Today I am deviating from my normal Golden Age period to feature a rather unique superhero from the early 1980s. The Fighting Armenian was featured in Warren Comics Eerie magazine. Anyone familiar with Warren will know that they came along in the 1970s publishing black and white comic "magazines." Since they were larger format magazines as opposed to comics per se (although printed on the same kind of paper) they did not fall under the Comics Code of the period. The Comics Code was something most of the regular comic book companies signed up for to prevent external censorship in the 1950s when certain people had determined that comics were the reason the youth of American was rebellious. Rock and Roll music, video games, the internet and many other mediums have been blamed for why the youth of America is rebellious. Maybe they just are rebellious and don't need these external influences. Anyway, the Fighting Armenian (real name Sergei Baginski) was mostly played for laughs. He was from behind the Iron Curtain but defected to the West and was fighting for truth, justice and all that stuff. Most of his appearances (like most of Warren's comics) were in black and white, but every now and then they would have a color insert and the graphic presented here is from that Sept. 1982 issue. He also had some black and white adventures. The character is schizophrenic and not too bright, but he means really well. In the text they have various nicknames for him, like the Arbitrary Armenian and the Bumbling Bolshevik. The action figure was made from various GI Joe and Street Fighter parts and painted accordingly. I also had to use putty for his boots. I didn't want everyone to think that I only did Golden Age figures - and besides, I really wanted to take a jab at the comics code.
No comments:
Post a Comment