Rescue Me: Titania

Back in the 1980's, a bunch of folks under the nom-de-guerre of "Scourge" took it upon themselves to wipe out supervillainy! As long as it wasn't Doctor Doom or Magneto or the Mandarin or the Abomination or anybody else who stood a decent chance of kicking "Scourge's" collective ass. Nope, only losers and second-rate douchebags were offed by Scourge. With the cry "Justice is served!" Scourge agents would shoot hapless second-stringers with explosive bullets (usually in the back) or maybe they'd just lure a whole passle of 'em to an out-of-the-way location and blow them to smithereens, en masse. And almost to a man (and woman) these supervillainous unfortunates had atrocious costumes. In fact, it's my theory that if they'd simply dressed better, they could have ended up as big time villains... and therefore they'd have been too big to make the Scourge posse's shitlist!

Skeptical? Allow me to demonstrate! Take for example... oh, let's say... Titania! No, not the Secret Wars redhead with the spikes-a-poppin' costume and the bulletheaded beau. I'm talking the previous Titania. I'm talking about the lady who led the all-lady-wrestler supervillain team, the Grapplers. The close personal friend of Screaming Mimi/Songbird. The one who got her ass kicked by the Dazzler. The gal who was offed while she was taking a shower by a possibly female Scourge agent in a feather boa. Ouch.

Big Barda called; she wants her headband back! What's wrong with this costume? How 'bout the fact it just looks like a one-piece swimsuit with a lot of big red buttons on it? Oh, I'm sorry... they're "explosive discs." Whatever. Bottomline? It's BORING!

I think Titania's look is a remnant of the old Marvel policy of making every costume look like it was designed by Jack Kirby. Granted, she first appeared in "Marvel Two-In-One" #54. So she was probably designed by Ron Wilson. Wilson was Marvel's most prolific Kirby immitator in the early 80's, sometime after the heyday of Herb Trimpe (assuming Herb Trimpe ever enjoyed anything that could be considered a "heyday") and before the oppressive reign of Ron "Tom DeFalco Says I Have To Draw This Way Now" Frenz. That would explain the costume's thrown-together look and its oodles of meaningless ornamentation.

So here's what I'd have done:

Titania needed to ditch the disc gimmick and stick to the theme that made her (halfway) unique: lady wrasslin'! She was a strong woman, plain and simple. In fact, her strength was super-sized over the years... first through technology and then through the Power Broker's patented treatments. And with the wrestling angle, she had a reasonably solid, memorable hook. Hey, it's less generic than some bozo with a bad haircut and a zillion little pouches, flying around and shooting goopy laser beams out of his palms.

I wanted to put Titania in a suit that looked reasonably like a wrestling costume and was at once strong, intimidating, practical, and a little sexy. Admittedly, the recent (your time) kerfuffle over Michael Turner's atrocious depiction of Power Girl was in the back of my mind. Not that Titania the First was ever a sex object. At any rate, my Titania has more muscle mass than the skinny bitches who usually show up to fight the good guys. She's a strong, sturdy, healthy gal. And sure, she's in a tight costume, but there isn't a whole lot of skin exposed. Heck, even her ears are covered up, because her cowl is based on genny-ine wresting headgear. There's a chin guard and everything! Her shoulder straps are nice and wide so there's little danger of her breasts being exposed in combat. She's wearing heels, kind of, because a wrestling-themed supercostume needs some theatrical elements. But they're not really high heels and they sure ain't stilettos. You can't see it from this angle, but Titania is actually wearing those chunky, solid boots where the heel is elevated. Kind of like platforms, only not. I don't know what you folks call them. In my time, they go by a Khundian name and it's not really translatable into English. It kind of sounds like a really watery fart. Anyway, I think I saw Gwen Stefani wearing them one time. The 21st Century ones, not the Khundian ones. God, I'm floundering here. I'm flopsweating like a sum'bitch! Dang! Aw, let's move on. I used purple as the costume's main color to symbolize royalty, because Shakespeare's Titania was a queen. And in case that wasn't obvious enough, I added two crown symbols: one on the cowl and one on the waist where a belt buckle would be. So the yellow crowns wouldn't get lonesome, I added yellow accents to the gloves, boots, and headgear. They harken back to the fuzzily scientific thingamabobs Roxxon Oil added to her costume to augment her strength.

*slaps forhead* It's called a wedge heel! God, don't you just hate it when you remember things too late?

I like to think this Titania would have knocked the gun out of She-Scourge's hands with a roundhouse kick, strangled her with her own boa, hoisted the homicidal nuisance over her head, and tossed 'er out a window. And then she'd have said sumpin' kick-ass but not terribly clever, like "Serve this, bitch!" (Am I overthinking this? Oh, just a tad.)

Oh, and Scipio wanted to know how I liked the planet of Femnaz, which is ruled by lipstick lesbians. As you'll recall, the Femnaz men are all living there again, after the Legion took it upon itself to ship their wimpy asses back to where they came from. So the good news is: men! The bad news is: they're a weak and cowardly lot. All intellectual and spindly. Feh! I spotted one miraculously brawny specimen in a coffee shop and after chatting him up for a bit I suggested we go back to my hotel room and "wrestle." *raises big bushy eyebrows suggestively* His reply? "Like the other males, I think combat for sport is barbarous." Then he tooted his rape whistle and I was thrown in jail! Thank God my cell had pay-per-view!

The Sting

In "Marvel Team-Up" #106 (June, 1981) we find Stingaree the Scorpion safely incarcerated behind the walls of the "Brainsen Psychiatric Center" (no, seriously). So naturally he fakes a psychosis (which looks suspiciously like rabies) until one of the idiot doctors gives him his super-suit back.

"The costume itself is as dangerous as my daughter's designer jeans." That's where you're wrong, doc. As the victim of a freak Bedazzling accident, I can tell you that designer jeans are often more dangerous than any weapon-equipped Furry costume could ever be! I mean, sure, when you're fourteen years old it's fun to attend a sleepover at Plant Lad's house and stay up late and sneak into his dad's sewing room and try out all the cool antique machines he keeps in there, but when you're a little tipsy on Boone's Space Farm maybe you shouldn't talk Plant Lad into bedazzling your super-cool jean jacket while you're wearing it because maybe his hand-eye coordination isn't what it should be and he'll fall to his knees and start drunkenly bedazzling the pockets of your dungarees and it's not like you can scream or anything because you'll wake up Plant Lad's folks and they'll find out you're both wasted out of your minds on Boone's Space Farm and so you whisper through gritted teeth for him to stop but for some reason he can't hear you and he just keeps stabbing your ass with the Bedazzler. And finally you have to turn around and do this sort-of karate chop thing to a nerve cluster in his left shoulder and then he's out like a light and you have to drag his sorry ass back to his bedroom without anybody noticing, not even his slutty sister Plant Lass and that creepy old fertilizer salesman she snuck into the house and Plant Lad is really sore with you the next day and he won't even talk to you for like a month but what the hell is he so pissed off about, I mean, you're the one with the line of pinprick-sized scars in your buttcheeks in the partial shape of a unicorn head. Er, but I digress.

Okay, so who else dearly wants to see the Scorpion try dance therapy? Show of (jazz) hands!

By the way, guess who drew this. There's an important clue in this panel. Have you figured it out? Shall I give you a hint? Okay. Handlebar mustache! Yup! It's Herb Trimpe. (The poor dope. )

Y'know, I'm no expert but maybe the Brainsen Pyschiatric Center would have more success if all the walls weren't completely bare. In fact, I think some redecorating is in order. Scorpion, would you like to start?

"Ka-wassh!" Aw, the letterer must have a harelip.

I should also point out that it's never a good idea to entrust the care of a supervillain to someone given to exclaiming "Goodness!" That's a sure sign of weakness. Always get somebody who swears. Whatever their age or strength-level. (Even the kids on "Nanny 911" could do a better job than this guy! They'd at least freak the Scorpion out with their sheer evil-ness. I mean, I'd hate to cross 'em.)

Finally... "second-rate cracker factory?" Ah, so he's at Bob Jones University.

Too Hot To Handlebar

"Its giant crotch will kill us all!!!"

Y'know what amazed me the most about the startling high-tech world of the Shogun Warriors? The sheer metric tonnage of handlebar mustaches. Granted, it was 1979 and men in general were hairier back then, but in my many travels to that era, I don't recall seeing a lot of handlebar mustaches. And it's no wonder, really. It takes the better part of a year to develop a decent handlebar mustache, and you have to use a special wax and a liliputian comb to keep it groomed. And who has that kind of time? Besides Oliver Queen, that is. But in "Shogun Warriors" #7 (August, 1979) the handlebar mustache has penetrated all levels of society!



Scientists have them, of course. This fellow has the biggest, grandest handlebar mustache in the "Shogun Warriors" comic -- it's the Alpha 'Stache, if you will. It's so brawny, I'd love to see it in a steel cage match against Egg-Fu's mustache! Even if it lost, it would put up one helluva fight.



Movie directors have handlebar mustaches! I suppose that's logical; the eccentricities of artists are often indulged, or at least tolerated. Fun fact: when Jeremy was in high school, a TV movie was filmed in his hometown. ("The Parade," starring Rosanna Arquette and Maxwell Caulfield. That one guy from Toto showed up to visit!) The director, no lie, wore a safari outfit with a pith helmet the whole time.



What th'? Even the parking valets have handlebar mustaches! Are you freaking kidding me? I'm sorry; I'm just not buying that one.

So what's going on here? I have a theory. The penciller is Herb Trimpe, a middling-to-downright-crappy artist who managed to eke out a career at Marvel by doing a Jack Kirby imitation (just like his co-worker, Ron "Marvel Two-In-One" Wilson). Therefore he uses a lot of Kirby motifs, including Dum-Dum Dugan's facial hair, even when it's completely outdated and nonsensical. But he got a lot of work doing it, up 'til the early 80's.

Epilogue: unless I dreamed this, I could have sworn I saw a Marvel comic in the late 90's that was pencilled by Herb Trimpe -- but this time he was doing an imitation of Rob Liefeld.

It was the most depressing thing I'd ever seen.