Day Eighty-Five: I've Never Seen Purple Underwear Before
Yesterday we saw that Marvel Comics can do "serious" and "meaningful". Today we see, not for the first time and doubtless not for the last, that it can also do "daft". Today's topic is perhaps only second to MODOK in the ranks of notably bizarre villains whose very name is guaranteed to elicit a little cheer from the less reverent Marvel fans - He Whose Limbs Shatter Mountains And Whose Back Scrapes The Sun himself, the lizardy wizard, Fin Fang Foom!
Take a moment where you are right now, and enjoy saying that name a few times. Revel in the terribly satisfying repetitive fricative of it, the great pleasure to be taken in bellowing it directly from the diaphragm like you've dug him out of La Brea yourself and are ready to conquer your local 24-hour shop and off-licence. Fin Fang Foom! FIN FANG FOOM! Everyone, all together now:
Lord Foom (as he likes to be called) hails originally from the planet Kakaranathara (also known as Maklu IV). He came to Earth squillions of years ago, with nothin' but conquerin' on his mind. He got hopped up on ancient Chinese goofballs and had a bit of a severely long lie, peppering his dormancy with occasional forays into terrifying rampage. Most recently, Iron Man's arch-nemesis the Mandarin decided that he wanted to hang out with someone else for whom "orange" was a big part of their shtick and revived Fin Fang to do his bidding. Since then, it's been hero fights a-go-go. He used to be orangey-brown, now he's green. He wears huge purple pants. GSOH, own car, likes long walks on the beach & chick flicks.
Fin Fang Foom, as a story device, is brilliant. He's a walking destruction machine with a bulletproof ego and a bulletproof hide who can be guaranteed to give Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man or whoever dares (or, as FFF himself would say, DARES!!!!!) to go up against him a jolly good fight with plenty of property damage and over-the-top melodramatic banter on the way. In recent years, he's been a source of deserved ribbing - I mean, I'm all for maintaining the dignity of the fictional characters, but they're not real people, y'know? We are allowed to have a bit of fun at their expense. If it helpes soothe the consciences of those who believe that these pretendy people should be spoken of reverently, if Foom was a real person (or dragon, or alien) then he'd already have such a massive chip on his shoulder that he wouldn't notice. Anyway, yes, the comedy. He's been sighted recently in Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's Nextwave, putting robots into his purple pants. He's also featured in Scott Gray and Roger Langridge's excellent Marvel monsters stories, which feature a sarcastic Fin Fang Foom who's been shrunk to human size and rehabilitated (one of which I linked to just before Christmas).
In all seriousness, though, there really are people who can't see the joy of Fin Fang Foom. His very name cries it from the rooftops - he's the only remnant we have now of the brilliantly strange and demented 1950s monster comics, where Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others would give us creatures like Tim Boo Bah, Monstrollo, Googam (Son of Goom!) and the Creature from Krangro (as dutifully and fascinatingly detailed on this blog). He's a symbol of invention and a total lack of self-consciousness. He's a big daft monster with a huge chip on his shoulder and he wears purple pants. There is absolutely nothing that is not to love about this guy. Fin Fang Foom. A name to say with pride!
