It isn’t easy standing in other people’s shadows. Superheroes from the X-Men to Superman, from Spider-Man to The Avengers have swept the cinemas. Batman and the Justice League deck all manner of undergarments at the WebUndies online store.
illustration by erin dawson | summer arg
The following heroes may lack underwear deals, but they work as hard as the others to keep us safe from a universe of boogiemen.
Doc Samson
Psychiatrist and teacher Dr. Leonard Samson is a gamma-radiation-based superhero similar to The Incredible Hulk. He collaborated with Bruce Banner, the Hulk’s fully-clothed alter ego, to save Banner’s love interest Betty Ross from a mysterious condition. Doc Samson exposed himself to gamma radiation left over from the procedure and developed superhuman physical strength and durability along with a kickin’ green hair-do.
He’s spent his life trying to cure Banner of his Hulk condition and has often gone toe-to-toe with the green bruiser. Unlike the Hulk, his powers and ripped abs are permanent rather than awakened by emotional surges. His unaltered memories and cognitive capabilities allow him to pulverize his enemies with psychoanalysis as well as his fists.
He can bench press more than 100 tons, roughly the mass of five Tyrannosaurus Rexes on each end of the bar. He can leap from a jet 4,000 feet in the air, hit the sidewalk at terminal velocity in front of a Starbucks and stroll inside for a trenta quad-shot I-don’t-give-a-frappuccino. He even died once and was resurrected.
Good looks, a genius intellect, a noble heart and a unique resume make it hard to keep this “gamma” man down.
Huntress Helena Rosa Bertinelli
This vigilante heroine has at least two primary alter egos depending on how far one reads into the DC comics universe. The character Helena Rosa Bertinelli was born into the prominent Gotham City Bertinelli mob clan and donned the “Huntress” guise to take revenge for internal family murders. Longing for vengeance but lacking resolve, she found inspiration in Gotham’s Dark Knight. She saw what scared the mob after Batman crashed her family’s Christmas party and decked the halls with their teeth.
It wouldn’t be her last run-in with the Caped Crusader. Though her motives began with cold-blooded malice against her family’s assassins and general criminal corruption, the Huntress showed redeeming qualities. She survived five gunshots from the Joker and earned Batman’s respect. She renounced her vengeful path in the moral fallout of retribution against her family’s true assassins and Batman funded her new threads and wheels. She later saved his bat-bacon when she fended off his foes in Crime Alley and hoisted him into the Batmobile.
The Huntress is a cunning detective and quick on her feet. She knows Dragon Style Kung Fu and can split a bullet in the air with a crossbow bolt. She also designs her own costumes. Tyra’s got nothing on this “top model.”
Cloak and Dagger
Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen were teenage runaways when they met in the alleys of New York City. Johnson saved Bowen from a purse snatcher, but both were lured into a deadly experimental drug test soon after. They survived the tests, escaped the narcotics developer and realized the drug afforded them remarkable and complementary powers. Johnson became Cloak and absorbed the life force of his victims inside his ethereal darkened form. Bowen became Dagger and hurled blades of light at her foes. The two stuck together and took the fight to drug dealers who preyed on runaway teens and also helped cure drug addicts.
The duo has worked alongside various heroes and faced numerous villains. They joined Spider-Man in his struggle against a vicious group of enemies led by Carnage, a psychotic serial killer with alien powers. Dagger proved instrumental in the fight to stem the bloody tide and nearly lost her life saving Spider-Man in the conflict. She was thought dead but recuperated inside of Cloak’s dark abyss.
Cloak can drain people’s lives inside his shadows and teleport himself and others through the same darkened realm. He is more powerful than Dagger and has saved her on various occasions, but her light is an effective relief for his maddening hunger. Dagger is capable of graceful street fighting and her light blades stun humans and cure addiction but are useless against non-humans.
Dependent on one another for survival, these whippersnappers wander the mean streets laying the beat down on drug dealers and helping the downtrodden.
Matt Maw can be reached