This has no business being here, but I couldn't resist this panel from Amazing Spider-Man #37:
Everybody, sing along! And a'one, and a'two
Spidey didn't start the fire!
It was already burnin', Spidey was just concerned but
Spidey didn't start the fire!
No he didn't light it, and those webs on his tights
They're all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone....
Sorry. It's the only Billy Joel song I know, I promise. I saw a theater production where people did interpretive dance while a band performed Billy Joel songs. It was every bit as good as it sounds, by which I mean, "a painful way to spend a Saturday afternoon."
Let's fast-forward to Amazing #39, shall we? Here we can see a typical scene where Pete has his internal monologue running amok:
"What would he say if I told him I swung in thru the window on my web?!!"
I'm guessing he'd say, "Hey! You must be Spider-Man!"
I know it was rhetorical question and all, but the answer came to me pretty quickly.
What would the doctor say if he saw your Spidey suit sticking out of your clothes?
ME! ME! I KNOW THE ANSWER! NO ONE ELSE ANSWER THIS ONE!
He'd say, "Hey, that's a Spider-Man costume! You must be Spider-Man!"
There's no gettin' one past me today, folks! Don't even try.
You know how I showed the inverted colors of the Elongated Man's costume yesterday? Apparently there was a third variation in Detective #359!:
Yup! Purple!
He also wore this in a guest appearance with Zatanna in Justice League of America Vol. 1, #51! This was before either character was a member of the JLA.:
I've had this issue for years, and just assumed he wore it before he picked up the red costume that he wore for so many years, but apparently it was just kinda shoe-horned in there somehow. Go figure.
See you Monday!
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10 comments:
Dazzle mine eyes, or does that first "purple" costume look...well...red?
The second one does look like a dark shade of fuchsia. Magenta, even.
In both the panel and the cover, EM's costume is 100% M (Pink), 25% C (Blue), more a violet than a purple.
He kept it thru the remainder of his Detective run.
IIRC, the reason they changed it was that Plastic Man had just received his own book, and two red-garbed elastic heroes might have been confusing to the target audience (kids 8-14), especially since, unlike the Golden Age Plas, the new Plas also had red leggings instead of bare legs.
Personally, I preferred the violet/yellow to the red/yellow coloring.
Wow and I thought that Zero Hour didn't come out until 1994, but here it is coming out in 1967.
That makes sense about the Plastic Man confusion... I noticed in the ish that there was a house ad for DC's first Plastic Man revival... and I also noticed the red leggings, which looked weird to me....
There must have been hundreds of Superman comics where Clark said some version of, "If so-and-so only knew he was talking to Superman right now!" and even back in the 70s I thought, well, if Lex knew you were Superman, you'd be screwed!
"IIRC, the reason they changed it was that Plastic Man had just received his own book, and two red-garbed elastic heroes might have been confusing to the target audience (kids 8-14), especially since, unlike the Golden Age Plas, the new Plas also had red leggings instead of bare legs."
It might also be the reason they tried the yellow-with-red trim costume for EM in one issue.
But it looked really yukky.
Note how few heroes use yellow as their main color?
Both Marvel's Daredevil and Iron Man dropped it within a year of their debuts. (Shellhead, despite being called "The Golden Avenger" is really only half yellow-gold, The rest is red.)
The Whizzer and Yellowjacket (either the Marvel or 1940s Charlton versions) are the only ones that jump to mind. (And having a guy called the Whizzer in bright-yellow garb had led to innumerable juvenile jokes...)
Yellow looks TERRIBLE as a main color. Yellowjacket only looks good because of all the black that breaks it up. I'm not sure why that is. The only character who I think looks good in yellow is the Reverse-Flash.
And yes, I'd thought the same thing about reversing yellow with red costume. It didn't look good, but Ralph sure didn't look like Plastic Man!
Ditto on the preference for the second purple costume. Some added blacks make it an improvement on the original.
Is it really a surprise when it's mentioned on the cover?
One other yellow-based costume I forgot (and could kick myself for doing so)...Wolverine!
(Remember the "yellow spandex" joke from the first X-Men movie?)
Why was Logan's costume yellow and blue when the animal he's named after ain't bright primary colors?
Look at the University of Michigan Wolverines football team!
Somebody at Marvel was either a U of M alumni or a fan of the team! ;-)
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