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decepti-thots · 2 years

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@sauntervaguelydown:

god. you know what. i told myself i would only ramble about this if someone asked directly bc it's so ridiculous. haha. OKAY YES INDEED I WILL EXPLAIN..... PROWL 2: OWL FURRY. but if i'm going to do this i'm going to be stupid about it, so instead of the quick and dirty "beast wars prowl is this weird JP G1 exclusive version of the character" 200 word summary i could probably manage, i'm gonna explain the entire Prowl 2 thing. why? i'm bored as shit at work today. i did this instead of being productive.

it is entirely possible bits of this are wrong. it is entirely possible lots of this is wrong. if this is the case my defense is that YOU try to sort this shit out and make sense of it, okay. if i mixed up what happened when or got specific things wrong then we'll all just have to deal with it.

below the cut is a load of bullshit.

so alllll the way back when the original G1 cartoon was being dubbed into Japanese and aired over there, one thing that happened was that the movie didn't immediately get a release over there. G1 S3 and then the JP only continuation anime The Headmasters came out before the movie was dubbed into Japanese and shown. this created some continuity errors, namely: famously, fuckton of characters gruesomely die on screen in the movie, and some were shown as alive in the JP G1 stuff. for our purposes, the important thing is that this includes prowl. which, on the one hand, massive continuity errors are par for the course in G1, because it's a very silly 80s cartoon. but as time went on and JP continued to produce more and more G1 stuff well past it ending in the US, it wound up becoming a lot more complex and interconnected than the English language continuity ever was, and also a bunch of nerds started caring about all this dumb nonsense. (this is self-directed.)

(EDIT: I have been reminded the below all refers specifically to transmetals II beast wars prowl- i added an explanation at the end as to why that is.)

jump ahead a few years. beast wars comes out. the important part here isn't anything in the actual show, but is instead the "expanded" lore provided by the bios in the toyline. a couple of names from G1 characters were re-used for "new" characters in the toyline, to e.g. extend copyright protection on the names for Hasbro. however, at this point in the brand's history, Hasbro has still never actually "rebooted" transformers- they re-imagined it, but BW is set in vaguely the G1 continuity, albeit nobody really cared about the details and making it line up perfectly. later on (like, way later on, in the 2000s), there would be material that dealt with the fact that a bunch of names that definitely belong to characters that already exist in this continuity are now given to unrelated toys by suggesting they were just really old autobots who survived into the later BW time period and got reformats. this is what happens with BW ravage, famously, since he shows up on the actual show, so this became the standard explanation slash fanwank. and even at the time, this was a pretty common assumption apparently, since no other explanation was given.

but prowl, in western G1 continuity, is dead! they got around THAT and made his bio say that he has a vague sense that "in a past life" he used to be a bigshot tactician. beast wars is the show that introduced sparks and the afterspark, so like, whatever, that's a cheeky continuity nod, fun for the fans, etc. so it stays just like that, a weird little joke on a toyline-only character's bio. 'look, this new Prowl character might be vaguely connected to that G1 guy you remember, cool, huh?'

THEN. we get to 2000-2001. Car Robots, the first Japanese produced Transformers show since the 80s/90s G1 continuations ended, is made. this is the show that is later imported by Hasbro on the cheap and dubbed into English to fill a one year gap in their toyline, when it became Robots in Disguise, aka RiD01. in English, this is the first ever Transformers reboot, taking place in a fully new continuity with a new version of e.g. Optimus Prime. in the Japanese original, it's... a little more complicated. the main character is actually another dude who just looks like OP, and while it's in a totally different style and doesn't REALLY make any sense as a part of G1, it's not explicitly stated that it's a reboot.

spoiler alert: for some insane reason, Takara did indeed later decide it was not a reboot. (OK, that's slightly unfair. CR does actually use some concepts from JP only G1 stuff that western audiences don't necessarily tend to notice, apparently.) Car Robots is not in the same continuity as RiD01, it's a part of the G1 timeline over there. for the record, here is an incomplete map of the G1 JP continuity:

this is years out of date now, btw. but i wanted to show you all what we're working with here. ANYWAY.

one of the characters in this show, in both versions, is Prowl. in RiD01, this is fine, he's just the new continuity's Prowl. in regards specifically to Car Robots, however, this is now once again a continuity error.

which is probably about where this weird plot hole would have stayed, if not for the fact that for NO REASON ANYONE CAN DISCERN, a random toy released for this character in the RiD01 toyline was called. Prowl 2. like that's his name. on the box. just. Prowl 2. prowl two: the sequel. he doesn't have a bio. no reason given for this, nobody has a clue how it happened.

he was also a US-only toy, so this was mostly also just an oddity that would have stayed unimportant... if not for the fact that in 2005, the collector toyline Binaltech had fiction (not the toy itself) used this weird one-off probably-an-error US toy name for its lore. the toy ITSELF is just called 'prowl', but the actual story...

being an adult-oriented collectors line in a pre-bayverse era, binaltech didn't get a fully realised fiction tie in like we tend to see now with e.g. the WFC netflix show. but it had *some* fiction in Japan, through little bits of the story being included with each toy alongside the standard toy bios, and this was ALSO part of the G1 continuity. so now Prowl 2 is in Japanese G1 as a canonical character, instead of being exclusively a weird US-only name in a different universe, or whatever. and the story is... uh... okay. i literally can't summarise this. basically it involves the creation of a split universe timeline that is linked to Beast Wars Ravage surviving and then time travelling, and it results in G1 Wheeljack finding out in advance that Prowl is gonna die, so he tries to create like, a clone that he can move Prowl's spark to after he's destroyed to save him? chip chase is also there. it doesn't work but his personality is still copied to the new body. chip's lifeforce is used to make him come to life so i guess that's weird. in fiction, this is Prowl 2. he's literally a failed clone of Prowl. i think at some point they find OG prowl's spark and it replaces... you know i really don't understand this part. at some point. a guy called prowl is alive. idk man. (did they just kill prowl 2 or something, this is the impression i get???)

...AND THEN the end of binaltech makes it all non-canon because it branches into an alternate universe timeline at the last second so this doesn't even FIX ANYTHING. this is about the part you're legally obligated to lose your mind, i think. so post-movie inexplicably alive G1 prowl is not prowl 2, but prowl 2 is now a character in an alternate universe version of japanese g1. also btw the characters in the new alternate universe develop dimension hopping and sometimes show up in the regular universe eventually. canon is an abyss and i am falling into madness.

and then. finally. a decade later. we have the solution to this, which came from a fucking facebook post. i've explained everything in excruciating detail for no real reason SO far, so may as well explain about Ask Vector Prime even though i'm pretty sure most folks do know about that. just in case anyone doesn't: AVP was a facebook feature, endorsed by Hasbro and considered canon, run by a bunch of reeeeal big fans (think 'the people who wrote like half of tfwiki' level of nerds here) where you could submit the kind of incredibly dumb pedantic nerd questions that I promise you I also inexplicably care about, this is a self roast- and they'd answer them and the answers were canonically factual, hasbro endorsed, 100% true. (this makes it sound like AVP is insufferable nerd bullshit, but to be clear, it's not. it's fun and silly and written by self-aware people who want to enjoy the franchise, and i highly recommend reading the archive some time if you haven't; the whole thing is archived on tfwiki.)

in 2015, they reached out to the guy who wrote the aforementioned binaltech fiction, with the hope of collaborating with him to clear up some stuff that had never been reconciled within the canon itself. chief amongst this was that they asked if he would provide them with an explanation, finally, that made the Prowl 2 stuff make sense. and... he did! he sent them across some stuff they used to create a retcon that basically ironed the whole thing out once and for all. from tfwiki:

"When Prowl and Wheeljack traveled from BT World to OG World and subsequently took up permanent residence in the latter dimension, they transferred their sparks into new, non-Binaltech bodies, leaving the old bodies in storage. Years later, when the elderly Chip Chase fell ill, Wheeljack remembered the time his essence had powered Prowl's Binaltech body back in Wheeljack's home universe, and repeated the process using the Cortexitron and Prowl's Alpha BT unit in hopes of preserving Chip's lifeforce. Unfortunately, the process was not entirely successful, and the new Chip/Prowl fusion was put into stasis until eventually, Maximal technology enabled it to be reactivated. Some memories were lost, but Prowl II was once again alive."

translation: prowl went from the new alternate dimension to the original one after a while. he changed his weird alternate universe clone body for a regular cybertronian frame. i think this is the original prowl in prowl 2's body. then when chip was gonna die wheeljack tried to use prowl 2's original clone body to mad science their way out of it, failed, and they were fused(?) and in stasis for millenia until beast wars era technology was able to revive him/them, and he became a maximal. at some point he reformats into an owl, i guess. also this is definitely prowl 2 and not OG prowl.

so beast wars prowl is, canonically: the failed attempt to save the life G1 prowl after BW Ravage time travels and alters the timeline, which still resulted in an identical copy/clone of him called Prowl 2, who wound up in a split timeline alternate universe but who eventually made his way back to regular G1 continuity after being replaced with OG Prowl, where he is essentially any version of Prowl seen in G1 fiction that occurs after he's supposed to have died in the movie, who is then in a coma for ages while his brain is merged with chip chase's after a failed experiment, who is woken up in beast war times by the BW characters and turned into an owl furry, and also by that point he's Prowl 2 again.

note that while JP G1 is not generally considered obligatory for western G1 cartoon canon, it's also like, not really contradictory. so for all intents and purposes this is just... true everywhere BW Prowl exists, even if it's not liable to come up outside Japan.

bonus: there's one ambiguous and two unambiguous references to this prowl in IDW, which comprise three seperate characters. one is the "other prowl" who is "a predabot" that Skids references in Shadowplay. this one is maybe not a deliberate reference, but "predabot" seems to have been derived from "predacon", and "beastformers prowl" is at least a POSSIBLE sly reference to BW prowl, and people have speculated it was a nod. but even without that one (and when Milne draws him a cameo, he makes him a lion alt, so eh), there's still TWO. one is that one of Tarantulas' chimeracons in SotW is BW!prowl. (he dies at the end of SotW.) the other is that when in TAAO they go to the beastformer colony, Eukaris, BW!prowl is also THERE, and so it's definitely a different character.

EDIT: the reason i thought of the first one as a reference is because i forgot the following.

yeah, there's also another unrelated BW prowl who only exists as a single toy and doesn't even have a bio. jesus christ.

lmao. god. transformers is so dumb. i love it. i hate it. help me.

#g1 #reference #prowl

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bigbookofrescues · 4 years

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MAN. SO. I wrote a twitter thread like handful of days ago and been chatting a bit about TAG’s future a bit... just yesterday even and I can’t get over the irony the very next day then TAGHQ dropped that tweet. XDDD

Anyhoo, this is edited a bit from my initial string of tweets cause I discovered a few other things of note. XD Apologies it’s SUPER long. lol

SO. TAG's end seems to be approaching... right? OR IS IT? I've seen talk of it being cancelled, but uh... how can something be cancelled that we never had indication would go past 3 seasons? It's just not had (so far) more commissioned. lol

Unless someone's read/heard something (that’s credible!) that I haven't, that's been as far as we knew it was going so far. Series DO end, and given TAG is expensive and time consuming to make (going model/cgi hybrid def made their lives so much harder lol) it wouldn't be surprising at all to me.

There’s also some thought that it’s not continuing due to some amount of failure. But there's no evidence it's failed? It has sold to networks all over the world. ITV bragged the first chunk of S3 eps reached 1.4m people and was #1 kid show across their networks. The second chunk of eps increased to 2.2m! (These all coming from Toy World Magazine UK.) Three different networks bought the show here in Canada even! So the idea it’s failed seems like a stretch to me

So like. Yeah. If this is the end... fair enough imho. lol BUT. No one has really said THIS IS IT. That's what's strange even...

There's a cage-y-ness surrounding it. Everyone has spoken of the end of season 3, but really no one's claimed it to be absolute THE END of the show. In fact, ITV's behavior towards S3 has been downright strange imho.

In 2018, Season 3 started kinda surprisingly soon after the end of S2. Then it suddenly stopped before the mid-way point. It was bizarre at first until an article was uncovered, where a small reference to a new toy deal came to light. Then it did make sense. (Though bit strange new toys being made towards possibly the end of the show, but okay... ...Which is now even STRANGER since found out there’s even MORE toys coming.)

Fast forward to London toy fair, and reps of the toys were saying first the 'property would return in June' and that the final 9 eps had been held back for the toy launch... which was meant to be in the fall. It was a bit confusing until TAG returned even sooner with 9 more eps in May.

So then it seemed like, OKAY, so last 8 will be in Fall with the toy launch. Which would make sense. The toys... the show... before Christmas... sell ALL the toys. Right? ...Wrong apparently. This is where it starts getting kinda really weird. They claim it's scheduling etc.

But why the heck would you not want the series on (Least a couple eps even?) with your new toyline that you'd want to have sell truckloads of for Christmas??? Why the delay into the new year? Which I even questioned would actually happen in January... but now it seems it IS in fact gonna be back in January.

So. WHY? I have 0 knowledge of TV toys selling, so undoubtedly I could be entirely wrong, but my gosh, in terms of common sense? This utterly baffles me. And THEN we now know in Q1 MORE toys are even about to be released. More toys. During or just after the show, allegedly, ends? What???

What exactly is ITV's game plan here??? So that aside, some other small things I've noticed...

A lot thought that interview with both David's had David Graham confirming TAG's end... but uh... pretty sure he was saying they'd wrapped recording the voices for S3 given the Q asked. (Which of course, was done a REALLY long time ago for them when came to the second part of S3. lol)

Then digging a bit cause the Wiki was still reporting Graham said no more eps were being made, apparently a written interview with him was where he was quoted as saying that, but it was rather swiftly edited. No cap exists, unfortunately, to show so. Question is was it David being mistaken or was it an misquote by the site? (Goodness knows these things happen... Many of us older fans I’m sure recall the tiny blurb interview where Kayo’s VA suggested it was JOHN, rather than Alan, who had a thing for Kayo. It was either a slip by Kayo’s VA or a mistake by the article writer. lol) I think it says a lot that, if that DID really happen, it was DELETED rather than it being said.

Then there's an interview with the Fosters at a music event which they seemed to talk a little kinda endish... BUT when asked just after the recording for the finale of S3 if... It was THE END, the end and the reply was 'Certainly not!' and date wise, pretty sure that was after the interview at the music event was recorded. BUT then this was said over a year ago now, so who knows now.

Also in a People interview with Lee Majors he was kinda joking around but said, "If they go for a fourth season, which I hope they do, then maybe my part will have worked,” Majors jokes. “You’ll see how good I was if they don’t get picked up!”

Yeah, a 4th season didn’t seem to be happening when he was interviewed... but also making it apparent there was, at the time, some unknown-ness to TAG's future.

AND THEN there’s the plans for that theme park in Kent that they said they’d have "rides and attractions themed around ITV's Thunderbirds Are Go, and Robozuna" The later is still a fairly new show... but... TAG? It's def TAG they're wanting to use. That's AGAIN super interesting for a show that might be on the cusp of being done and would long be just in reruns by the time this park comes into being? Maybe it's not that weird at all. IDK. (Be awesome if happens!) But my common sense-a-meter is just all... *squints at ITV*

Tl;dr TAG might be over and imho it'll be understandable and doubt any failure. (Like. BTW. Richard Taylor compared making a season of TAG to making 6-7 Coraline's in a row in a year. If that's accurate... W O W. That's nuts, guys.) BUT... I've not seen commit to that's it. DONE.

Which is why my only speculation I'm really trying to present here at all is that I believe there might be some limbo going on... or least there has been. It might well be past tense at this point. There's just so many strange signals around. lol But generally towards the end of a show you see a huge loss of motivation, but we’ve been only seeing more build UP about it.

Ultimately, we’ll have to see what happens. TAGHQ is being SO specific that it is the ‘conclusion of season 3′ and well, I just posted on my main about ‘The Final Countdown’. (But if someone reading this didn’t see that... go google: final countdown europe lyrics XD I’m 99.9% sure it’s gonna be a reference to in-show happenings... not the show’s future. XD)

SO YEAH. These have been my observations. (OH and if anyone wants sources to what I've referenced, I'll be happy to provide. :|b )

#Thunderbirds Are Go #~Thunderbirds Are Go #(Observations and Speculation)#(and a whole lot of ITV what are you doing???)#(Sorry so long XD)#(There's been a lot to cover!)#(ITV's been doing a lotta things relating to TAG)#(A lotta kinda STRANGE things even)#(Things that make me squint at them lol)

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thecollectorsector · 5 years

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Did you know...

That Danzig’s classic logo:

Was originally designed and created for a Marvel comic book cover?

Crystar

Today, not many comic book fans remember the Marvel character Crystar. This relatively obscure 80s character was originally created and developed for a line of toys. Crystar was a crystalline warrior who came from the world known as Crystallium-where everything was made of crystal and most characters had bad, rock-themed pun names like Ogeode, Feldspar or Stalax. Marvel Comics later created a Crystar comic book to accompany and promote Remco’s Crystar toyline. This is one of Michael Golden��s many classic comic book covers and is probably recognizable to any die-hard Danzig fan. I doubt Michael Golden imagined when he first created this cover, that someday one aspect of this image would be the identifying symbol of a major band. I’ve always wondered if Michael Golden receives any kind of compensation or recognition for creating the original comic cover that formed the basis of that now famous and highly-merchandised Danzig logo.

Marvel partnered with the now-defunct toy company Remco to produce a comic book series to expand the Crystar line of action figures and playsets. This was a common practice in the 70s and 80s. Marvel had also found success with such toy/comic crossovers like the Shogun Warriors, Micronauts and ROM: Spaceknight line of toys. Since the storytelling abilities of the toy industry were so limited, many toy companies benefited by having a comic book expand upon the characters and universe of a limited toy line. Companies like Marvel benefitted by having a large captive audience of kids who were familiar with the toys but would never have bought a comic book otherwise. This would not be the last time Marvel would create a comic series to promote a line of toys. G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers and even the beloved Secret Wars line of toys were all popular toy lines that Marvel published comic books to accompanying and promote. He-Man actually had the rare distinction of being one of the only toy lines to have a promotional comic book published by both Marvel and D.C. Toy companies like Remco used to view comic books as an advertising mechanism to draw in new kids while also being a cheap, easy way to create new characters that could eventually become new toys.

The Punk Connection

I’ve always loved the Misfits and by extension Glenn Danzig. Back in my punk days, The Misfits were always my favorite band, usually tied with the Dead Kennedys and the Germs (but I also loved T.S.O.L, the Buzzcocks, The Adicts, Crass and Minor Threat). As a fan of classic horror, sci-fi, and monster movies, I always appreciated The Misfits’ and Danzig’s use of horror and sci-fi imagery in their lyrics and album art. That was actually one of the things that I loved about the Misfits above all other bands; the imagery. All that Vincent Price and Plan 9 imagery really appealed to a kid like me. When I was a punk, comic books were the last thing on my mind. I hadn’t read or collected comics in years by that point. So I never made the connection between Danzig and comic books, despite being aware of Crystar as a character. I remember owning several issues of the Crystar Marvel series as a kid. After all, I am a child of the late 80s and early 90s who grew up owning many toys from some of the most iconic toy lines of the 80s. I was initially surprised that Glenn Danzig would show an interest in comics and co-opt the cover of a Marvel comic book series that targeted kids and was designed to promote a corresponding toy line. That fact is even more surprising looking at some of his later, solo-era imagery and lyrics.

Looking at that kind of album art, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised Danzig digs comics. As it turns out, Glenn Danzig has been into comics for years. This is why he used so much of that sci-fi/horror imagery in his early days in the Misfits and borrowed themes and concepts from comic books like Crystar and Conan. The misfits often used a comic book/Lichtenstein-esque pop-art art style as evidenced in their Bullet imagery with JFK and their Horror Business album art. Danzig also chose an HR Giger painting as one of his later albums. When you compare Frazetta-era “barbarian/warrior” artwork with Danzig’s comics or album art, you can see the obvious inspiration. In the 90s, Danzig actually began publishing his own line of comic books, Verotik comics (Verotik was a portmanteau of the words “violent” and “erotic”). It would be easy to looks at some of the comic books he’s published and dismiss them as immature or sophomoric. After all, they do feature most of the things pubescent boys are into-big pecs, bigger boobs and the biggest swords. It would also be easy to view Danzig’s foray into the medium of comics as a cash grab. This was the era that outsiders and speculators were coming into the comic book field en masse. Many people who had zero interest in producing quality comics came into the field with delusions of making a fortune based on the newfound popularity of comic books.

The Bubble Goes Burst

When the comic book speculator bubble burst in the mid-to-late-90s, many of these new imprints and comic lines went under; never to return to publication. Verotik has managed to outlive Homage, Wildstorm, Continuity, Legend, Malibu, Chaos!, Caliber, Comico, Defiant, Kitchen Sink Press and Eclipse (to name a few). It’s important to remember that those were among the most acclaimed indie comic companies during the 90s comic boom. All of those companies were either bought, closed or are otherwise now defunct. While it is true Verotik published way fewer comics than most of those other companies, Verotik still publishes comics today. Glenn Danzig outlasted them all. Surprisingly, Danzig’s line of Verotik comics have been continuously published since 1994, with Glenn Danzig himself still involved. While other, more mainstream comics have been adapted into the Hollywood Blockbusters we all know, Danzig adapted one of his comics, Grub Girl, into a porno that came out in 2006. Say what you will about adapting a comic book into pornography... it shows that Danzig has found a way to maintain an almost entirely adult audience while simultaneously promoting his line of comics and spinning those characters off into another medium (film).

Mainstream comic readers have not spoken kindly about some of Verotik’s offerings. I certainly don’t like everything that Dark Horse, or Marvel, or Image publish. Many comic fans have dismissed Danzig’s line of comic books for their perceived “low quality.” However, if you go back and examine some of his earliest works, you’d be surprised by some of the names you’d recognize. Many well known, popular writers and artists of today had work published in one of Verotik’s comic books. Grant Morrison actually had a story published in the first issue of Verotika, something he never mentions. Simon Bisley contributed some really solid artwork on many Verotik comics, as did Frank Frazetta.

Some of the most iconic Frazetta artwork (beyond his legendary Conan art of course) appeared in Verotik comics. The “Death Dealer” image has come to typify the classic Frazetta “barbarian” style. The Frank Frazetta style of heavily painted Barbarian/Warrior art has almost completely disappeared from the today’s modern comics. In my opinion, Danzig and his line of Verotik comics are almost solely responsible for the preservation of that kind of 80’s barbarian/sword-and-sorcery/heavy metal comic book aesthetic. By the 90s, that genre of comic and it’s associated art style had fallen out of favor with the general public and was considered dated by many critics and fans alike. This kind of hyper-masculine Barbarian imagery existed only on the fringes of pop culture and is virtually nonexistent today. What had been an industry staple was now relegated to a tiny niche audience. Fantasy artwork like that is sorely absent from today’s comic book marketplace. Rafa Garres, Eric Canete, Liam Sharp, Arthur Suydam, Dave Stevens and Kent Williams all contributed artwork to at least one of Verotik’s many comic books. When you re-examine some of the covers to Verotik titles like Jaguar God, Valkyrie or Weird Voodoo, they still look pretty damn good even by modern standards. Painted covers like these have withstood the test of time; good writing and artwork often endures and stays relevant for years.

Legacy of Brutality (and Comic Books)

It‘s a shame that Danzig doesn’t get more recognition for his contribution to comic books from the modern comic book community. I’ve never heard anyone mention Danzig and comics in the same sentence. For a guy who’s written songs for Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, owns his own label (Plan 9), had a long history with the Misfits, found renewed success with Samhain and again with his solo project Danzig...the guy has quite a resume. Even many punks don’t know that Samhain was essentially a punk supergroup, since their debut album featured former members of Minor Threat, Rosemary’s Babies and Reagan Youth. To switch gears entirely and begin writing and publishing comics shows how seriously he took his interest in comic books. He never compromised his artistic integrity and made exactly the kind of comics and music he wanted. Whether you personally like the results or not, you should respect that kind of commitment and discipline. It’s unfortunate for Danzig since many people in the punk/metal community would mock his comic book pursuits, and the comic industry often resents outsiders coming into the field from another medium, he rarely gets recognition from either community.

His contribution to music cannot be understated and his foray into comics cannot be dismissed as a mere cash grab or way to stay relevant. He put his money where his mouth was and was willing to invest his own money and time into his life-long love of comics. I honestly wish more people would do that. Danzig teamed with some of the best fantasy comic artists in the field at the time and wrote many of Verotik’s comics himself. He is also a graphic artist in his own right who is known to do sketches at signings and conventions. Danzig has created music for over 41 years and for 24 years he has also been involved in the production of comic books. That alone makes you a pretty cool guy in my book. His comics are about as “creator owned” as it gets and in that 24 years he has made the kinds of comics that he wants to make. You can’t dismiss that kind of artistic determination. For a guy who has always been known as the “Heavy Elvis” of punk music, his artistic portfolio is surprisingly diverse. Danzig should be accepted by the comic book community as being every bit as worthy of inclusion as any other, more accepted comic book creators.

Don’t sleep on @therealglenndanzig-blog, the dude might just surprise you.

-AG

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knockoffcollector · 7 years

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Underworld Warriors Origins, Pt. II: Skeleton Monster Ninja Wrestlers from the Tomb!

As we have seen in my previous article, Underworld Warriors (UW) show all kinds of possible incluences. They were exploiting the 80s MotU craze, and were particularly knocking off MTC’s Nightmare Warriors and Universal Monster figures. So far we have only talked about the UW figures out of their packaging, though. What we haven’t been looking at yet is that weird UW card.

None of the Underworld Warriors figures does really look like that hooded creature in a skeleton suit, that we find on the packaging. It appears that the artwork is contributing something else to the Underworld Warriors origins.

First of all: Packaging art is essential to every toyline, even (or especially) to knock-off action figures. It makes them sell. The artwork plays a major part in the figures’ marketing. The cardback literally is the background, the story telling behind the toys. The question is, what were the UW creators ripping off or cashing in on with their design?

I’d like to point out four genres that Tung Sing, the makers of UW, were mimicking with their packaging art. That’d be cult horror comics, lucha libre, ninjas, and Japanese superheroes.

Indeed, the style of the UW artwork reminds me of old horror comic book covers. This may count for the entire UW figure designs, by the way. During my extended search on the web for vintage pulp cover art, I came across a mindblowing Tales from the Tomb artwork by Bill Alexander from 1973. The “Fleshless Corpse” kinda looks like the UW vamp. But apart from that, if you take a look at those skulls, and bones in the right corner of the piece, the symmetry, how everything is arranged, you probably have to admit that this might be the style of drawing the artist of the UW artwork had in mind. At least when he worked on that coffin and its surroundings.

Tales from the Tomb was one of many cult horror comic books that were popular during the 60s and 70s. There’s loads of other examples, such as Tales of Voodoo, Horror Tales, and Vampire Tales. A pretty good archive of these magazines can be found at https://comicvine.gamespot.com/, or http://comicbookplus.com/. I’m quite sure that the UW artwork is partially mimicking, if not even bootlegging this particular wave of horror art.

Let’s get back to that caped guy on the UW card. He’s not looking like any of the UW figures. He rather looks like a Mexican (or maybe Japanese) wrestler in a Los Hermanos Muerte suit. I guess Underworld Warriors were called Ultra Tumba Luchadores in Spanish speaking countries for a reason! If you ask me, Tung Sing knew exactly what they were doing, and set to exploit wrestling or lucha libre popculture in the best possible way, too. It’s safe to assume that legendary luchador and Mexican folk hero El Santo († 1984), and his legacy of weird monster movies and comics, had some impact on the UW esthetics, as well.

Another thing that strikes me about our apparent UW luchador is his ninja-like chain weapon. It’s not just the weapon, though. It’s the whole body language that looks suspicious. Isn’t our caped guy executing some sort of ninja-move?! A ninja-wrestler in a skeleton suit, what crazy combination is that! Right, the 70s and 80s experienced a massive martial arts hype, reaching a peak in the mid-80s with countless Ninjaploitation movies, video games, and action figures. To list them all would fill an entire book on its own. I’m only naming Remco’s five inch action figure line Secret of the Ninja from 1984, the unbranded Ghost Warriors from 1985, and Select's Ninja Assassin from 1985, to give an idea of what kind of martial arts themed toys were around when UW eventually came out in 1986.

Classic Hong Kong Ninjaploitation VHS cover art, Silver Dragon Ninja (1986).

Ninja / Ninja Mission Video Game (1986).

Advertisement of Remco’s Secret of the Ninja (1984).

I’m particular naming Ghost Warriors and Ninja Assassin because zombies in samurai gear, and monsters in ninja suits certainly share a common theme with our beloved mythic fighters from the underworld. This simply seems to be the kind of stuff that kids were digging back in the days!

Ghost Warriors pic courtesy of Jason Pi.

As a Hong Kong based company, Tung Sing had the sets of many exploitation flicks right at their door step. Hong Kong – the Mekka of 70s and 80s knock-off culture! They knew what was going on. Monsters were an all time classic, wrestling boomed, ninjas boomed, so why not mixing it all up? Last but not least, concerning our silver colored monster ninja luchador on the UW packaging, there’s one iconic Japanese superhero I’d like to mention in particular. It seems like the skull faced, and red caped Golden Bat or Japanese Ogon Bat could have served as a blueprint for the UW artwork! I’d even go this far and call our UW ninja “Silver Bat” a Golden Bat knock-off!

Golden Bat’s first appearances date back to the early 1930s, but it gained wider recognition due to three tokusatsu movies released between 1955 and 1972. It’s often referred to as the first Japanese superhero.

It seems weird that one of the first superheroes of popculture bears a skull face. Anyhow, it’s this very weird idea that Tung Sing were adopting for their creations. As the name suggests, “Underworld Warriors” were supposed to be warriors, not villains. They were supposed to be the good guys!

Let’s draw a conclusion, before we get lost in the depths of contemplation of the relativity of good and evil. With their packaging artwork Tung Sing were extremely smart in adding more popular, and international franchises and genres to their figures. Monsters, wrestlers, ninjas, and Japanese superheroes - it’s all there. Mashed up, knocked off, and exploited in the best possible way. “Skeleton Monster Ninja Wrestlers from the Tomb“ would possibly be the perfect description for an UW figure in its packaging. The best of all worlds combined! I’d buy that for the dollar the Underworld Warriors were retailing at back in the days… or the hundreds of bucks they’re going for today.

#underworld warriors #classic monsters #wrestling #lucha libre #mexican wrestling #santo #exploitation #ninjas #ninjaploitation #knock-off toys #knock off toys #motuko #golden bat #ogon bat #tokusatsu

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