Freaked. Out.

This month over at Geek Orthodox Reis has been posting a bunch of images of old "cheap mask & vinyl poncho" style Halloween costumes. I remember some of them from back in the day, but not this one:That's a mask, right? For some reason I can't pin down, that mask thing is just breaking me over here. That's the scariest effin' kiddy costume I've ever seen. And the mask tinges the poncho part for me, making me skittish about the whole set-up. Instead of just a picture of a spaceship on a cheap plastic tunic, I now see that the kid dressing as this thing is basically going for Halloween as a torso-shaped hole through which we can see events in outer space.

Return of the creep

This post is a follow-up to Audience participation time, wherein I challenged everyone to rate three comic book panels in order of increasing creepiness. Thanks to all the usual suspects for participating in my silly little game. In the comments to the original post my buddy Pat suggested that I was not doing the Ms. Marvel panel justic by cropping it down to just the kiss with MODOK. So below you can find the entirety of page 30 of issue 7 of Ms. Marvel. The whole page takes place entirely in Ms. Marvel's mind. MODOK and his AIM goons have captured her and subjected her to his brainwashing "mindripper" device. This page is meant to illustrate her internal struggle with the dominating effects of the mindripper.

(Click the pic for a bigger version.)

I find this page extremely effective in conveying how unnerving it is to lose one's power of self-determination. In one quick transition Ms. Marvel goes from mentally kicking MODOK's ass to re-imagining him as both god to be worshiped and idealized mate to be loved. Ewww.

On one hand I find the MODOK-smooching to be a very effective way of depicting the horrors of mind control. On the other hand I'm just a bit disappointed. The rest of the comic is a pretty gender-neutral story of superhero asskickery. You could redo the rest of this tale for a male super with very little alteration. Only with a superheroine on the field would mind control be depicted as swapping spit with MODOK. Maybe nowadays some enterprising writer would try to pull off a male/male kiss with MODOK. I dunno.

It would be interesting to compare this sequence to contemporaneous examples of female villains mindcontrolling males. Like maybe some superhero falling under sway of the Enchantress. (Was Nekra active in the 70's?) I don't really have the collection to undertake such a project.

Audience participation time!

The name of the game is Creepy, Creepier, Creepiest. Take the three scans below and put them in increasing creep-out order. Justify your answers in the comments section. There are no winners or losers in this game, just fellow victims all wallowing in joint misery.

Scan number 1 comes from issue 10 of The Occult Files of Doktor Spektor, published in 1974 by Whitman. Here we have Lakota, Dr. Spektor's Native American secretary/love interest/damsel-in-distress, dressing up for a costume ball. Note her choice of costume: sexy injun squaw.



Contestant number 2 hails from the ninth issue of Teen Titans Spotlight (copywright 1986, DC Comics). In this issue for no apparent reason Beast Boy goes to the zoo and starts flirting with a lioness.



Finally, we have Ms. Marvel #7 (1977), wherein we find a picture of Carol Danvers making out with MODOK!



So now that I've scarred you all for life, tell me which scan is merely Creepy, which is a bit Creepier, and which one is Creepiest.

P.S. #1: Don't try to tell me the green dude's name is Changeling. He's Beast Boy on the cartoon and that's all that matters to me.

P.S. #2: This issue of Teen Titans Spotlight is the first time I've read a story with Robotman in it. And let me tell you, he is rad to the max. Cliff Steele spends the whole issue acting like Ben Grimm, only he's a robot instead of a rock monster. Is he that awesome all the time?

Move over Galactus.

Man, this cover is creeping me out.