There was a comic book miniseries Tales of the Unexpected that came out in 2006 and brought back a bunch of older comic book characters who had somewhat dubious powers. The title itself was a part of this because Tales of the Unexpected had been a low rent comic book series back in the fifties and sixties.
You never read 1963, then?
Last I heard, Luke Cage is doing pretty good. He got married, had a kid, and joined the Avengers. Not surprisingly, he also dropped the headband and yellow shirt.
“Split!”
An incompatibility issue referenced on Smallville… and famously in the Niven essay “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”. :eek:
Sorry, Capitaine, I meant no disrespect. I really liked Luke Cage when he was new, but it never got any better and I eventually gave up on him. (After about 30 issues.) I never thought he was lame, but the dialog was bad, even at the time. I was mostly keying off the “Low Rent” part of the OP.
Yah, I always thought he had great potential, but never seemed to live up to it. I read in wikipedia that he also got stronger by going through the treatment again. Glad to see he made it to the big time.
Oh, I can actually believe that Clark has enough control to keep from crushing Lois or Lana or Lori or Cat Grant or the archeologist chick whose name I am too lazy too look up in the throes of passion.* He might even be able to keep his ejaculation from, ah, drilling through her. But he’s never showed any conscious control over his invulnerability; the nearest he’s ever come to demonstrating the potential is at the beginning of the Busiek run, when his loss of super-powers was at least partly psychosomatic.
- Did I miss anybody? And don’t say Wonder Woman, because she’s probably tough enough to handle it.
Lex? <_<
“Sweet Christmas!”
I’m not even going to bothering issuing the threats at this point. I’m just going to release the locusts.
That mermaid he married in the 60s. Though she might not count, as Futurama has reminded us, (And The Slayers years before) hot kryptonian-on-mermaid-action dosn’t involve any direct bodily contact beyond some cuddling.
The general consensus is that Power Man and Iron Fist never really clicked until they teamed up. I kinda liked the over-the-topness of the early Power Man, though his Dr. Doom fight had the silliest version of Doom ever written, and that’s saying something.
Isn’t it great! And now, he and Danny can be LEGALLY married in NY!
. . .
Upon closer inspection, it appears he married Bendis’ Nomad rip-off. I’m sure that will last. To be fair, Iron Fist was dead at the time. Or a Scrull. Or possibly both.
Cage still unfortunately, ends up often as not on the short list of “heroes who act like douches” when a story requires a hero that is acting like a douche.
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I was going to point out that Iorn Fist’s girlfriend was an amazoinan be-afroed black woman with a (presumably “steel-hard”) cybernetic arm, while Cage’s was a slender, long-tressed martial artist, but apparently he never was coupled with Colleen Wing. I’ll have to fall back on unsupported supposition that he has pressured any romantic partners he has been with into wearing a long blonde wig on special occasions.
Upon further research, Cage appears to have scored with She-Hulk on at least one occasion. Well done, my friend. Well done.
I liked that series a lot, though I am happy never to have read the proposed “annual”, which looks utterly stupid. I loved Johnny Beyond, the hep-cat Dr. Strange.
Lori Lemaris, who was mentioned.
I have a post-Crisis issue where this is discussed - a scientist (not Magnus) is explaining to Superman how the Metal Men work, and for the first time (that I ever saw, anyway) advances the “polymer” explanation, including that the polymer used to make Tin actually replicates the weaker properties of the metal, which in reality is actually quite strong.
I have occasionally wondered why Tin (the robot) is such a pushover when tin (the metal) is actually reasonably durable, though in practice his best application would be in conjunction with the other metals. In their first story, I seem to recall, Lead forms into a large ball, Tin coats him for extra durability, and Iron throws them at a fairly ridiculous flying creature that looks like a giant stingray.
But after that it was always Tin bravely but ineffectively lunging into battle, with sometimes him being the one to outsmart the villain. It’s kinda like writing the story to let the nerdy kid be the hero now and then.
Here’s a pretty representational sampling of the weirdest comic-book hero of them all:
If that surreal experience left you faunching for more, here’s the entire series:
Brother Power The Geek.
“Herbie: The Fat Fury.” That’s pretty bad.
How about DC’s Wild Dog? So low-rent that all his gear is off-the-shelf.
Another dimly-remembered one: there was a comic series about a tribe of people who inhabit a post-nuclear war New York City-they swing off vines growing off ruined skyscrapers, and wonder about all yjose abandoned buildings and cars. That is all I remember.