Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Bold Fashion Choices--Whip It Good!

Look, I'm not going to claim that when Whiplash debuted in the late 60s, he had a great costume...or even a good one.

Yeah, pretty silly. But Gene Colan made it work. The color scheme proved a good contrast to Iron Man's. And while that normally would be enough flying-everywhere fabric to drive Edna Mode mad, again it makes a nice juxatposition with the sleek but metallic armor.

Later, in the 80s, for reasons, he became Blacklash. Stupid name, but perhaps a better costume:

Again, not the best, but I kind of like how it evokes the Zorro/19th century man of action feeling, a look not inappropriate for a man with a whip.

But then came the 1990s. Oh, 90s, was there nothing you can't ruin?

Yes, someone decided that dressing up Whiplash in full fetish gear was a look that we wanted in our villains.




How bad, terrible, awful was that costume? It was so abominable that when Iron Man 2 came around with a godawful design...

..and the comics felt the need to mimic it...

...they actually looked good compared to the 90s version.

So that's how bad the 90s were--they made crappy things look good by comparison.

2 comments:

Jonathan Hendry said...

The shredded orange jumpsuit Whiplash is wearing in the Iron Man movie actually kinda resembles (to me, anyway) the original costume's orange parts. Which is kind of interesting.

Warren JB said...

Do you ever get the feeling that comics haven't really crawled out of the 90s yet? I get it all the time. I mean they try, but then we get things like Penance, and 'Dark Nights: Metal', and this.