Wonder Wednesday 08-18-10 It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (Not Really)

First off, the trailer for the upcoming Avengers cartoon. I love the cheesy emo theme song! I can just imagine a moody Captain America moaning, "Leave me alone. Everyone I knew in the 40s is dead. You just don't understand!" And then he mopes off to the bathroom to cut himself.

The song actually reminds me of those cheesy hair metal cartoon theme songs I posted about recently. Oh guess what, Emo kids...your the headbangers of this generation. Deal with that!

So in working on last week's blog about goofy super suits, I noticed an ugly trend of creators giving super heroes togs in the Merry color scheme of red and green. Um, those two colors look dreadful together. Not like red and YELLOW, my favorite color combo for super hero costumes, modeled here by the original Kid Flash, in one of my favorite all-time costumes.
So let's start at the beginning with the previously discussed Robin, the Boy Wonder.
Robin also throws a little yellow in the mix, which helps draw gunfire from his darkly clad mentor. His nickname should be the Boy Target or the Boy Decoy! (Hey, that rhymes!)
Also mentioned last time was the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott who took the extra step and threw PURPLE into the mix just to make it even more mind-boggling.
From the 1940s-60s, Green Arrow rocked this look. Not only is the color scheme lame, but the costume overall is just BOR-ING! It's basically a long tee shirt, no chest logo, no cape, tights, boots and gloves. Oh and that feathered cap. Then again, I don't get the impression that much thought went into Green Arrow at the time to begin with. In his secret identity, he was millionaire playboy Oliver Queen, who cruised around with a kid sidekick, Speedy, in the Arrow Mobile, took to the sky in the Arrow Plane (okay, that IS kinda cute) and was based out of the Arrow Cave. Also his utility be... I mean quiver contained all kinds of gadget arrows that just happened to be exactly what he needed to escape any narrow situations the pair found themselves in. As Batman once said, "Did you EVER have an original idea?" (It's true!)
Esteemed artist Neal Adams retooled him in the late 70s, giving him one of the all-time most bad-ass super costumes ever! He's been redesigned a few times since then, but they always go back to a variation of this look. For some strange reason, though, on the current Batman: The Brave & The Bold tv series, they chose to depict him in his lame old suit. Strange.
Green Arrow's suit was mostly green with a dash of red. Starman's is the opposite. Mostly red with green accents. As if it weren't garish enough, they topped him off with a head fin.
Green Arrow's long-time lady love is the Black Canary, whose mother was the original Golden Age Black Canary, who often teamed up with Starman and in recent comics, it has been all but spelled out that Starman was her actual father, not her mother's husband Larry Lance. Scandalous! Who knew a guy with a fin on his head could drive a woman to adultery!
Ugh. This is absolutely one of my least favorite costumes ever. His name is Mr. Terrific. No really! Geez, where do I even start? "Fair Play" emblazoned on his belly? A big ass girdle? Those shoes and rolled up socks? It all sucks.
You'd think there'd be no way this character would work in the present, but DC actually has a modern day Mr. Terrific. He's actually a great character (and one of the most prominent AA heroes around), but still... Mr. Terrific? Fair Play? At least his costume bears NO resemblance to the original's!
One of Mr. Terrific's teammates is Cyclone, the granddaughter of the original Red Tornado:
Okay, first of all, this character is SUPPOSED to look silly. The original Red Tornado was secretly a hefty, middle age gal named Ma Hunkle:
Ma Hunkle was like the Rosie the Riveter of super heroes. With no powers and her silly homemade costume, she went out and cleaned up her neighborhood with her fists and wits. So, surprise! I'm not going to make fun of her! In a completely non-mocking way, though, yes her "helmet" is a cooking pot.
In the 60s, DC introduced a new Red Tornado, an android with no affiliation with the mostly forgotten original from the 40s. The new Red Tornado's red and PURPLE costume is far uglier than anyone else's that I've mentioned.
Which brings us back around to Cyclone. Descended from the original, non-super Red Tornado, but coincidentally possessing the powers of the robot RT, she rocks a silly mall-bought costume with candy cane leggings and SHOES (no boots, see Mr. Terrific above). Her costume is some kind of billowy sack dress, which I mean if your power is whipping up wind storms... maybe not the best of ideas unless you're an exhibitionist and that's not how she's depicted. But here's the kicker, her name is Cyclone and she loves the musical Wicked, so she sports a pointed witch's hat AND in the Amazon, she adopted a (non-super) monkey which she dresses up like a winged monkey. Seriously?!
Like Robin and others, Mr. Miracle throws some yellow into the mix for that extra dash of crazy. One of my all-time LEAST favorite costumes. I have nothing to say except SO! EFFING!! UGLY!!!
But wait, it's everyone's least favorite super hero ever, Vibe, the ridiculously racist caricature Mexican American break dancing, street punk from the poorly conceived Justice League Detroit. Nice neckerchief.

Just to mix things up, there are a few characters who have managed to sport red and green together (usually with additional colors thrown in to offset them) successfully.
I actually love Dr. Mid-Night's costume! The black and brown even out the otherwise bold colors.
Then there's Hawkman and Hawkgirl. I'm not sure WHY but their costumes just seem to work.
Maybe it's the gray wings? Not sure, but I totally dig their appearances.

So far, I've only focused on DC heroes, but Marvel's had a few doozies too. First of all, there's The Vision, who like Dr. Mid-Nite and the Hawks, actually pulls it off well.
Not so much Wonder Man:
No relation to Wonder Woman. She's DC, he's Marvel. And 100% stupid looking. And it DID NOT HELP when he was redesigned in the 70s:
"Like my safari jacket? Leisure suits are gonna be in style forever, right?" But the worst was yet to come. After leisure suits went out of style, he continued to rock one for SEVERAL years until the late 80s, when he went back to his roots in this horror:
"Who wants a Christmas flavored punch in the mouth?" Hey look, the stripes form a W and M. Yayyy.
Which brings us to the 3-D Man and his sartorial legacy. In the 1970s, there was this wave of 1950s nostalgia, with Grease, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and so forth. So Marvel did a book set during that time period, inspired by the 3-D movie fad of that era, 3-D Man gained super powers when he put on a pair of special 3-D glasses. Wow, terrible origin.
Aren't 3-D glasses red and BLUE?! I mean, yeah it's a teal blue, but I still think it's blue not green. Believe it or not, despite being a minor, short-lived character, Marvel actually introduced a modern 3-D Man, who originally went by the slightly better name Triathlon. He went through a costume change shortly after his induction into The Avengers. Even more recently, though, he changed his name to 3-D Man and adopted the costume of the original 50s (by way of the 70s) character.
Yeah, sorry buddy. That would be my reaction as well.

So let that be a lesson. red and green=great on wrapping paper. Not so much crime fighting.

My-Tee Obscuri-Tee

This site has the freakin' awesomest geek-wear you can possibly imagine: My Tee Spot. I just popped by to see if anything new and cool had come out and OH MY has it ever! On the one hand, SWEEEEET! On the other, Ooops! Maybe this was a mistake.

Now, of course there are MILLIONS of different Superman and Batman tees. There are also probably nearly as many The Flash and Green Lantern tees. There are even a sizable number of Aquaman tees. I know. I own them. And for the ladies and scrawny bird-chested males like myself, there are almost as many Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl tees... which sucks for me, because that just doubled the number I NEED to own.

But as a TRUE dork, I pride myself on owning not just tees based on the household names, but more obscure characters. I have a Bizarro tee and Hawkman and even The Wonder Twins! So I popped over to My Tee Spot and saw what I thought was a tee featuring the logo of The Atom:
However, upon closer inspection, The Atom actually appears above the "T" in the logo, just really tiny, which is appropriate since his power is to shrink down to micro-size.
The Atom?! Wow, that's right up there with Hawkman! Maybe I should get that! Little did I know that The Atom was (no pun intended) just a delicious amuse bouche to whet my appetite for the delightful geekstravaganza to come! (Did NOT buy... maybe on a slower new tee day, but it didn't measure up to the other riches I found.)

Next I saw a shirt featuring Firestorm!

No way! Now, both The Atom and Firestorm are somewhat obscure, BUT they've both starred in their own comic series and they were both on the Super Friends. (Especially Firestorm who was a focal character the last two seasons.) (Did NOT buy... I look awful in black!)

But...The Red Tornado?! Aw HELL!!! I GOTSTA get me one of those! Plus, it's red so I can wear it to work! Red Tornado never had his own comic and was never on the Super Friends! (He DID have his own Super Powers action figure though, which I assume is why he gets his own tee.)(BOUGHT!)
But these could not prepare me for what came next. Aqualad, Aquaman's sidekick! That takes the cake! Now Robin is the king of sidekicks and often gets his own tees and appears on quite a few others alongside the other big names. I am also the proud owner of THREE shirts featuring Wonder Girl, buried in crowded group shots, but nonetheless, there she is and YES her presence is the ONLY reason I got them! But the rest of the Teen Titans have never had a high enough profile to warrant this type of exposure!

That one went right in the Shopping Cart. I wasn't waiting and running the risk of it selling out! (Okay, that's not going to happen any time soon... however, I will point out that Robin tees always sell out of the smaller sizes first, so maybe other scrawny geeks like myself also relate to the eternal teen sidekicks moreso than to the strapping lead heroes.)

Also, may I point out that at one point in the 60s, Aqualad was BUMPED from the Teen Titans (because they could never find a use for him in stories... sigh, such is the curse of the Aquas) and replaced by Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy? HA! Take that, Boy Bowman! Where's your tee?! (Obviously, BOUGHT!)

So that's all well and good, but this next one BLEW MY FUCKING MIND!!! This surpasses the El Dorado Valentine's card!
Samurai! WHO?! Like El Dorado (and Black Vulcan and Apache Chief), he was an ethnic super hero added to diversify the all-white Justice League on Super Friends. That's right, he's not even a REAL comic book character! Power-wise, he was sort of a replacement for Red Tornado, able to summon tornado winds. He could also turn invisible, burst into flame, and wield a lightsabre-esque lightning katana. (Yep, the writers were making it up as they went along.)
He DID receive his own action figure in the Super Powers line, because it was cheaper to reuse the Red Tornado figure's tornado twisting waist mechanism than create a new mechanism for a different character with a different power. (Also, I'm not sure how you'd get a small plastic toy to mimic El Dorado's ability to pull whatever super power he needed out of his ass.)

ASIDE: I never relate to the Asian super hero, because they are usually actually FROM someplace in Asia. Like Samurai had that accent and was dressed like a pagoda. He had to say magic words in Japanese to activate his powers. Instead, I could definitely relate to the Wonder Twins, even though they were technically from an alien planet, Exor, because they had dark skin like me, but spoke normal "American." Even so, I can never dress like a super hero for Halloween, not just because I'm built like a skeleton, but because #1. there are like 2 Asian super heroes and #2. I can't be one half of the Wonder Twins without the other. Such is my dilemma. (BOUGHT!)

But it wasn't just a super HERO extravaganza. Ho no! There are probably nearly as many Joker tees as there are Batmanand also even a FEW Catwoman tees, but I don't think I've ever seen a Two Face tee!
There probably have been tees featuring him based on his movie depictions by Tommy Lee Jones and Aaron Eckhart, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen a comic book Two Face tee. There was also probably a tee or two made based on The Governator's performance as Mr. Freeze in the shiteous Batman & Robin, but I don't think I've ever seen a comic book Mr. Freeze on a tee... until now!
Once again, this ties into the Super Powers toy line, as this is how he looked in that collection. He hasn't worn this overly detailed suit since that time period, but I'm sure he's happy to wear anything, so long as he gets his own tee shirt! (Did NOT buy. I respect that they were made, but neither is a particular fave of mine.)
Sinestro HAS had his own shirts, because as of right now, Green Lantern is the hottest hero in DC Comics' stable and Sinestro is his arch enemy. Even so, I'm digging this "vintage look" Sinestro. Plus, I DO look great in yellow. (However, did NOT buy. Maybe later. I'll put it in the Wish List.)
I already have a Bizarro tee, featuring his image from the Super Friends, but this is a comic book image of Superman's evil duplicate. It irks me, though, because his S logo should be sdrowkcab. Needless to say, me no am going to get this. (That's how he talks.) Actually, since he usually says the opposite of what he means, I suppose that should be, "Me am getting shirt with frontwards logo." (Did NOT Buy.)
Are you KIDDING me?! Mr. Mxyzptlk?! Never... NEVER! NEVER in my wildest dreams did I imagine anyone would EVER produce a tee featuring this 5th Dimensional Imp, who uses his magical powers to constantly punk Superman until the Man of Steel tricks him into saying his name backwards! Hell, can anyone say his name FORWARDS?! (It's Mix-yez-pit-ill-ick.) (BOUGHT... even though I know every time I wear it, I'm going to get asked, "Mr. WHO?" a million times.)

And there was no way I was able to resist the feline feminine appeal of:

Wonder Woman's arch nemesis, The Cheetah!Sigh. Okay, so Cheetah will always be the other feline femme fatale, but she was a member of the Legion of Doom and her depiction, smokey, purry voice and all, beats Catwoman's appearance on the Batman cartoon, with her helium voice and ugly green jumpsuit. What's so catlike about that? I've never seen a green cat before... well, except Battle Cat. But that's neither here nor there. Hello Junior XL! Reow! Hiss! (BOUGHT! I mean it's WONDER WOMAN'S archenemy!)

What was even more delightful was that not only did they offer tees based on famous heroes' foes, but one borderline obscure hero's. Meet Captain Marvel:
It says "Shazam!" because that's the magic word he says to turn into a super hero and Marvel Comics would sue the shit out of DC if they dared put out anything with the word "Marvel" anywhere on it. Leading to an entire generation thinking that this character's NAME is Shazam. Now Shazam/Captain Marvel isn't a complete unknown, as he starred in a very popular 70s live-action Saturday morning series that is quite fondly recalled today. He often muscled his way onto licensed merchandise during that time in place of Super Friends star Aquaman. (Read a blog all about it from the Aquaman Shrine here.) Bastard. But in the ensuing years, Captain Marvel has faded into the background. He's not even a member of the Justice League like Firestorm and Red Tornado. So it's mind-blowing that not only does he have his own tees, but so do his wacky villains!
Just as Captain Marvel is a poor man's Superman, Dr. Sivana is his poor man's Lex Luthor. No powers, unless "evil" counts as a power. Or "ugly." That's a pretty dynamic design for a tee for such an UN-dynamic character! (It kinda looks like he's letting loose a powerful fart, doesn't it?) But wait! There's more:
Mr. Mind is Captain Marvel's enemy, a genius hypnotic WORM! Captain Marvel is actually probably Mr. Mind's second arch enemy behind tequila manufacturers. (I should get that for St. Patrick's Day! Er, the shirt not tequila... that would be like holiday mish-mashing.) (BOUGHT Captain Marvel's... hey, it's red, I can wear it to work! Did NOT buy the two villains, but may come back for Mr. Mind.)

And finally (almost), once again spawned from the Super Powers toy line... which, by the way, didn't even have this many tie-in products back when it was out! Ahem... spawned from the Super Powers toy line come three shirts based on Jack Kirby's New Gods. First:
Super escape artist Mr. Miracle. Real name: Scott Free. LOVE a terrible pun! One of THE. UGLIEST. SUPER SUITS. EV-ER!!!
Orion, son of evil overlord Darkseid, constantly caught between the struggle of light and darkness. And I know what you're thinking, but this all happened like 10 years before Star Wars came out! Also, this was how the Orion action figure looked, which is different from the way he normally looked in comics:I effing hate Orion. You know his ONE character trait? He's angry ALL. THE. TIME. And you know what his power is? Super strength. THAT'S IT. Like there aren't 20 billion other super strong heroes out there already! Needless to say, I will NOT be adding this to my collection, even though I am impressed that it was made. Also, I hate wearing black anyway, which is why things will never work out between me and the Firestorm tee.

And finally, Darkseid himself:

Ruler of the horrific planet Apokolips and uber-foe of ALL of the DC super heroes, Darkseid sashays into the world of fashion flanked by his two most famous servants, his brutish son Kalibak and the nefarious DeSaad (as in the Marquis...) as well as one of his army of Parademons, all four rendered... you guessed it, like they appeared in the Super Powers toy line. (Did NOT buy any of the three.)

I've saved the most obscure for last. The absolute cherry on top of this sundae is:

Robotman. WHO? Answer: NOT a member of the Justice League. NOT on the Super Friends. NOT a Super Powers action figure. Then who... he was a member of an odd-ball team called the Doom Patrol in the 60s, until they were all killed in action (supposedly). He was revived in the 80s as a member of the new Doom Patrol, until all of THEM were killed (except him again). He's still clanking around. I think the original Doom Patrol is back... I'm not sure. They're kind of hard to follow. At any rate, there's a book out now called the Doom Patrol and he's in it. (Until it gets canceled which ought to be any day now because no one cared about them in the 60s and no one cares about them now. Seriously!) AND YET here he is, posin' it up on his very own baby blue cotton tee! I want to buy it just for the shear absurdity! (I probably won't though.) But as I've said before, EVERY super hero is someone's die-hard fave, so I'm sure someone, somewhere shit his pants when he saw this! I almost did... but that was a whole other issue. I had my own things going on. (Did NOT buy.)

Yup! So YEAH! Viva obscurity! Hopefully, this will lead to a whole slew of wacky tees featuring
Metamorpho the Element Man! or...Bwana Beast! (Who can combine two different animals into one hybrid creature... you can't make stuff like that up!) Or what about...
Black Lightning! Oh PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make Black Lightning next! C'mon insane tee shirt maker! Make my blaxploitation dreams come true!