In honor of Columbus Day, here's the Top Five Italian-American superheroes!!
Enjoy!
HONORABLE MENTION
The Punisher
I've decided not to count him as a superhero. If I did count him, he'd be #1 easily, as Garth Ennis' run on The Punisher was amazing.
5. Argent
Toni Monetti, Argent, was a member of Dan Jurgens' Teen Titans line of a bunch of teenagers who found out they all shared alien heritages and had powers.
Her father was an Italian mobster.
When Devin Grayson did her Titans run, she insisted on taking one member of each Titans run, and Argent was her pick from Jurgens run. Jay Faerber, who followed Grayson, did some good work with Argent, but really, she was a pretty blah character.
4. Rockslide
Santo Vaccarro was a minor character in New Mutants, as a member of the "bad" other team of students at Xavier's, the Hellions. He was a fan-favorite, and when Chris Yost and Craig Kyle shook up the New X-Men, he ended up as a member of the new team.
Currently, he's on the Young X-Men, one of the few remaining members of the New X-Men still in the book.
He is sort of like Rob Liefeld's Badrock character.
3. Witchblade
It's weird - Sara Pezzini is Italian-American, and so is Jackie Estacado, the Darkness. That's kinda weird, no?
In any event, Sara was a decent character, although she had a flash of coolness when Paul Jenkins took over Witchblade for a little while.
And more recently, Ron Marz has been doing some strong work on the character, giving her an interesting romantic relationship and a new baby!
2. Strong Guy
Guido Carosella was the bodyguard to Lila Cheney. He was strictly a background character until he made Peter David's "leftover mutants" team, X-Factor, and it was there that David made the character a total fan-favorite, with his humorous approach to the superhero lifestyle (like taking the name Strong Guy, because every team has a strong guy!) and his pretty sad background (including the fact that the way his powers work, he is in constant pain).
David recently brought Guido out of limbo as a cast member of X-Factor, where he continues being a cool character.
1. Huntress
Helena Rosa Bertinelli is the post-Crisis take on Huntress, who before Crisis was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton introduced this new take on the character in a short-lived (but good) series in the late 80s. She was a short-lived member of Giffen and DeMattei's JLI, too.
She is an intriguing character - she's Catholic, but she also is willing to kill people. Her origin is that she was Bruce Wayne, only her parents were part of the mob.
After the Cavalieri series ended, Chuck Dixon rescued her from limbo, and made her part of the Batman universe.
Her interesting dynamic was used well by Greg Rucka, who did some really nice work with in her Huntress: Cry for Blood mini-series. Gail Simone also did nice work with her in Birds of Prey.
That's the top five!
Agree? Disagree? Let me know!