Warning: This is going to be rambling and incoherent (unlike a Palin speech).

This weekend, I gave myself a creative assignment (as I often do to help remain creative). I'm creating a comic book monster-hero. No particular reason. No directive from a publisher or anything like that. Just for the hell of it and just for my own entertainent. (I love doing this kind of stuff... the research, the thought behind it... it's all fun to me rather than work.) For this project this weekend, I went over a lot of material pertaining to monster-heroes and monsters in general. Everything from "The Incredible Hulk" movie on blu-ray to old Savage Dragon trades to old copies of Alpha Flight and The Thing comic book series. I even pulled out my old Guyver dvds and studied the Zoanoids from that anime series...

... such as Ramotith (pronounced "ram-oh-geez")...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWRgiHSoJgQ[/youtube]

The big question seems to be, for me, "How ugly is too ugly?"

I started with the Hulk, whom I consider to be sorta the "granddaddy of all comic book monster heroes" (and if things at Marvel continue on their present course, that will be a literal title as well as a figurative one). Okay, the guy is big and muscular... usually green... and has some caveman features. Not a hideous monster-hero at all, which lends to his success somewhat, I would imagine. I wouldn't mind turning into that once in a while, to be honest. Okay, so it would be really hard to come up with a monster-hero as pretty as the Hulk. He's actually quite bland looking... his visual signature is his skin color, his torn pants and, depending on the artist, his musculature. I mean, you could have a guy who looks minimalistically monstrous but be a different color and that's exactly what people will think... "Oh look, it's a blue Hulk."

So we go a little more into that caveman idea and we (reluctantly) invoke Darwin's theory that man descends from an ape. That brings me to John Byrne's creation, Sasquatch. 'Squatch is one of my favorite monster-heroes from my childhood. He's the evolution Hulk. His body is even more primitive than the Hulk's... with even longer arms, an even bigger proportunate upper body and hair/fur. Everywhere. The thing I was always thankful for when reading Byrne's Alpha Flight material was Walter Langkowski's unstable molecules orange trunks. The hair just sorta grew through the trunks when he changed and his privates where hidden by extra-long belly hair. (I choose not to think of said hair as being "pubes.") Then when Walter wanted to change back, the hair sorta melded into his trunks again. No embarassing issues for that guy! Fur is actually a pretty nice characteristic for a monster-hero. Our pets tend to be covered with it. It's a friendly texture that can also be threatening depending on the scenario.

Some of the best or most memorable monster-heroes tend to be super-strength oriented, but not always. Swamp Thing, The Demon, Man-Thing and The Gargoyle are all distinguished by characteristics other than brute strength. We may enjoy reading about these guys, but I don't think very many people like imagining they are one of them. I'm trying to create one that a reader might fantasize about being, so I'm excluding these types in my thoughts here. I want a super-strength based monster-hero. It's that specific sub-type that I'm most interested in here.

But getting back to the overrall question I'm asking here, I have to admit that the Thing puzzles me. He's lovable. He's awesome. He's funny. He's powerful. He has a distinctive look. But I really never fantasized about being the Thing when I was a kid because his life sucked most of the time. He couldn't change back. Also, if his look was more derivitive of the human condition (i.e. skin and hair textures) instead of rock, life as a monster might have been slightly more bareable. Chicks love 'Squatch. They can't wait to jump into his arms and play with his fur. They don't seem to want to do that with the Thing. 'Squatch and Thing are the same color (orange). To me it goes back to that texture thing. Granted, sometimes Thing is able to change back... but usually he isn't.

Monster-hero fail designs can be summed up by the Hulk of 2099 character. This guy is damn unappealing. He looks like a throwaway monster-villain from anybody else's comic book. He's usually got Venom's tongue too... with little spikes on it. Who the heck would want to turn into that?

On the creator-owned side we have two designs I like a great deal, the Savage Dragon and Pitt. Both have commonalities with the Hulk's design themes. Dragon may not be thought of as a monster-hero by some simply because for the most part he's pretty well adjusted. He's a respected law officer in his continuity. He wears a shirt and tie. But he's a monster. I'm sorry, Hanzo. (Don't get me wrong, Sav Drag was my favorite Image title and still is.) I don't think anybody else could get away with creating a green-skinned superstrong monster since the creation of the Dragon, though. Larsen-haters like PAD just love to sum up Dragon as a Hulk-rip off, but that's only because they grope for any negative they can find when it comes to Larsen and when they can't find one that's substantive, they make something out of nothing... like Dragon's skin. Dragon's signature is that great big fin on his head. Initially, he reminded me a little of Triton from the Inhumans visually... but only initially. That fin is iconic. There's something lizard-like about it... but Dragon doesn't have reptile characteristics beyond that. Good thing too, because other reptilian characteristics like tails and scales aren't winners when it comes to making a monster-hero that a reader wants to fantasize about being. Those features are just too removed from the human form. Pitt looked neat too. A Keown-hater may say. "Oh, it's just the grey Hulk with long hair, talons and no nose." Maybe so. I dunno.

Anyway, I'm done for now. Thanks for indulging me in this brief exposure of my stream of consciousness.*

Time for some of you to chime in.


*A fancy term for "rambling."

Can someone get me the Cliff's Notes to Darin's post, please?

Darin, there's a classic Frederik Pohl science fiction novel you might enjoy if you haven't read it before: Man Plus. It's been fifteen years or more since I read it, but in a nutshell: NASA (or a sci-fi counterpart, I don't remember) is launching the first manned Mars mission, and they've concluded that the only way to feasibly establish a permanent presence on the Red Planet is to reengineer a certain number of top astronauts into a new form that can survive the Martian environment directly. So most of the story is about the physical transformation of the first pioneer -- one of the best physical and mental specimens of the American man alive -- into a completely monstrous shape. Pretty good stuff.


(edited because I forgot which great SF author wrote the book!)

The Maharishi, he say, "I challenged myself to come up with a monster-hero this weekend," then explained why it's difficult to create such a character.

I think the answer might go something like this:

1. Big

2. Humanoid

3. Different color than human skin

4. Perhaps some kind of texture for the skin: scales, fur, slime

5. Monstrous facial features, but not too far away from human. I think I would think like Hollywood make-up. If it can be done for Star Trek or Babylon 5, it's probably good.

6. How to clothe the monster would be the big question for me.

If it were anyone else but Darin, I would suspect a little nose candy...

I used to like S'ym from Claremont's X-Men except for that vest.

I don't understand what that means.

Some substances can make you very verbose.

Unlike many people in the comic book industry, Darin does not rely on any artificial chemical enhancements for his talent, but solely on good old American know-how.

Feel free to name names.

Hey Darin, when I first posted above, I misremembered who wrote Man Plus. It's not Ben Bova, it's Frederick Pohl. Have now edited to fix.

I think Kilowog has a great design - does he count as a monster? Man-Bat also has a fantastic design.

Ethan Van Sciver and Ivan Reis have created some great aliens in Green Lantern.

'Course, a female monster-hero would be interesting... She-Hulk isn't really a monster-hero anymore.

The last good monster-hero female design I saw was John Byrne's Rampage.



And such clever placement of ripped chain mail...

Well, Kilowog isn't portrayed as a monster, but rather "just" an alien. I'll agree that if you deposited him in Minnesota, the locals would definitely see him as a monster... but he rarely if ever is in that kind of situation. Man-Bat is a great little monster design too... but not something we'd mind turning into even momentarily.

Not if you put him in a flannel shirt and jeans.

"How ugly is too ugly?"

A good question -- both taken on its own, and in conjunction with something I'd say is a truism: the monster-hero can get away with being uglier if s/he is correspondingly more likeably human in other ways.

Remember Doop from the Mike Allred version of X-Force? (Which was a love-it-or-loathe-it run, but that's not the point here.) Basically Doop was a sentient, hovering, warty pickle that spoke in gibberish -- but he was FUNNY, a la mute sympathetic supporting heroes like Chewbacca or R2D2, so the readers who enjoyed the series adored him. (As long as they were supposed to, anyway.)

Already discussed in another thread, but the Beast is another good example of a monster-hero. He never seemed to suffer any mental or behavioral changes (except for the bit in X-Factor where his increasing strength diminished his intellect), but physically he went from reasonably attractive dude with big hands and feet (you know what that means, right, ladies?) to a big blue gorilla with fangs and a horned hairdo.

Morbius is another good one, though he doesn't have a lock on the strong/brutish angle that most of the other monster-heroes did.

Kirkman's astounding Wolf-Man comic is also exploring this trusty old saw.

big hands and feet (you know what that means, right, ladies?)

Uhh, big gloves and big shoes?