Gorillas, sphinxes, doppelgängers and rainbows — they all sold comic books, according to DC’s thinking.
Color was a particularly important factor in Silver Age comics aimed at children. “(K)ids prefer bright colors as they are easier to discern with their still-developing sight,” wrote Thomas Boyd. “As they use the colors to make sense of what is what, they find bright colored objects more appealing and stimulating.”
When I first saw the Justice League at age 5, I remember being almost mesmerized by the bright colors of the superheroes’ costumes (and in one case, bare skin) — scarlet, emerald green, jet black, a shiny scaled orange and the good old red, white and blue. On that score alone, The Brave and the Bold 29 was irresistible.
We also had a rainbow-costumed Superboy (Superboy 15, Sept. 1951) and a rainbow-costumed Batman (Detective Comics 241, March 1957). Batman and Robin also fought a giant rainbow creature (Batman 134, Sept. 1960), and Superboy faced a Rainbow Raider who could seemingly control him (Superboy 84, Oct. 1960). Green Arrow fought the Rainbow Archer (Adventure Comics 246, March 1958), the Vigilante battled the Rainbow Man (Action Comics 156, May 1951) and the Scarlet Speedster fought another Rainbow Raider (The Flash 284, June 1980).
Not to be outshone, Superman projected a “rainbow doom” (Superman 101, Nov. 1955), glowed like a rainbow (Lois Lane 3, July 1959) and acquired a rainbow face (Action Comics 317, Oct. 1964).
The most poignant of the multicolored lot was Superman’s New Power! (Superman 125, Nov. 1958), in which the Man of Tomorrow lost his other powers but gained the ability to project rainbow beams that created a super-powered miniature duplicate of himself.
Bob Hughes wrote: If the Blackhawks had kept their rainbow costumes maybe they would have made it out of the sixties.
ReplyDeleteGary Van Horn wrote: Not to mention that kryptonite went the skittles route with all the different versions.
ReplyDeleteMark Engblom wrote: How about Color Kid, whose powers weren’t quite “great enough” for the Legion of Superheroes and, instead, joined the “farm team” of the Legion of Substitute Heroes?
ReplyDeleteMark Engblom wrote: As for color in general, DC seemed to make more hay out of it than Marvel ever did. Beyond the rainbow-hued characters you cited, there was the vast spectrum of Kryptonite, the imaginary story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue, the clever inverted color scheme of The Reverse Flash’s costume, and even the Green Lantern’s color-based weakness of yellow (by no coincidence the symbolic color of cowardice).
ReplyDeleteMike McAllister wrote: When I was a teenager, I used to buy comic books from a collector who was about eighteen years older than I am . During one visit, he told me "I think kids get interested in the colors at first, then they get interested in the characters and the stories !" .
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