Ten
years ago the greatest force of good the Pioneer Valley had ever
known simply vanished into thin air. What became of the Western
Massachusetts Avengers?
Western
Massachusetts Avengers was a comic book that Noah Smith and
I wrote, drew, and promoted while in high school. Featuring no
less than two Batman parodies, the comic was published by us in
a copy shop and sold at a local store. It gained somewhat of an
odd following, with us receiving fan mail from Hampshire College
students, local newspaper editors, as well as 9th graders and
Noah's brother Abe. Real life and incredibly lazy editors (read:
me) and spontaneous bouts of procrastination kept us from
publishing beyond Issue 4, although we had at least 12 issues
planned out and a Secreted Wars mini-series. Issue 5 ("A
Whole Buncha Fights!") remains partially inked, and considered
by me to have our best artwork.
Hopefully
some day I'll remember to start scanning the issues in so you
can see the hilarity and violation of the laws of perspective
yourself, but for now you'll have to make do with textual representations.
The
team of good guys featured the following drawn by Noah:
Molar
Man and Kid Kanine, our Batman & Robin pastiche
The
Teenage Mutant Ninja Republicans -- Ford, Bush,
Nixon and Reagan in turtlesque form, guided by Fragment,
a giant talking elephant. Years later, Robert Smigel would come
up with The X-Presidents, and Noah and I would just smile.
Toast
Rider, who said things like "Blirp de bew!" and
"Yeah, don't worry, you're not so bad."
My
contributions to the comic included:
No
Homework Man, slayer of teachers and friend to kids everywhere
Bratman,
our Dark Knight ripoff parody
Captain
Ireland, a hero patterned after our Irish pal Neill
Rutabaga
Woman, our first heroine
Captain
Cosmos and Bionic Cosmos, two characters who got lumped
together for no apparent reason, really
Feldspar,
a guy-in-a-battle-suit from Dimension 88 who'd come in from time
to time to help our heroes out. He was the one who got the special
element to turn No Homework Man back from a bagel in Issue #4.
Zamfir
Quark, one of Bush's "thousand points of light".
He was the most fun to draw. He also provided the means of getting
the TMNR from Washington to Amherst -- instantaneous transportation!
w00t!
And
what's a good comic book without villians?
The
Evil Entity was our first villian, who in Issue #1 hid out
in an abandoned drugstore and required aluminum cans to gain his
strength. Think a dark, foreboding presence in a giant, scary
cloak -- with a clown nose for no real reason.
The
Evil Entity's Lackey was the one who actually stole the cans,
teleporting back to the hideout when he got a good haul. Unfortunately
he'd leave his clothes behind when teleporting.
Ms.
Price was No Homework Man's teacher nemesis from the very
start. Large and seemingly in charge, she had a fondness for cloning
herself and growing to Godzilla proportions. In Issue #4, she
attempted to take over the Avengers, much to No Homework Man's
dismay. He got so mad he tried to smash Price over the head with
the bow of the Titanic.
A.
Restum showed up in Issue #2 as the evil police chief of Amherst
(get it? A. Restum? Har har!) He had some beef with all superheroes
and arrested our pals for various and sundry reasons. He also
had many policeman lackeys who all wore extremely silly police
hats.
Ronald
Dump conspired with A. Restum in Issues #2 and #3. Your typical
billionaire megalomaniac, Dump wanted to buy up the entire town
of Amherst and turn it into Dumpville USA, his gigantic casino
resort town. Luckily this didn't happen, or else we'd all be dealing
cards right about now.
The
Squidmongers were a band of mercenaries-for-hire brought in
by Dump in Issue #3 to enforce Dump's buyout of the town. They
contracted out for a giant killer robot, only to fall victim to
the inches-not-feet trap that befell Spinal Tap in the early 80s.
The
Reptile faced Toast Rider in a special extra for Issue #2.
He is known today for the wonderful phrase "Me not buttpal!
Me Reptile!"
So
the question was begged of me (begged by me as well): What would
the WMA look like in 2001? Probably the same as before, really
-- I haven't exactly had the opportunity to evolve as an artist
since and I'm not sure about Noah. At any rate, I'd at least like
to have a fresh start on some of the creative process, seeing
as how half our characters are copyright infringements and the
other half are, well, somewhat non-PC (Captain Ireland, I'm looking
at you, put down the beer.) I'd like to salvage as much as I could
if I were giving it a new start, and this is what I'd probably
end up doing.
The
art below isn't mine or Noah's -- I found a nifty site called
heromachine.com
where you can create your own dynamic superheroes from the templates
given. It's a lot of fun and you should try it sometime. With
this I came up with a core group of characters, including 5 originals.
Decibel was a character I was planning on introducing at
some point. Scarlett Pimpernel, Lucre, and Sister Mary
Beatdown are entirely new creations as of March 22nd. Hey,
inspiration strikes, not much you can do about it 'cept take it
and go.
