Forgotten Heroes - Final Rush Job

Okay so here are my final entries for Forgotten Heroes. I was running out of time so I've thrown paint roughly in the direction of the figures and hoped for the best.

 

I went with the version of Color Kid that appears in the Legion of Substitute Heoes Special. This was released in 1985 so I guess that explains the shoulderpads and wedge haircuts. I started painting the rainbow that appears on Color Queen (on the right) and then I copyed this onto Color Kid. It wasn't until later that I realised the rainbow wasn't the usual ROYGBIV order - yet this is how it appears for Color Queen. Then I looked at all the versions of Color Kid and noticed that the artists didn't seem to stick to one order of colours, even within the same comic! But its too late now, I won't be changing them :-)

I left the eyes that blank color as that's how they appeared in the '85 comic - I don't know why the eyes are black as (I think) he wasn't made blind until a later story arc. I found the shoulderpads for Color Kid started out in the original concept as an elaborate collar, as seen here in the 1968 version. You can also see here the rainbow is out of whack again.

The hair in the '68 version seems sort of like that crew cut that some young kids seemed to get in the 60s, and is also sported by a very young Suggs from Madness here.

I regret not spending more time on these guys as they show some promise when you look a them from a distance :-) Maybe next year I'll make the guy I was first drawn to - that edgy, fatalistic Color King...

Forgotten Heroes 2017 - Update

So I did manage to get a bit done on my heroes yesterday. I had to firstly scrape off a tiny bit of flash from the figures for Aurora, Northstar and the figure which I have chosen to become Color King with a scalpel blade. Then I attacked Aurora's long hair. This was relatively easy as it appears the head is a separate piece glued on, so the hair came away from her back fairly cleanly. I had to chop into her head to get her ready for the 80s wedge haircut that Color Kid seems to sport.

I then put some greenstuff on the shoulders of Aurora and Northstar to build up those 80s style shoulderpads. Then came the 'pirate-shirt' puffy sleeves for both of them. I seem to recall pirate shirts were also a fashion trend in the 80s - New Romantics like Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran, etc. All these 80s references made me start wondering if the characters were actually designed later than the Silver age cutoff date of 1970  - or do comic book styles inspire real-life fashion trends?

Last, I 'de-buffed' Northstar a bit by cutting back his pecs and abs as I wanted a flat surface for the rainbow that I'll have to paint on his torso. Similarly Aurora had a bit of greenstuff added to her torso to flatten out her bosom.

From the pics it appears I've been a bit rough with them so far so I'll have to go back and clean them up if I can - or not bother. I guess the wedge haircuts will be the next bit of modification before going on to painting although I don't fancy putting ears back on Aurora. I am also in two minds about bothering with making Color King using the trenchcoat guy. From his expression I suspect he doesn't want to be part of the process either :-)

Forgotten Heroes - 2017

Okay, so I said I'd join in this year's Forgotten Heroes Challenge and then I was told by my doctor I had to have my left kidney removed instead (true story). So this update is a bit late in coming. In fact I think it's been quite a while since I updated this page at all. I think life got in the way.

So this year, knowing full well that I know very little about comic book heroes in general, I was starting to worry about what I could do for this year's challenge. I then saw a clickbait style page on the worst comic book heroes ever which sounded just right for me. I looked through the list and, after a bit of um-ing and ah-ing, I settled on Color Kid. I googled him and found this comicvine page all about him. Color Kid's power is to be able to change the colour of things, that's all, just the colour. This didn't win him a position within the Legion of Super-Heroes but did win him the honour of being in the Legion of Substitue Heroes!

While reading the page I initially noticed that his superpower was next to useless which I found amusing. I also found it amusing that he was rejected by the Legion of Super-Heroes who I initially mistook for the Justice League that I remembered from the telly long ago. Then I noticed that in many illustrations he appears to have a rainbow displayed on his chest. This I also found amusing as I'm guessing the character was devised long before the rainbow was adopted as a symbol by the LGBTI community. This last bit is probably wrong but I only remember the rainbow becoming a symbol when everyone updated their facebook profiles with it just this decade. In contrast, I read that Color Kid appeared during the Silver Age of Comics which was from '1956 to circa 1970'.

In the next paragraph I noticed that Color Kid spent some time as Color King. He somehow lost his sight and became all edgy and a bit Neil-Gaiman-Sandman-ish in appearance. Maybe this was during the nineties or something but it reminded me of the time I mispent reading Sandman comics (see last year's effort for Forgotten Heroes).

I eagerly read further into Color Kid's history, i.e . further down the web page. For some reason he spent some time as Color Queen. This is when I started thinking he should be some kind of LGBTI icon, if he isn't already.

This sealed the deal and so I bought a bulk lot of cheap heroclix minis from ebay with an eye to converting one or more of them. So the grand scheme is to try and convert one or more of these heroclix figures into one or more incarnations of Color Kid.

According to their bases they *were* Northern Star, Aurora, Vamp, maybe Death's Head and some other guy - I forgot to check the names before I removed the bases of the last two. Hopefully some greenstuff and paint will see them transform into this year's forgtten hero :-)