationship is built on, vote 'Bad Romance'. The couple with the highest 'True Love' score will be have bragging rights as the best couple, and isn't that what Valentine's Day is really all about?