Saturday, August 25, 2018

Kingdom Come Spotlight: Mister Scarlet

I try to avoid cross-comic canon immigrants when I can, but I set the precedent by including Kingdom Come ones on this site, so I guess I have to continue. As a compromise, however, I will post these and any future ones like these on Saturdays.

If you're not familiar with Kingdom Come, it's about a future of the DC Universe and how older versions of the current heroes we know clash with the new generation of heroes. The whole thing was basically a satire of 90s superheroes compared to Silver Age superheroes, and it was very successful, both critically and commercially.

Nearly every character who appeared in it got a new design of some sort, and for the most part, the designs fell into one of a few categories:

1) A design that combines aspects of multiple identities of the character to make it unclear which identity it was. Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman are examples of this kind.


2) A design that combines multiple separate superheroes as certain heroes take on new identities. Red Arrow and Red Robin are examples of this kind.


3) A design that plays on the trends of modern superheroes. Magog and Kid Flash are examples of this kind.



4) Minor tweaks. Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman are examples of this kind.



Mister Scarlet definitely falls into #3.

Mister Scarlet was a superhero originally published by Fawcett Comics, along with Captain Marvel. He was essentially a Batman knockoff, complete with utility belt and kid sidekick, but he had the interesting gimmick that he was too good at his job. Despite being an attorney, he frequently had to find side gigs because of the lack of crime!


In Kingdom Come, a new Mister Scarlet appears. Although his look is partially derived from the fin on the original Mister Scarlet's cowl, I don't think it's a stretch to say that this Scarlet was more closely based on Image's Savage Dragon.


A Mister Scarlet looking just like this one made a brief appearance in Justice League of America #21 (December 2017).



Thanks to Thomas Parks for telling me about this one!

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