Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I'm only fifty-plus days late on this one:

And now you can't get that image out of your head, either...
I swear, this is the first thing I thought of when Disney purchased Marvel: sure, Disney's getting a library of more than 5,000 Marvel characters, including The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man; but there are a lot of good characters further down the list as well. Or, at least ones with untapped potential, like Morbius, the Blazing Skull, Death's Head, or Woodgod. (Maybe not Woodgod, but can't you just see him happily prancing around with the happy little Disney woodland creatures, until one of them gets killed and Woodgod has to go berserk?)

Somewhere, I saw pointed out that to turn a profit on this deal, Disney would need to see a return of what, over $800,000 per character? More than that, because they're never going to get any cash out of Bloodhawk, the Devourer, and the Raptor. And those are just the lamest ones I've blogged about, you can probably think of others. (Oddly, I keep thinking of lame characters they probably could get some money out of, like the female Dr. Octopus from the Clone Saga: somebody would buy her action figure...)

But I immediately thought of one that probably isn't going to become a Disney Princess: Oubliette from Marvel Boy:
It's not ok to think that's hot, right?
Which is actually kind of a shame: Oubliette (noun: a dungeon with only one opening.) describes herself as "the Lara Croft of evil." She quickly proves to be less evil, more used since birth by her megalomaniac father Dr. Midas. Among other crimes, Midas convinced his daughter she was hideously ugly under her mask (she wasn't) and he seemed to be wearing an old Iron Man suit for some reason.

I haven't been as enamored of Grant Morrison's recent work, but damn, I loved this one. From the trade Marvel Boy, written by Grant Morrison, pencils by J. G. Jones, inks by Sean Parsons. The scan is from issue #6, which I couldn't find for the life of me, and finally just bought a used copy of the trade. Which I wholeheartedly recommend, and I also recommend finding a copy while you can, since I doubt Disney will be keen on reprinting that one.

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