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This month, I'm taking on a broader subject. Usually I stick with one character or team, but since we're going to be taking a month off in March, I thought this would be the perfect time. I've said, on many occassions in this column and in the real world, that super-villains have almost always been short-changed in the fashion department.
In comics, the heroes get the flashy, cool-looking outfits and the villains seem to make do with rejects from the color-blind circus. If they're not sporting garish, clashing color schemes, they're dressed in shapeless gray or green coveralls. Well, I'm here to change all that.
First up, we have a selection of super-villains from the Marvel Universe, geniuses all, who either lack fashion sense or through lack of vision, have been relegated to the criminal element. I don't think these guys have ever "teamed up", but I think they should. First there's the quintessential curmudgeonly old gadget-monger, The Tinkerer. At least he looks comfortable...Then there's Mentallo, boring outfit, dumb name, but at least his color scheme of dark red on dark red is easy on the eyes. The Mad Thinker....shapeless green cover-all and work boots, and lastly, the unfortunate victim of mishandling at birth, Egghead.
These guys are smart. They can whip up gadgets and schemes like mobody's business. So, where did they go wrong? Actually, it was more a question of timing. In the 1960s and 1970s, when these guys first debuted, the workld just wasn't ready for them, but by the 1980s a place had been made for such people and that place is the consulting firm, an evil scheme to put all other evil schemes to rest, forever! Meet THINK,INC.
No more goofy outfits, it's corporate to corporate casual for these guys, now. Comfortable enough to wear all day, stylish enough to get them into the boardrooms of the world's top corporations where they can milk them for all their worth! And the beauty of it is, they just have to come up with the ideas, someone else has to actually execute them!
Something about Egghead just screamed sweater-vest, so I had to go with it. The Tinkerer is more of the behind-the-scenes guy anyway, so he still wears his sweaters and rumpled slacks, just a better quality, now. Mentallo is the fast-talking, charismatic head of marketing, is that charisma or is he manipulating your mind with brain altering technology? And, of course, the Thinker. No long mad, or even miffed, he gets to lay out his intricate schemes and some other poor bastard has to make them work while he collects a fat consulting fee for his efforts! You can almost here the BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHs from his office.
Yes, I'm totally picking on Marvel, this time, but next time I promise to dig up a slew of DC villains with unfortunate outfits.
This next guy has been in dire need of a makeover for decades. It's almost sad that he's probably going to be featured in the Iron Man film, one can only hope that they don't try to keep him too close to his comic roots. The Mandarin originally dressed like a low-rent Ming the Merciless. He possesses ten rings giving him a wide array of super-powers, based on technology found in a crashed starship from the planet Maklu-4. Over the years, the Mandarin has forsaken the robes for various costumes, the worst of which is reproduced here, based on his Marvel Universe Book entry...
It's just awful. It's undignified and it's not comfortable! Think about it, you're working 18 hours a day to conquer the world in a metal skirt and leather straps... how the hell are you supposed to concentrate when a metal scale is digging into your left buttock during an important debriefing prior to your assault on Stark Industries? Seriously, wear something distinctive and comfortable, to hell with being weird! At different times, the Mandarin has employed lackeys to do his fighting, at other times, he's gone hand-to-hand with Iron Man, so I figure his outfit should be some kind of fighting suit, that allows freedom of movement as well as dignified covering.
My next victim is, well, a bit different from the others. It's not one person, it's an entire criminal organization. They're called Advanced Idea Mechanics, because that makes the cool acronym AIM. But, how the hell can you take them seriously when they wear a yellow bucket on their heads? Here's my interpretation of a young man, fresh out of school and entering the workplace, telling his two good friends about his new job....
The thing about AIM is, they seem to really value anonymity. I can dig it, the Avengers bust in and capture your whole crew, do you want to be wearing your lab coat and Evil Scientist name badge, or do you want to be wearing the same thing everyone else is wearing, including the janitor? "Who, me? I'm Emil, I clean the toilets, Captain America, sir. I don't know nothing about no plot to release a deadly virus at DisneyWorld..." I bet AIM keeps a set of records showing everyone in the facility is a janitor or some kind of low level workman. "Man, you just missed them, all them scientist types teleported out, two seconds before you busted in here!" I bet they get off with probation and AIM gives them new fingerprints, retina patterns and identities when they come back to work. So, there's a definite advantage to a "company uniform".
But, does it have to be so damn goofy-looking??? No, . . . no, it does not! What we need is a distinctive haz-mat suit in hard-wearing Tyvek(tm), with integral gloves and chemical resistant boots, gloves and headgear. But, all AIM employees must be equally armed and equipped, so any one of them could be a guard or other flunky, who might be adjudged to have less legal exposure than, say, the geneticist who designed the flesh-eating bacteria that devoured Butterville, Wisconsin! And no garish yellow, neutral colors work best, a cool grayish blue, I think.
And, for my last piece, I have an alternate universe villain, Master Menace, from the SQUADRON SUPREME maxi-series. He seems to be part Dr. Doom, part Lex Luthor, so I took his clunky armor and borrowed a bit from George Perez's Lex Luthor armor from the 80s. Screw the cape...
Well, as previously mentioned, we'll be taking March off, so I'll see you all here in April!
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