The World's First Superheroes

Sometime ago, I ran across this title in a stack of 39-cent comics at the Goodwill:

Even though the shininess of the foil-embossing doesn't show well in the scan, you can almost feel the waves of pure nineties-ness radiating from this cover, drowning the poor, staid Scholastic logo under crashing waves of total awesomeness. The book does not disappoint.

Published in 1996, Hercules: The Strong Man is the first issue in a series of tales under the title Myth-Men: Guardians of the Legend, which presented stories of heroes and heroines of Greco-Roman myth. This inaugural edition gives a one-paragraph introduction to Hercules, takes four pages to summarize three of the twelve labors, and then spends the rest of the book telling of the theft of the three golden apples of the Hesperides. (SPOILER ALERT) The tale ends with the moral that Hercules was smart as well as strong.

All of this is told in lavish full-painted pages in a format somewhere between illustrated story (an awful lot of narrative weight is carried by text) and comics (there are word balloons that convey essential information).

While the form is pretty typical for "educational" comics, is the sensibility that is most striking: the ancient world of myth is depicted in that mishmash faux-medieval/quasi-classical/fantasy mode that was popularized by Xena: Warrior Princess, Dungeons and Dragons, and most versions of Lord of the Rings. Myth-Men is part Classics Illustrated comic and part Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, wrapped up in pretty paper that's only slightly homoerotic.

I'll leave it another time to deconstruct the whole story; what's more interesting to me right now is that there was a whole series of these. Although I haven't been able to track down any more issues, the back of the book promises even more mythic badassery and shiny, shiny outfits:


Now let's zoom in a little bit for a quiz - or perhaps more properly a survey, since I'm not 100% sure of the answers myself.

Can you recognize these heroic men and women after their makeovers? We know the big blond guy is Hercules, and numbers 2 and 3 look pretty much of the period, if not terribly distinctive. But who's number 1, the dark-skinned woman warrior on the left? Is silver-carapaced number 4 wielding a Klingon bat'leth? And is that Scarlett from GI Joe at position 5?

Tell me what you think. No Google-cheating - just think back to your Bullfinch's Mythology, put on The Macarena, and take your best shot. Just list 1 through 5 and the names.

(Here's a hint: Issue #2 was subtitled The Soldier King.)

Who the heck? (things only I wonder about)*

So, while I was in Value Village today as part of an errands run, I encounter this guy hanging in a plastic bag on the cheap toys wall:

He was eye-catching in the first place because I didn't immediately recognize him: the brown suit, green bird-motif cape, and visored helmet rang no bells. At first, I thought he might have been an owl-guy of some kind, and Otis has been developing an owl-theme for me lately, so I picked it up. A closer look revealed more details:

Look at that phiz. Seems determined, but a little confused at the same time. The design of the helmet looks less like and owl, and more like a... parrot? Parrot-man? There ain't no Parrot-man I know of.

And the belt: besides his, shall we say, greater that typical belt size for a superhero, his buckle is a big "G." G is for... owl? parrot? Is this a Spanish superhero or something?

But get a load of the detail on the boots - the split-toe really makes the costume.

As I was taking photos and moving through these details, I started getting some resonance that I had indeed seen this fellow before, and that he was a Japanese character, from one of those groups of heroes like the Power Rangers. A little bit of internet research later, the mystery is solved: he is Ryu, the ship's pilot for Science Ninja Team Gatchaman! This series was known more popularly in the U.S. as G-Force or Battle of the Planets.


It's nice to know I haven't completely lost my touch for pop culture, even stuff I'm not directly interested in.

Oh, and despite indications to the contrary, that is indeed an owl suit: Ryu's name in some English translations is Hooty.

So, what did you do while you ate lunch today?

*Actually, that title is a lie: the server here in the Green Bean Coffee Shop took a close look at the figure and texted her husband to ask him who it was.