Awfulness is not a prerequisite for becoming Nobody’s Favorite. Indeed, it is quite possible for a transcendentally terrible character to achieve a level of camp-fueled affection, which is why you won’t see Jericho or Vibe or Paranex the Fighting Fetus ever featured here.

In the entertainment realm, being forgettable is a far worse fate than being terrible. People will flock to a midnight showing of Manos, the Hands of Fate, but good luck finding anyone willing to Netflix Secondhand Lions, even on a dare.  Terry Longs are few and far between. The majority of Nobody’s Favorites dwell in a Grant Morrison-esque Purgatory of the Forgotten, where the best that can be hoped for is an occasional hit on their Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe page.

So it is with Cloud…

…a one-time member of the Defenders who has long since slipped off fandom’s Doppler radar.

Cloud originally debuted as a villain in Defenders#123 (September 1983), working on behalf of Professor Power and the Secret Empire in their efforts to capture the Vision. After a few battles with Marvel’s non-team, the amnesiac Cloud followed the usual course of action for teenage villains and joined up with her former enemies.

She stayed with the team for another two years, using her cloudlike powers to slam evil while floating around starkers (save for some convenient whisps of cumulus around her naughty bits, which seems a rather chancy business in even the slightest of breezes) and developing a obsessive same-sex crush on Moondragon, the team’s resident bossy-boots telepath and possible future candidate for Nobody’s Favorites.

Cloud’s angst over her unrequited love caused the character to undergo an unexpected change in gender which causes the other Defenders to succumb to acute crotchfear…

…especially Iceman, who had previously shown interest in hitting Cloud’s vapor-shielded underage ass.

This being a team superhero comic — albeit a cruddy one — it eventually leads to a melodramatic discussion of Cloud’s transformation and the larger social-sexual issues involved…

…which turned out to be fairly enlightened in tone — providing you can get past the troubling, “empathetic” comparison between gender reassignment and being possessed and/or monstrously transformed. If it failed to generate controversy at the time, well…that would have required people to actually read The New Defenders, wouldn’t it?

(Seriously, New Defenderswas the bottom of the 7-11 spinner rack barrel for me back in the day, purchased only if I was jonesing for a superhero comic and had already read everything else available…including Detroit-era JLA stories.)

The true origin of Cloud was eventually revealed in a two-part story which ran in issues 149 and 150 of New Defenders. As it turned out, Cloud was neither a “he” nor a “she,” but rather a sentient nebula which traveled down to earth to find allies to help stop a star-eating monster, but suffered memory loss after nearly killing a couple of human teenagers (male and female, see? So there’s nothing pervy about it!) and copying their forms.

Having recovered its memory, the stellar dust bunny formerly known as Cloud press-ganged the other Defenders into fighting the big bad guy…with the help of a Cosmic Cube with a Captain America fixation and, or course, the power of caring. (Yes, hand-holding was involved.)

Its mission complete, Cloud returned to its rightful place in the heavens, leaving behind a vague message of love for a befuddled Iceman and the eventually realized threat of a future Solo Avengers appearance.

Neither awful enough to be sublime, nor inspired enough to endure,  Cloud serves as a fine example of the forgotten mediocrity school of Nobody’s Favorites.

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  3. Nobody’s Favorites: Cruddy like the wolf