Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Monochrome

Superhero costumes are often garish mixes of clashing colors -- just look at the Golden Age Green Lantern, with his bewildering combination of red, green, purple, and yellow, or Vibe's blindness-inducing original yellow, red, and black fighting togs. Some heroes get around this with sensible color combinations -- red and blue (Superman, Spider-Man, the Atom), green and black (the Green Lantern Corps), two shades of the same color blue (Green Arrow, the Blue Beetle).

Others, though, take a monochromatic approach: If a costume is all one color, it HAS to match!

We've got the original Ray, who dressed all in yellow; his son opted for a mix of yellow, white, and black, but was back in a variation of the original suit for Kingdom Come.

Also in Kingdom Come, we saw the Blue Beetle don metallic armor that was entirely one shade of blue.

For most of his career, Daredevil has worn a costume that's entirely red. Elektra has tended to wear either all red or all white, depending (I think) on whether she's alive or dead at the moment.

The Golden Age Robotman was entirely silver, and each of the Metal Men was all one color.

On the Justice League cartoon, Amazo started out as gray before turning golden.

I'm sure there are folks out there I'm missing. Anyone have anything to add?

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