Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Hairless Heroes

Jon asked me an interesting question after we saw "Iron Man." He noticed various similarities between Obadiah Stane and Lex Luthor, and asked me if, besides Professor X, there were any bald superheroes. After all, it's easy to rattle off bald villains: besides those two, you have Kingpin, the Vulture, Ultra-Humanite (sometimes), Puppet Master, Brainiac, Dr. Sivana, and so on. It gets exponentially bigger if you accept a fringe (Mr. Mxyzptlk, Red Ghost, etc.).

I thought for a few minutes, but I didn't come up with much. There are quite a few black heroes who are or have been bald--Steel, Black Lightning, Luke Cage, Ultimate Nick Fury, John Stewart, Patriot. There are some aliens--Martian Manhunter, Silver Surfer, Chameleon Boy--and some not-quite-humans--the Thing, Red Tornado, Vision. There are even a bunch of bald servants and sidekicks to heroes: Alfred Pennyworth, Edwin Jarvis, Wong. Even the JSA, where it would really be expected, the only bald hero is one of the youngest members, Jakeem Thunder.

Can anyone expand the list? Why is there such a color gap among bald heroes? Why isn't it acceptable to have bald Caucasian heroes, or Asian heroes, or Hispanic heroes? Why does the combo of "bald" and "white" seem almost universally to mean "old" or "evil"?

5 comments:

Johnny Bacardi said...

Don't know if he qualifies as a "hero" necessarily, but there's Mister X...

Richard said...

Not "superheroes" but heroic protagonists of comics published by DC: Spider Jerusalem and Gideon "King Mob" Stargrave.

Jason said...

Um...Dr. Druid?

Sea-of-Green said...

Kilowog doesn't have hair! ;-)

Matthew E said...

plok did a thing about baldness on A Trout in the Milk which might be of interest to you. Dashed if I can recall what the article was called, though...