Friday, July 8, 2011

Golden Age Villain - Image


I like comic book villains - I specify comic book villains in case anyone might think that I was shopping for a date with Casey Anthony. Nah, you wouldn't think that!! Anyway, I like the villains because many of them are so obscure that none of the toy companies are ever likely to produce any of them. I mean, we all know about Batman's Joker, Penguin and Catwoman and Superman's Luthor, Parasite and Brainiac, but who's ever heard of the Image?? Well, I have and I did him. The Image appeared in the Superman comic strip back in 1942 and (since even I'm not that old) I found him in a reprint edition, "Superman: The Sunday Classics 1939-43." The Image makes his first appearance at a movie premier where a beautiful, arrogant blond actress named Laurel Amour makes an appearance before her devoted fans wearing all of her priceless gems (just goes to show not much has changed since 1942). The Image appears and demands her jewels but the police step in to capture the thief. That's when he springs this ability to project multiple images of himself, which has the flat-foots acting ... well... flat footed, and he absconds with the sparklers. Superman pursues but finds he's chasing identical multiple cars, all but one of which disappear when the Image does the same. In the end of the story Superman tracks down the Image, manages to save Lois Lane, who's thrown from a cliff, and catch the Image when he figures out only one image out of a thousand is casting a shadow. The Image was made using a Spy Kids 2 Donougan figure, with the head from a GI Joe (don't remember which one). I used a piece of sheet plastic to make the mask, which is a little clunky but has its charms. I briefly toyed with the idea of making several versions of Image as shown in the graphic, but Donougan figures are hard to come by and that would have been a little obsessive. Wouldn't it?

1 comment:

  1. I love these!
    Your tastes mirror mine.
    If you weren't one uh dem der g'vment men, we might uh been related! :)

    ReplyDelete