Again, the concept for this bit is that there are certain topics that I've considered for Top Fives that when I go to narrow it down, it strikes me that there are just way too many good ones for me to truly narrow it down to five, so rather than miss out on highlighting these bits, I figure I will instead throw it open to you good folks to name as many examples that fit this theme as you can think of!

Going even FURTHER, I've decided to make this a DUAL Theme Time (rather than making two separate entries)!

The list topic is in honor of my pal, Matt Bib, who celebrates his birthday today. Matt is the biggest Monica Rambeau fan that I know, and thinking about Monica (who I like as a character a lot), I was thinking about how, especially nowadays, there are certain obscure characters that you almost DON'T want to see show up in a comic, or you at least don't feel SAFE seeing them show up in a comic, because they make perfectly good cannon fodder for writers (again, especially nowadays).

However, all these characters (I say "all" like it's easy - it is definitely NOT easy) need is for someone to come around and do something with the character to make other writers not want to lose him/her. For awhile there, I definitely began to worry that Monica was in the first category, but then Warren Ellis "saved" her by using her in Nextwave, and now she's likely completely safe from being killed. A good example of this is when Tabitha from Nextwave was "killed" in an issue of X-Force. Normally, I would totally buy an obscure character currently in limbo being killed off, but since Tabby was a member of Nextwave I knew there was no way that she was actually going to be killed off - and sure enough, through the miracles of time travel, she was saved at the end of the arc.

So your challenge this time around is to come up with two lists...

1. Characters you like that aren't currently appearing in any comic that you would not feel safe about if they suddenly DID show up in a comic (for me, Banshee was like this for a few years, and with good reason, as ultimately they DID kill him off)

and

2. Characters that you like that you were once worried about like above, but now you feel safe about (Jack Flag is another good example of this - before Ellis revamped him in Thunderbolts, I never would have expected him to live past his next appearance - heck, I half expected him to be killed off off-panel, like Maxi-Man from the Conglomerate)