Thursday, April 06, 2006

Beat the Clock

I much preferred super-villains to superheroes as a kid. Super-villains were like the little girl with the curl -- when they were good, they were very, very good, but when they were bad, they were horrid.

Seanbaby writes about one of the stupidest (and most stupid looking) villains of all time, the little-known Clock King. Just check out that hideous costume.

And this great quote: "DC's Who's Who described him bluntly as "An average athlete... He has no special weapons or powers." Think how hilarious the police scanner would be after a Clock King crime: "Attention officers, we have reports of the suspect in the area. He is unarmed and should be considered badly dressed. Apprehending officers are advised to use caution - reports indicate the suspect loves clocks. Repeat: He enjoys clocks very much. Over."

Another great stupid villain is the Rainbow Raider, who apparently turned to a life of crime because he is color-blind. As we all would.

3 comments:

Steph said...

When it said that he was a villain named "Clock King", I immediately thought that it was Flavor Flav. Now THAT would be something to write a comic strip about.

Toby O'B said...

In the old 'Batman' series, Walter Slezak played a character named the Clock King. I don't think there's supposed to be a connection between the two versions.

Anonymous said...

And then in Batman: The Animated Series, they took a completely different approach to the Clock King, one which, given your appreciation for Seanbaby's snark, you'd probably get a kick out of. There, he was an almost perfectly unassuming elderly gentleman with a dark suit-coat, small wire-frame spectacles, and a very sour expression. Okay, so his "cane" was really an abnormally large hour or minute hand lifted from some horridly large clock. And he tended favor timed devices. And he had this most unerring sense of timing for escapes, and a vendetta against the mayor for screwing up his timing on what was to be the day of his largest court case.

This Clock King was angry. And much better explained. And he could be remarkably subtle—a far cry from those olden comic book days when it seemed characters were at the tops of their lungs, using word balloons so spiky it's a wonder they bothered with dialog and didn't just grab those word balloons and tried clubbing each other to death. But then again, video doesn't need word balloons.