Category: ultracomics

Mohawk Storm

marvel1980s:

1983 – Mohawk Storm
From Paul Smith’s blog:

Towards the end of my X-Run, Weezie (editor Louise Jones), and hubby, Walt Simonson, go on vacation. They leave daughter Julie behind (there’s a movie in there somewhere). Upon departure, Walt sported the hirsute look we’ve all come to know and love. Upon his return, not so much. Somewhere in-between he’d undergone a tonsorial transformation of titanic proportion. He was now pink faced! Beard and mustache… gone.

Daughter Julie is not amused. She runs from the room. That’s not Daddy, that’s one of the pod-people!

Chris thinks this is story gold. He puts Storm through her paces. She loses her powers. She loses her nerve. She gets blowed up. Her powers attack her. But that ain’t the worst of it. She loses huge chunks of her beautiful hair! Storm needs a stylist.

I do a number of different styles and AS A JOKE, I include a Mr T mohawk for laughs and giggles. Chris and Weezie fail to laugh and latch on to it immediately (d’oh!) I argue as best I can but, my run is essentially over. My vote doesn’t count. Weezie says (and this is pretty much a quote) “We’re going to get hung no matter what we do. We may as well commit the murder.”

Stuck with the mohawk, I do my best to make it work. Once the style is set, I determine she needs leathers to pull it off. Punk Storm is born.

Never forget

seanhowe:

Never forget. (Panel from X-Men #193. Art by John Romita, Jr. and Dan Green.)

In X-MEN #192, Professor X was the victim of a hate crime, attacked and left for dead by a group of anti-mutant college students. When he woke up in the care of the subway-dwelling Morlocks, he found that he’d been outfitted in studded leather straps, with spikes and piercings. According to Jim Shooter, writer Chris Claremont had initially wanted to dress him in “transvestite gear” for the story. “He had this thing for bondage and fetish,” said editor Annie Nocenti. “He wanted to run a story line where Xavier wanted to wear women’s clothes and I said, ‘No fucking way.’”

The Lengths

The Lengths, issue 1

Now that he has completed his ambitious, tricky, and emotional comic series The Lengths, I’m really pleased to see my pal Howard Hardiman get recognition for the achievement. Check out, for instance, this majorly fantastic review from The New Statesman (an excerpt):

The Lengths is an important work. It covers topics largely passed over even in prose literature, let alone the diversity-challenged world of comics. In giving a voice to the voiceless, Hardiman deserves praise — and behind the anthropology, The Lengths is a love story sweetly told.

The best way to check out the series for yourself, of course, is to support the artist and buy it here.

from The Lengths, issue 5