Over in Border Mutt's Favorite long-term titles thread, I brought up the character of Ace from The Spectacular Spider-Man Annuals .in the 1980's. For those of you unfamiliar with the character, Ace was a street legend with some sort of super power that allowed him to move faster than Spider-Man. He was your standard mysterious character, but I felt he had potential.
Only one problem: he was drawn like a cross between Prince and Michael Jackson. Really hard to take someone like that seriously as a man of mystery when you're expecting him to moonwalk at any second.
This got me to thinking about other characters that might be more viable or at least more fondly rememebered if not for the way they looked or because of some annoying personality quirk. For instance, I seriously doubt Snapper Carr would be as unloved as he is were it not for the finger snapping quirk--well, that and Denny O'Neil's character assassination, but I digress.
Is there a character out there you think had the potential to be more than they were except for being held back by some arbitrary defect like the ones I outlined above?
Replies
Are you making this "Ace" character up?
Is this a joke, like "he moves too fast to be seen on panel"...
I remember once when they tried to convince me that the Hulk had a pet black boy named Jim for a sidekick...
but I'm pretty sure that Peter David revealed that either he was gay or he had AIDS...and died.
Kirk G said:
Nope.
Yes, he did. Jim Wilson was his name, and he was also related to Sam Wilson, the Falcon.
I hadn't heard that, but that may be the case.
You're right! He really does look like a Michael Jackson clone.
I'll bet they could make some real money if they'd reprint them under the banner title "This is IT!"
Kirk G said:
Randy Jackson said:
Kirk G. said:
Well, they never actually said Jim Wilson was gay, but he did have AIDS, which developed into full-blown HIV, and he died in Incredible Hulk #420 (August 1994). Here are some excerpts from Comic Book Resources: "A Year of Cool Comics -- Day 275"
A fine comic from a fine run.
And it was more like young Jim had a pet green monster. I remember him from his first go around, even though I didn't read a lot of Hulk comics from that era.
The Golden Age Atom's original costume has an interesting mask. I don't like the open chest and odd brown shorts. I like the idea of the character (a little guy is tough and fights crime). In the first Injustice Society story, in All-Star Comics #37, the Atom's chapter was drawn by Alex Toth. I read the story in B&W, in which costume issues can be less obvious. Spoiler warning. In the chapter the Gambler captures the Atom by pinning his cape to a wall with throwing knives. I assumed the Gamber was the Atom's arch-foe, and the sequence made me want to read more of the stories where they fought. In actually he was a Green Lantern villain (as was Vandal Savage). In the one Golden Age Atom story I've read he fought ordinary crooks. To my mind a series in which the scrappy, acrobatic Atom fought colourful villains, like Batman's, might've been interesting.
As I've said before, I think the Spectre's mysterious look, which he gets from his cowl-and-cape combination, is at odds with his muscle-hero-style bare body and bathing trunks. But I should add I think more voluminous robes would not have fitted with the idea of him as a very powerful hero who can bring physical force to bear. Imagine him growing to giant size in such robes, for example; the effect would not have been the same.
I might've also said something like this before, but when Illyana was introduced into New Mutants I got the impression she was going to be a formidable, leading character. (In #14 she beats S'ym, and he accepts her as his boss. In the next storyline she was one of the two New Mutants who escaped capture by the Hellfire Club and Hellions.) Instead, she was taken in a mopey, less on top of things direction, which for me didn't have the same interest.
I don't know if she could've been a contender, but here's where I think DC went wrong with Zatanna when she was added to the JLA. I accept that she would have been out of place on the team if she'd stuck with her original costume, but it had given her a distinctive identity (real magician who looks like a lady stage magician). The Conway/Dillin team lacked a sense of what her limits should be, so she didn't have a distinctive set of powers that might capture the imagination (beyond her use of backwards spells, and after her introduction, in which she was presented from using them, the stories didn't play on that element). Initially her distinctive identity in the title was that she was a younger hero than the others, but this element was dropped; in her third costume, introduced soon after artist Dick Dillin's death, she didn't look younger than the others. Whereas her second costume looked elfin, her third look represented her as a powerful sorceress, but the upshot was she was now a more generic character, especially since throughout this period she wasn't represented in the JLA's title as having a life apart from the JLA, and she wasn't written as having a colourful, distinctive personality. From #191 her powers were limited for a time to control over earth, water, air and fire, but this solution to the second problem I mentioned doesn't click with me.
I've read a number of the Golden Age Atom's stories, and for the most part he fought ordinary garden-variety thugs and villains. A better costume may have made him better remembered.
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