Monday, July 2, 2018

Live models portraying DC Comics characters in print

The 1990s were a drought for live action DC Comics superheroes

(Those days seem light-years from the current landscape, where the CW's Arrowverse has included dozens of unlikely characters from Gypsy to Ragman and a DC streaming service launching later this year will bring us Hawk and Dove and Robotman.)

The entire decade, the only two capes to appear in feature films were Batman (plus Robin and Batgirl) and Steel. The TV shows were limited to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Superboy, Swamp Thing, The Flash, and Human Target, and only the first three lasted more than a season. 

Oh, let's not forget the 1997 Baby Ruth commercial featuring...Hawkman? (And mentioning fairly obscure villain Lionmane?)


Because of this dearth, it stood out even more when the print comics used live models to portray characters. Aside from Vertigo, it happened only twice that I can determine, once in an ad and once on a cover:

1994

1995 
(The Grand Comics Database says 
the model is named Chris Eades.)

If you know others, please let me know in the comments.

11/18/20 addendum: I am sure there are also non-DC examples of live models portraying superheroes on covers, but I'll leave that compilation to someone else...with an exception. Thanks to Ross Pearsall at Super Team-Family: The Lost Issues, I have learned of a very early instance...1944. Plus it's a female character! Too surprising to not mention:

1 comment:

Archi said...

my database tells me that Chris Eades was an Assistant Editor at DC Comics from about 1993 to 1996 on series like Sovereign Seven, Gunfire and Firebrand.

Bye,

Archi