A typically offbeat, colorful story of the Man of Steel done up in plastic…
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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. You’ll be hearing from comics creators, regular 13th Dimension contributors and more. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan
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TOYHEM! isn’t really a single series of stories. It’s sort of a series of series. We have the 13-day Custom Mego Box of the Day, for example. (Click here.)
But we also have TOYHEM! MEMORIES – a collection of guest essays by comics creators on their favorite childhood toys.
In this installment, we give you Tom Peyer, the ever-irreverent editor-in-chief of AHOY COMICS, whose brilliant Dragonfly and Dragonflyman #2 is out Dec. 11.
Tom has a typically offbeat recollection of a toy that needed his own special twist…
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By TOM PEYER
When I was a kid, the great super-heroes were overseen by business-people who hadn’t yet figured out that every dime in the world belonged in their pockets, so we had very little in the way of comics-related toys. Which was largely OK with me; all the more money for comic books.
But I did get the Aurora Superman model kit, even though I was relatively uncoordinated and lazy, because Superman. And I put the whole thing together, a major feat for me at the time.
For some reason, though, I changed Superman’s color scheme. There’s an old story where Jimmy Olsen uses a magic wishing totem to will a Supergirl into existence — this is before Kara — and when they reprinted it in the post-Maid of Might era, they gave her an orange tunic where it was originally blue.
So that’s how I colored my model kit:
Recreation by Anthony Durso
I must have been really bored.
Also by Durso
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MORE
— The Complete TOYHEM! Index of Features and Columns. Click here.
— TOYHEM! MEMORIES: CAPTAIN ACTION, by MICHAEL EURY. Click here.
December 7, 2019
Wow, that is a twisted story, Tom. “Inspired by the inaccurate reprint!” Maybe if you could afford $5 to splurge on Superman model kits, you could experiment to your heart’s content. My aim was always to do the best (and most faithful) job I was capable of doing at whatever age.
Actually, LCA (Licensing Corporation of America) was part of National-DC and did a pretty good job of expanding the existing market for DC merchandise, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, you had to convince a manufacturer that he was going to make money!
December 7, 2019
I like that repaint of Superman’s outfit. 🙂
December 8, 2019
My partner Mary just said that, with the orange color and the wall, I predicted Trump!