Superheroes and superheroines can wear a lot of colors: red, blue, yellow, and to a lesser extent, green. Sometimes black* or white or silver or gold.
Villains corner the market on most of the black, as well as green, orange, and purple. Funny that heroes use largely primary colors, while villains largely use secondary. But there are some colors you never see superheroes in: gray, pink, brown, tan, aqua. And if they do have these second-rate colors, they probably have second-rate powers and no-one’s ever heard of them.
There are exceptions, of course; Green Lantern is certainly a second-rater (or a mid-carder, for you wrasslin’ fans), and he’s got all kinds of green, and thanks to the movie this year, non-nerds have now heard of him.
But back to the issue: superheroes, as a rule, don’t wear gray or brown or aqua. But there is one notable exception. Not only does he wear brown, he actually does it well. And he’s huge.
True, he’s largely depicted now in black, yellow, and sometimes blue. But for a large part of his existence, this was Wolverine’s normal outfit. How does he get away with it? I guess by simply being such an awesome character. Pretty much all of Marvel’s heroes have flaws, but Logan really has problems–yet he is so real and so likable.
And when you’re the best you are at what you do, you can wear brown as a superhero.
*No, I’m not going to dignify any of those idiotic ‘black’s not a color’ arguments you might have.
Comments are closed.