Monday, August 15, 2005

Top Five Superhero Toy Tie-Ins!

Today's list is for the top five comics that tied into superhero tie-ins. And I do not mean comics that were adaptations of toy lines (like GI Joe), but actual superhero comics that were written to coincide with superhero lines of toys.

5. This title just came out last week - Marvel Mega Morphs!

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

The conceit is that various Marvel heroes and villains fight each other in large robots designed with the person's particular abilities in mind.

So Spider-Man's robot turns into a spider, etc.

How Ghost Rider was convinced to control a giant robot with a giant robot flaming head is beyond me.

4. In the early 80s, DC finally "outgrew" being Super Friends, so they changed the name of the new cartoon featuring their heroes to Super Powers, which coincided with a new line of toys.

DC also had a series tying into it, with covers and plot by Jack Kirby!!

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

3. In the mid to late 70s, DC actually had someone whose responsibility was to look into DC comics and see if there was any good possibility to work in a toy tie-in. For instance, if Joker was fighting Batman, why not have a Joker VAN?

Stuff like that.

The most direct tie-in such as this was the storyline from Action Comics #481-483, where Superman loses his powers, and must create a SuperMOBILE that can mimic his powers.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

2. The second-best tie in, in my view, was Christopher Priest's 1996 mini-series Total Justice, where he managed to make the concept of various DC heroes needing special armor actually seem quite interesting.

Courtesy of his website, here are some samples from the series...

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

1. Secret Wars has to take the top spot. Probably THE ultimate example of actually fun, brainless comic books. This was the Die Hard of comic books (in that it set the standard for action series from that point on).

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

And Mike Zeck ruled!!!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have one of those supermobiles. The little fists actually have spring action, (good) but the supermobile has no wheels!

8/20/2005 2:28 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home