Friday, March 11, 2011

Bold Fashion Choices--John Byrne's Communist Avengers

You know what was wrong with John Byrne's run on West Coast Avengers?

It was very, very VERY red.

I can't believe it was intentional, but over the first 8 issues of his run any characters who didn't wear significant amounts of red were shuffled away--Hawkeye and Mockingbird (was she Mockingskrull at that point?) left, Tigra was essentially written out (in a never-ending subplot where she stayed in her quarters all the time and went feral). Meanwhile, U.S. Agent came on board, the Wasp took to wearing mostly red, Wonder Man got a new costume, and the Vision had all of his yellow and green bleached away. So by the time we got to issue #50 (1989):

I mean, that's a whole lot of red there, without any other primary colors to distract us.

Reading these issues meant having to rub your eyes and check to make sure they weren't bloodshot, because you got scene after scene of groups of people in red standing together and talking. Visine time.

But wait, we're not done yet! In that very same issue:

The Original Human Torch joined, in his head-to-toe all-red costume!! But wait--there's more!! Just one page later:

Iron Man rejoins, in his predominantly red armor!! As a bunch of guys dressed in red watch him.

Byrne was gone a few months later, and the red lessened: Hawkeye returned, Tigra got better, Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) joined, Quicksilver joins...

So, did Byrne have the market cornered on red ink, or what? It's hard to imagine that he didn't notice, right? Was he deliberately bringing in all the red he could?

Or did he want characters who all just happened to be red? If so, surely he could have redone some costumes, right? Maybe Iron Man's was relatively sacrosanct. But he just completely refurbished the Vision, and probably nobody at marvel would have squawked to loudly if he had given makeovers to Hank Pym's red jumpsuit or Wonder Man's costume, for example.

Maybe he lost a bet...I'm just sayin', that was an awful lot of red!

13 comments:

Austin Gorton said...

Holy crap, that's insane! Also, I've read that run a handful of times, and I'm appalled I never noticed all the red...

Eyz said...

My take on this?
...behind the scenes running joke perhaps?



(no! really! These sort of things do happen in the comic industry! I read some similar stories for the french-belgium publication Spirou)

Chris said...

And that run was the last thing he did that I liked....now it's ruined. Thanks, Snell.

snell said...

Teebore--I had never really noticed it, either, until a recent read-thru.

Eyz--Undoubtedly. Or maybe even Byrne being persnickety--maybe DeFalco had told him he had too many red characters, and Byrne said, "oh, yeah? I'll show you..."

Chris--Really? The color of the costumes of the characters he used ruined it for you? You must not have liked it that much to begin with, then...

Anonymous said...

Maybe he's a communist?

MOCK! said...

I've never joined Byrne's official Forum, but I think I need to look around and see if he ever addressed this....

Chris said...

I think you're right, Snell.

Siskoid said...

But he made the Vision, who has red skin, white!

Still, better red than dead!

snell said...

Siskoid--true. But the trade off was losing a relative small amount of red (only the Vision's face was exposed, usually) while also losing a ton more of green and yellow...so the net effect of the Vision's transformation was mainly to remove the only significant source of non red/black costuming.

Martin Gray said...

And what about the Avengers' villains. Did they become a Rouge Gallery?

Siskoid said...

Martin: Ouch!

That reminds me. Why is Madame Rouge always dressed in blue?

hueysheridan said...

Im coming in years late on this thread, but Im surprised no-one on here has noted that John Byrne is color-blind. I think that condition can vary though, so I cant say if he can see red specifically or not.

hueysheridan said...
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