Hawk Two… Ah!

 

No other DC character has been screwed up more post-Crisis than Hawkman. I have never been interested in the character until I gave the 2002 series (by Geoff Johns and Rags Morales) a shot. Johns successfully cleaned up the mess, in my opinion.

On another note, I find the Zuggernaut to be quite funny. It’s clearly a blatant rip-off of a Xenomorph in appearance, plus the name is just Juggernaut with a Z, which makes no sense.

KatDog

 Pilipino Funny Komiks (or just simply Funny Komiks) was the staple for Filipino kids growing up in the late 1970s up until the 1990s or even until the early 2000s.

Superkat and Superdog were two of their most famous characters, although the Superkat serial ended before the Superdog one began, so they never really got the chance to crossover with one another. I remember Superkat would often fight various evil giant robots, since it came out at the time when Japanese Super Robot anime was very popular in the Philippines.

With Sword and Lance

 

It’s amusing in comics how wearing a blonde wig alters your appearance so much that people can’t tell it’s you when you remove it, like in the case of Black Canary who’s a natural brunette.

But I guess it’s the same conceit that lets Superman hide behind a pair of glasses, or Oliver Queen with his distinctive facial hair hide behind a tiny domino mask.

G Spotting

 

These two licensed properties overlapped at Marvel for a few months, but it was a missed opportunity not to have them cross over with each other. Maybe if Marvel had held onto the Godzilla license for a while longer, we would have gotten it. Or maybe not, if Toho or Mattel had any objections.

Men in Black

 I think most people like the yellow and black outfit for the Black Hood, but for me personally I like this design better. And I just realized while drawing this that his mask must have taken inspiration from Diabolik. On the other hand, I prefer the Fox with his yellow emblem on his chest. The all-black outfit that Red Circle used in the 1980s looked too plain.

Action Figures

 

This one’s an homage to the cover of DC’s Captain Action no. 3, but with Lady Action instead of Action Boy. Lady Action was introduced in the revived series from Moonstone Books, and I’ve drawn quite a nunber of her adventures for them. I don’t think she’s turned up anywhere else. Here’s hoping that the Captain Action family returns someday.

Elders of the Lost Ark

It would have been nice to see Ke Huy Quan reprise his role in the the last Indiana Jones film, given his resurgence in popularity around the same time as that film’s release. But, yeah, I don’t think the Indy producers were prescient enough to know that he’d be relevant again with the surprise hit Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

 

What is it with Batman and his attraction to women with criminal backgrounds? Catwoman, Talia, Nocturna… were there any more? It’s a wonder he didn’t fall for Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn, but maybe he draws the line at women who’ve been admitted to Arkham Asylum.

Headmen

It’s kinda interesting that Marvel nicknamed quite a few of their characters with the word “head”… like Hornhead for Daredevil, Winghead for Captain America, Buckethead for Nova, Canucklehead for Wolverine, and the two examples above.

Yeah, I think we can blame Stan Lee for that, since he was the scripter for most of the time those terms were used for the first time in Marvel’s comics.

Eye Bros

 

OMAC was my favorite among the Kirby Kreations at DC Comics when Jack Kirby decided to jump ship from Marvel. Too bad it only lasted a short while, and had an abrupt cliffhanger ending. I didn’t read the Jim Starlin stories that served as backup on Warlord, but I did read and liked the John Byrne miniseries that came years later.

The New 52 version was meh.