It's no secret that I consider the West Coast Avengers to be the all-time worst-dressed team in comics history. They featured Iron Man in arguably his worst armor, the worst-dressed married couple in Hawkeye and Mockingbird, a cat woman whose "costume" was a plain blue bikini, and Lifetime Achievement Award in Bad Clothing winner Wonder Man.
Which explains why, if you're a super villain looking to make your mark on the world, you'd give yourself the power to absorb all of their bad fashion choices into one, all-encompassing Suit of Suckage:
When you go out in public wearing the worst elements from the worst dressed characters in the worst dressed team in history, you are going to need an industrial sized high-tech diaper to hold all the pooping you will be doing on yourself in the face of universal revulsion. And that's just what this fine fellow has, so points for forethought.
It's hard to pick out just one element to hate the most here, so let me do a quick overview of the lowlights:
- Weapon 1 is a gigantic pleasure device from the planet Orgasmitron.
- Weapon 2 is a crossbow that has taken the place of his hand. Since his other hand is holding the aforementioned giant pleasure device, how exactly does he plan on loading that sucker?
- Giant purple Hawkeye mask -- let me repeat that, "giant purple Hawkeye mask", how are we not hiding the children at this point?! -- is so big and pointy that the white Moon Knight cowl has to be pushed way back. I'm willing to bet there are bobby pins involved to hold those suckers together, and nothing says "Fear my might" like bobby pins.
- Purple cloth boot tops popping forth out of footless metal shin guards. How you get purple cloth out of metal shins is not a question I am capable of answering. It just makes me feel twitchy.
- The Super Depends are going to get so full, they require not just one purple Hawkeye bandolier to hold the quiver, but two of them, rigged "Deliverance" style for a sort of high-tech overall look. In purple.
I get the idea of a composite villain, but concentrating that much super-powered costume badness into one individual is far more power for evil than can possibly be countenanced.
But, Jeff, all that purple just clashes SO well with those black and orange Tiger Stripes… and the robotic jaw! What’s not to like?
Holy eye-rape, Batman! I really think they managed to answer the question of just how many vision-molesting items and colors they could squeeze into one character. Somehow Jeff forgot to mention the following bits: the tiger fetish, Iron Man mouth-piece (although it’s probably just a metal waste basket with a paper-shredder in the side), useless metal neck guard on top of an orange and blue Wonder Man top, orange metal Wolverine shoulder guard things, and what looks to be a flash-colored arm under that useless crossbow gauntlet and even more useless Hawkeye archer sleeve. Even Wonder Man could do better than this costume. I mean, this thing would give Tim Gunn repeated strokes, heart attacks and seizures for about a week.
That’s definitely an Iron Man mask there, since this outfit is made up of bits of each of the WCA’s costumes.
I like “vision molesting”, that’s a keeper right there.
Wow. This is… this just un-look-at-able. I think I’ll give myself a headache if I look at it too long.
It might be an Iron Man mask, but it’s clearly from his first gen costume. As far as the quote, go ahead and use it, I’ve got plenty more where that came from. I mean, I assume I do, but the quotes like that are sort of like the Silence. You might Yeah, it’s a Whovian thing Jeff, you’re not expected to understand.
Hm, you’re right on that score. I wonder why they went with that — other than it looks cool, which is a fine reason as far as I am concerned — instead of the Silver Centurion model Iron Man was actually using at this point. Odd.
What the H*LL is that, anyway? Someone has gone over board with this costume. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry… I think I laugh, makes me feel better…
well he sure scares the fudge out of me! Do you think he did this to teach them a lesson like “See, this is what you all look like, losers!” At least AMAZO had the good taste to just look like a weird mash up between Namor and the Vision while copying the JL’s powers.
and p.s. am I the only one who liked the silver and red Iron Man armor?
I learn so much here. I never even knew there was a West Coast Avengers. And now I’ve spent my lunch looking up pics of them just so I can follow the bad costume write up. As a result, I have learned more today than I probably needed to know. 😉 Back to work.
JEFF! post this at some point for new users with: WITH HERO MACHINE, everyone can make comic book characters that look better than THIS REAL EXAMPLE FROM. . .
Jeff, you forgot one. This was also when Hank Pym deceided to go without a hero name, and was running around in a red jumpsuit. As far as the Composite Avenger up there goes, it’s funny how The Super Adaptoid, Mimic, and The Super Skrull, as goofy as they look , work somehow, yet you mix it a little diffrent and add in that good old 80’s vibe, and Bam! instant crap. The problem with all of the combo villians is that once you change the lineup, which the Avengers is pretty well know for doing, the combo villian becomes pointless.
I think there’s an inner beauty about this. It’s like a Jackson Pollock reproduction painted with feces. It’s crap, it’s really bad, but there’s so much bad in it, it becomes inherently interesting. I don’t think this could have been done by accident.
Someone had to know what they were doing with this. Why else would the chest piece be Wonder Man’s costume, the worst dressed on the entire team?
Probably. I don’t mind this version, but it seems the weakest of the various Iron Man suits. The red and gold combination is much more aesthetically pleasing to look at.
Can we say that this is arguably the worst costume ever
Why does he have tiger claws for his crossbow, and why does he have a Hawkeye mask over his Ironman helmet?
So, apparently his skin is completely tiger…except for his left arm. Of course.
Seth MacFarlane: The early years
I think I recognize this from when I push the “random” button on heromachine 2.5.
Hah hah hah… Indeed!
I think the comic writers were a bit lazy with the concept for this mostrosity. Then the artist were kinda making fun of the writers by melting every bad costume together for this eyesore. I think I just lost my breafast!
Roll under your SAN
*rumble rumble*
You failed. Lose 1d100 sanity points.
This is just… lol!!!
Thanks for a good laugh! I needed it! 🙂
“And finally, there’s the issue of riding arrangements–”
“I’m not sure I understand. There’s the Quinjet, right? Help me out here.” Hawkeye said.
“Look, this has nothing to do with how we’re getting around, Clint. This is about…”, Tony paused, giving careful thought to his next words; they’d either defuse what could turn into a heated fight, or they would diplomatically solve this dilemma.
But, as usual, the demon bottle Tony guzzled on at all hours got the last word.
“Screw it– I had Stark Industries create a hovering mini-bus, because there is no way I’m riding with The Composite Avenger. Dude reeks of ‘tard, ok?!”
Howzabout we use HM3 to amalgamate entire super-teams into one super-awesome hero (or villain)? I say we do this for a “No-Prize” healing therapy session. I’ve heard fanboys talk about it, but no one had the resources to actually put an image together… How about it, Mr JB? This would be super-fun.
That sounds like fun!
Here is my Amalgam of the team the Defenders(hulk, Namor, Doc Strange,Silver Surfer) I tried to give the skin a more Metallic look if you have any suggestions on doing it better please let me know.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o240/watson_kaboos/defendor.png
It’s Captain Ultra as written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by Jim Lee after Jack Kirby!
Just be glad it wasn’t penciled by Rob Liefeld.
I find HM3 very difficult to use. There is so many poses, that it is nearly impossible to put all of the pieces together. I like the HM2.5. But after creating over 100 characters (no kidding, I counted) I ran out of ideas. Also, for some reason, the other versions don’t work. There just appears to be a red square in place of the HM flash video. If anybody knows why this is, please let me know!
I think if there is a hybrid-super hero, it needs to be something like:
Wolverine-spiderman
Wolverine-capt. America
Wolverine-batman
spiderman-batman
capt. America-spiderman
capt. America-batman
batman-iron man
Who agrees with me?
I’m sorry to hear that, Garrett. The assumption is that every piece fits if you just use the first, basic pose. You don’t have to move or scale anything, it should all appear in the proper spot. Doing alternate poses is sort of an advanced feature.
Maybe I need to make that clearer. The intention was always for it to work just like HM2 where you can just place your basic body and dress it by clicking without having to move anything, but with another layer of advanced posing/item creation for those who want it.
I am so onboard with that idea.
Hey Jeff, I was just wondering, have you ever thought about doing a HeroMachine contest where the object is to design the worst possible costume?
We did that “Bad Image Nineties” one that was pretty fun, but not since. Definitely something to consider. I’m pretty tired of the Seven Deadly Sins one, to be honest.
Here’s my Ultimate Avenger, which looks just as wildly thrown together as this hunk of junk.
Take a guess as to which parts belong to which Avengers: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/069/e/4/ultimate_avenger_by_heinz57xc-d4sclmd.png
I would like an HM3 that is more user-friendly like HM2.5. Where you select a pose and everything falls into place. I really do like the multiple layers and flipping feature. There also needs to be a draw lines and shapes option I mean; like you can create where the pattern is on the superhero’s costume, and an eraser to erase certain spots on whatever layer you are on, because sometimes stuff doesn’t fit together like certain boots with some pants. Does anybody else get frustrated by this? But, despite some of my problems, I love the HeroMachine. I would buy a 3-d art software based on this if it were available. How about it Jeff?
Has anybody figured out yet why there appears just a red square on some versions of the heromachine, I know it’s probably just a flash-operating system conflict, but maybe one of you software nerds out there can tell me what it is. (no offense)
maybe it could be setup some way like that all shirts are sleeveless, and you can put seperate sleeves on your character so you can have different arm positions on a stock torso. There is so many ways one could expand the heromachine repitoire, (did I spell that right?) anyways, I wish I could help.