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Villains. Without them, heroes are just men in tights
spending way too much time with young boys in short
sequined briefs. Idle hands and all that. Villains
perform a vital service, as you can see. And you know
what's funny about comic book villains? They never
hate the hero because of his race or ethnic
background. Even the most vile of the bunch, the Nazis
holdovers like Red Skull, Baron Zemo or Baron
Blitzkrieg, no matter how often they rant about their
inferiors, they never hurl even the tiniest racial or
ethnic epithet. Isn't that nice of them? Now, if
you're a Cretin-American, I know you're often offended
when you're people are invoked as an insult. They do
like calling people cretins.
Anyway, villains are an important part of adventure
fiction. They have a job to fulfill, but they often
show up to work so badly dressed, it's amazing someone
doesn't send them home to change. Someday I'm going to
put together the master list of lame villain costumes,
but this isn't that day. This time around, I'm working
off a suggestion made by one of our readers and it's
one I've thought about in the past, whenever these
guys would show up.
The Wrecking Crew...OK, it's not exactly a name that
strikes fear in your heart, but if you go solely on
power level, these guys are murder. They're ruthless
and immensely strong, and they're very nearly
invulnerable, or so close it makes no difference.
It all started with one man, a worker on a demolition
crew with the highly improbably name of Dirk
Garthwaite. When he was fired from his job for
anti-social behavior (imagine that!), he decided to
turn his talents, such as they were, to crime.
Throwing together a hastily selected and somewhat
comical outfit, complete with mask, he called himself
"The Wrecker" and with his trusty pry bar, embarked on
a glamorous life of crime. (Just a note to the readers
out there who may be considering a life of crime as a
costumed supervillain, it's probably not a great idea
to adopt a nom du guerre and modus operandi that is
closely associated with your last known employment.
For instance, if you were recently employed as a
bricklayer, it would be best not to narrow the field
of suspects by calling yourself "The Terrifying
Trowel" or "The Mason" and leave the bricks and mortar
behind as your weapons of choice. Try calling yourself
"The Florist" and develop some plant based weaponry.
It's all about misdirection. Hope that helps.)
I don't know why I never read the Wrecker's origin,
before. Sure, I knew the essential details, he got
zapped with some Asgardian magic once and got strong
enough to beat on Thor. And the power is somehow
linked to hiw wrecking bar. OK, I get that. What I
hadn't realized, however, is that the Wrecker is to
villains what Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern) is to
heroes. If you're familiar with Kyle's origin, you
know he just got lucky, right place, right
alley...BAM,,, power ring. Ol' Dirk, here, he decided
to rob a guy stating in a cheap hotel room and busts
in and wails on the guy with his terrifying wrecking
bar. The guy just happened to be Loki, who had fallen
on hard times and been stripped of his power. Lucky
for Dirk, cuz Loki is a genuine badass, not a wannabe
like Dirk.
So, banished to Earth, living as a mortal, Loki gets
beat down by Dirk, who then decides to try on Loki's
horned helmet. You know how it is, you always gotta
wear your victim's hat, right? So, Dirk slips on the
ludicrous horned headgear and wouldn't you know it,
that is the exact instant Karnilla decides to return
Loki's call! Loki had caller her up to try to borrow
some power, so he could go whip Thor's ass, since Thor
had also lost some of his power at the time. (Another
one of those times Odin was jerking these guys around)
Karnilla, being a good friend and all, was happy (or
as happy as she ever gets, anyway) to lend him some
power and not being the brightest star in the heavens,
she deliverer the power to the first guy in a horned
helmet she saw. Dirk gets the dose of magic power,
instead of Loki and goes on a destructive binge that
eventually gets Thor's attention (also not the
brightest . . . etc.).Thor and the Wrecker fought for
hours and the Wrecker managed to beat Thor, in his
partially weakened state, but was himself defeated by
the Asgardian battle-bot called the Destroyer. The
Wrecker was hauled off to jail, as befits his crimes,
heavily sedated, so he couldn't simply break out any
time he wanted. After awhile, he developed a tolerance
to the drugs and when he regained consciousness, he
broke free. He fought Thor, again, and this time the
fight ended with him smashing into the third rail of a
subway track. and Thor was able to drain the magical
energy out of him with his mystical hammer. Handy, eh?
The Wrecker belongs to the green suit crowd of Marvel
villains. I don't know what was going on in Marvel
Manhattan, but in the 60s and 70s, there must have
been a lot of green and purple in stores. Where would
you even find purple boots, golves and ski-mask in the
1960s? Anyway, this is obviously a problem. His
costume has changed, over the years, but it tends to
follow a certain general format. Purple boots, gloves
and mask, green pants and jacket with purple trim on
the jacket.
For my version, I'm keeping the freaky color combo,
because it's traditional with this loser, by now. He's
a fashion victim, but he should look like one, he's
not some metrosexual GQ model! He's never going to be
on Queer Eye for the Straight Supervillain! Besides,
when you're big and strong, you can get away with
dressing badly. Who's going to give you any lip?
I gave the jacket a fuller cut across the shoulders
and styled it like a classic Open Road motorcycle
jacket, but with buttons instead of zippers. Round
buttons, because those stupid rectangle things would
poke when you bend over or swing your bar at Thor's
head. I got rid of the wierd stripes on the mask, I
never understood what that was supposed to indicate in
the design, so it's out.
For the rest of the crew, I decided to work them into
more individual costumes. Unlike their boss, they wear
skin-tight suits and there are similar design elements
in all of them. This, I think, was just laziness on
the part of the artist, since there's nothing about
these guys that screams "teamwork"!!!
So, with his powers gone, Dirk needed help getting
out of the joint, this time. He'd paid someone on the
outside to keep track of his crowbar, into which he
believed his power had been transferred. With the help
of 3 fellow prisoners, he escaped and located his
crowbar, offering to share his power with them. Never
let it be said that felons aren't gullible, because
they agreed to hold onto the bar in an electrical
storm. No, I am not making this up!!!
The Fellowship of the Iron Bar are Dirk, Dr. Eliot
Franklin, Henry Camp and Brian Calusky. A more
charming bunch of guys you could never hope to meet.
They use words like "deze" and "doze" and call women
"broads", a wholesome crowd, as you can see.
Well, of course they're struck by lightning and for
once in his life, Dirk was right about something,
though I wouldn't want to stake much on his reasoning
ability, this was a long shot, after all. The
lightning coursed through the bar and endowed all four
with superhuman strength and toughness, just like Dirk
had, before.
Dr. Franklin, possibly a Bond fan, called himself
Thunderball and somehow found a wrecking ball he could
play with.
Green and yellow. How wonderful for him. The cutaway
mask, so cliche. At the time, half the black
characters in comics had them. Boring.
Then there's Calusky, who dressed in
red-white-and-blue and called himself Piledriver,
which is a decent enough name if you can avoid the
scatalogical connotations. The white shirt with
three-quarter length sleeves just doesn't work for me.
Nothing about the costume says "tough guy".
And last, there.s Camp who took the name Bulldozer
and tried to dress like one. There were several
Bulldozer costumes to choose from, but I just went
with the basic one, for this pic. Yellow and gray
metal. Okay, it can work, it works on construction
equipment, I guess.
So, what came we do with these guys? First, I tried
to make the costumes more individual. With Piledriver,
I added the bracers, because a guy who's pounding on
stuff needs big steel bracers. The shirt isn't white,
anymore, it's more of a steel gray. Bulldozer...well,
I took the various costumes I'd seen for him and went
one step closer to Juggernaut, figuring two guys with
such similar M.O.s would tend to dress alike.
Thunderball, well, I reworked his costume, keeping
close to the original colors, but varying them, a
little. Darker shades, less saturated, less jarring to
the eye.
OK, there's my take on the Crew. Thanks to Ozy
Mandias for the suggestion.
Now, I'm going to announce a little contest. Last
month I asked for suggestions for future columns, and
Ozy came through, and I got the idea of running a
little contest.
ANNOUNCING!!!!
Joe Singleton's Great Big Fat Contest!
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