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Imperial Guard
Back in the days when inter-publisher crossovers were still considered beyond possibility, the creators who wanted to cross their book over with another publisher's book had to create new characters to stand in for those not owned by their bosses. This is how the Squadron Supreme came about, and DC's Avengers pastiche, The Assemblers.
A couple of months back, I did a column about the faux X-Men who appeared in the Legion of Super-Heroes, called The League of Super-Assassins, and this month's column relates to the Super-Assassins. Of course, my victims this month are the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.
Introduced in X-men 107 and 108, the Imperial Guard is the Legion of Super-Heroes done slightly dark. Their leader is a Superboy/Mon-El pastiche called Gladiator (for Philip Wylie's novel, which served as part of the inspiration for Superman). Gladiator is Superman, with OMAC's (the original one) fashion sense.
For my column, this month, I decided to give the Imperial Guard the "animated" treatment. I've been playing around with a style similar to the Legion animated series, and having a lot of fun with it, so I decided to try it out on the other Legion.
I modified his costume, slightly, because I don't think all aliens should adhere to Terran fashion standards with their super suits. Basically, I lost the shorts. It's okay, I kept them for some other characters.
In many cases, I streamlined Dave Cockrum's original designs, slightly, but in some cases they were too perfect to tamper with, like this one . . .
She's called "Midget" in the Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition and I really, really hate that name. "Micron" would be cooler, but it's taken, I think, and something like "Nanite" doesn't fit with her 1970s origins. How about "Micra"?
Old Dave seemed to like the idea of big oval jewelry and it shows on a couple of characters. With Titan, the jewelry got bigger and bigger, because this Colossal Boy analogue could grow ludicrously tall. To be fair, so can Colossal Boy.
Several of these characters have less obvious powers, and like the one I renamed Micra, don't even show us their powers in the original appearance. Astra, is one of these. She's apparently the teams Phantom Girl, but she never gets a chance to show her stuff, because all the muscle heads and blasters are hogging the spotlight.
And then there's Mentor, the Brainiac 5 of the group . . . he's taken out in the first few panels, by Cyclops. Bad enough he has to wear green and pink, he gets shot in the face by Scott-so-sorry-I-can't-control-my-eye-blasts-Summers.
Electron is another whose name we didn't learn until the Marvel Universe book came out. His costume evokes the Cosmic Boy of the 1960s, more than anything, though Electron is obviously not secure enough in his sexuality to wear pink. Or maybe orange is the Shi'ar pink? Who knows.
Ahh, Fang, we hardly knew ye . . . before Wolverine made fangburger out of you and stole your costume. The Fang character originated with Cockrum while he was working on the Legion, a werewolf super-villain he wanted to call Wolverine. This is why Dave didn't like Marvel's Wolverine and why he wanted to get him into Fang's costume, because he hated the blue and yellow costume Wolverine sported in those days.
Next we have the Guard's versions of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, called Tempest and Oracle, in the Guard. These two get a fair amount of screen time in #107.
Neither of these needed any adjustment, I thought.
I apologize for referring to previous columns all the time, this month, but the next subject was featured in a column back in November 2006.
I think Smasher's costume is one of the few perfect costumes in comics. Sure you can update the lines a bit, but it needs no fundamental alterations. For this "animated" style costume, I lengthened the shorts, because that's what they've done with some of the characters with that look in the Legion cartoon.
I was noticing something as I was doing these pics. Especially with Titan and the next character, Hobgoblin, I see a possible Imperial Guard influence on the Legion cartoon designs for Colossal Boy and Chameleon Boy. Cham's classic costumes were never green.
Impulse, with his full-body condom costume and devastating energy blasts from his visor is clearly the Wildfire of the group, though Starbolt seems to almost fill that bill with his flaming skull face, he seems less like Sun Boy, though I'm sure that's his analogue. Neither of these needed any improvement. I made Impulse skinny, just because I thought there should be a skinny Guardsman. They're aliens, after all, why should they need big muscles?
As a Star Boy analogue, Quasar certainly fills the bill, and is another example of the big oval accessories club.
I could have done without the Batman-family style cape on Nightside, but I am a sucker for blue-skinned brunettes. Not sure where that comes from . . .
Well, that's my take on the Imperial Guard. Wouldn't it be cool if they could cross over and make an appearance in the Legion cartoon?
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