Saturday, March 09, 2013
Comic Art
SO BAD, THEY'RE GOOD
As if fear of clowns were not enough - we must fear the entire circus - Circus of Crime that is! There is some vailidty to this, the traveling circus really does make the perfect cover for a bunch of traveling hooligans and has often been used in that fashion in reality. It even made some sense in the WWII incarnation as a traveling groups of spies. It made a lot of sense in the Bond flic "Octopussy." But when you thrown in super-powers and the Avengers, well, the Circus of Crime starts to get pretty silly. Please do not confuse this classic bunch of marvel villains with the johnny-come-lately, and pretty lame, bunch over at DC.
Truth be told, I may ridicule the idea here, but as a kid, the COC was all over the Marvel Universe and the image at the bottom of this post is one of the classic images of the Marvel Silver Age. It is this group of evil-doers that crashed the wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne way back when in one of the classics of all time.
IN the end, I don't think the circus imagery is scary, I think this stuff comes form the boredom that many of us feel at the circus when we are young. We are unable to appreciate the acrobats and lions tamers in any meaningful way, so our minds wander and imagine all sorts of nefarious nastiness behind the scenes. And so, this and so many imitators appeals as a villainous nest of vipers.
As if fear of clowns were not enough - we must fear the entire circus - Circus of Crime that is! There is some vailidty to this, the traveling circus really does make the perfect cover for a bunch of traveling hooligans and has often been used in that fashion in reality. It even made some sense in the WWII incarnation as a traveling groups of spies. It made a lot of sense in the Bond flic "Octopussy." But when you thrown in super-powers and the Avengers, well, the Circus of Crime starts to get pretty silly. Please do not confuse this classic bunch of marvel villains with the johnny-come-lately, and pretty lame, bunch over at DC.
Truth be told, I may ridicule the idea here, but as a kid, the COC was all over the Marvel Universe and the image at the bottom of this post is one of the classic images of the Marvel Silver Age. It is this group of evil-doers that crashed the wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne way back when in one of the classics of all time.IN the end, I don't think the circus imagery is scary, I think this stuff comes form the boredom that many of us feel at the circus when we are young. We are unable to appreciate the acrobats and lions tamers in any meaningful way, so our minds wander and imagine all sorts of nefarious nastiness behind the scenes. And so, this and so many imitators appeals as a villainous nest of vipers.
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