Monday, May 7, 2012

Make Way for The Avengers!

This is going to be an annoying post for some of you, but perhaps others will get a hoot out of it. Quite a while back, being a comic book fan as a youth, I did a post on my favorite superhero team ever, The Legion of Superheroes. I also posted some pictures of drawings I'd done of many of the members of the team. With all the hubbub surrounding the release of the new movie The Avengers, I decided to dig out some more of my old "artwork" and share it here. The only defense I can make for it is that these were done in one fell swoop, in ink, with no pencil sketching beforehand or any other "pre-drawing," just freehand.


Back in 1986 through 1988, I worked at a restaurant called Perkins as a waiter and as the third shift supervisor. We had these pads of paper back in these pre-computer days used for issuing a customer a receipt for use on expense reports, taxes, etc... Always one unable to leave a blank piece of paper alone, I found myself occasionally sketching and doodling on the backs of these papers during down time. Eventually, I took to drawing all the members I could think of of my second favorite superhero team, The Avengers, and before long was coloring them in at home. (Why, I don't know... I think I just wanted to have a tangible sort of card - like a trading card almost - for each of the heroes. I used to shuffle them around and do a weird sort of process of elimination "game" with them to pass the time.)


To mark the occasion of the movie The Avengers (which I won't see, but oh well...), I am going to post those original drawings of the same members who make up the team in the flick. This is roughly the way they looked in the 1980s. There is Iron Man:


Captain America:


Thor:

The Hulk:


Hawkeye:


And Black Widow:
Here are some other selections from the first set of Avengers cards I made. These are not necessarily the most famous members of the team, just ones I was willing to put out there. The Falcon:


Mantis:

Scarlet Witch (my all-time favorite heroine, who has her own profile here elsewhere):


Yellowjacket:


Sub-Mariner:


Hellcat:


Black Panther:


Vision:
A few years later is when I made those Legion drawings (on 3x5 index cards) and when I was done with those, I started making cards for other DC heroes and then a plethora of Marvel heroes. So, again, I will post some more Avengers, starting with the ones from the movie. Oddly, some of the earlier drawings are better than the later ones, so I don't know that I ever improved! LOL Some of these are in their classic looks. Others were reimagined by me (I had aspirations as a youth for being a costume designer, so sometimes I didn't follow the uniforms exactly.) For whatever reason, I never re-drew The Hulk, so he is absent in this collection. So we have Iron Man:

Captain America:


Thor:


Hawkeye:


Black Widow:


Scarlet Witch:


Vision:


Yellowjacket:


Falcon:


Wasp:

Hercules:


Hellcat:


Tigra:


Moondragon:


Wonder Man:
Maybe you got a little chuckle out of these rudimentary cave drawings. I have been SWAMPED at work, but will be back very soon with another post!

3 comments:

Ken said...

Lol, I do the same thing. I would draw super heroes and demon princes and arch-devils (from the Dungeons and Dragon game) on index cards as well.

NotFelixUnger said...

This is another instance where it feels like it was the same youth. I suspect many other are out there too.

I never drew the Avengers though I collected quite a few from that series. (Oh, try as I might, I cannot recall Black Widow, though I have no problem with Yellow Jacket or Wasp or their little pills whom I'm sure they stole from the Atom in the DC Universe.)

Still, I did draw Fantastic Four (and Fantastic Five) for a while as well as constantly drawing Wonder Woman (and Super Girl and Bat Girl and Medusa from Marvel) in various poses disposing of some villain or other, all while they were looking incredibly fresh and ready for more dastardly action.

The Legion of Super Heroes was my #1 favorite though and I've been smiling all the while reading this excellent post. My favorites were Duo Damsel and Shrinking Violet. Later my favorite became Princess Projectra. I think she (PP) was dating Timber Wolf (woof)at the time. :-)

Thanks for the memories!

Poseidon3 said...

NotFelixUnger, please tell me you looked at my old post about the Legion! (Click on "Legion of SuperHeroes" in the long list of subjects on the right.) It will be right up your alley. Projectra dated Karate Kid and Light Lass (previously and later Lightning Lass!) dated Timber Wolf. I shudder to think how many pages of white typing paper I went through drawing, drawing, DRAWING as a kid, yet I really never progressed much! LOL