Back in 1983, Kim Metzger disparaged a trend he saw in Marvel Comics’ The Uncanny X-Men in his “Four-Color Comment” column in The Comics Buyer’s Guide. He was commenting on the intrusion of punk stylings into the character designs, which he viewed as triumph of style over substance to the point of warping the characters. He was specifically concerned with the recent change in Ororo “Storm” Munroe from her original long-haired and caped Nature goddess character design to a skintight leather bodysuit and short Mohawk. While he allowed that the new design was indeed striking in its “cool” edginess, it was totally out of character for her, in effect turning her into a completely different character with the same name and powers. He saw the same thing happening at DC with the Legion of Super Heroes, a sort of creeping hipness altering the face of comics, and not for the better.

“If this goes one, all of our beloved characters will be reduced to teenage mutant ninja with Mohawks!” he bemoaned.

From that offhand comment and the image it inspired, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were born.

Metzger was indeed prophetic. Within a few years, most of the nominal heroes had sprouted blades and chains and non-functional buckles and adopted such a dark demeanor that they more closely resembled the villains of old, only even nastier.

I foresee a similar wave of change springing from this, an unholy fusion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Powerpuff Girls, as if Princess Morbucks had indeed became genuinely heroic.

No good can come of this, I tell you. No good at all.

http://morningglorious.livejournal.com/4208.html

Revenge, that’s been the only thing keeping him going since the night Mary had been butchered by a monster nearly a year ago. During that time he had to find out, that those monsters had most of the town in their pocket keeping this and similar incidents hidden. All he had accomplished apart from being robbed, mugged, wounded and nearly killed at least once, was grilling one of those brainwashed servants the vampires keep around - AJ’s greatest success so far, yet when his master turned up… that was the point when AJ finally gave up.

That’s the reason why AJ was staring at the table - last week when he picked up this thing he waved it around to examine it, the next thing he knew was waking up in his bed with a vague memory what had happened. The only proof was a small heap of ash and some small charred bones on his nightstand. For several days he had racked his mind whether he should try it again and hope to avenge her, although he would have only little hope of influencing the outcome, because he had been overcome with strange feelings when he used this “wand”. Finally he grabbed it and got ready to leave the house.

The cold wind blew through the small alley between the two old tenement blocks, the location of one of the entrances to the lair of one those leeches, the only one he knew. Cautiously he sneaked closer and finally drew out his secret weapon. A few dramatic gestures later he felt a tingly sensation in every part of his body followed by a flash of light. When he opened his eyes again, the alley seemed both larger and brighter. She made sure every ribbon on her uniform was on it’s right place and then gripped her scepter tight and marched to the door. She knocked on the locked door with her fist. After some time the door opened an inch or two and someone asked “what do you want?”. She replied “In the name of all that is cute, I am pretty sparkly princess and I am going to squeeze you!”. The door was jerked open and the residents laughed at the girl with the sky blue hair in a pink dress. She only whirled around, the ribbons on her dress flapped in the wind and cried “super sparkly cutefy!”, the scepter flashed. Moments later the room, now painted in garish colors and decorated with flowers, ribbons and stuffed animals was empty, save ten chibi-bodyguards and one chibi-vampire in the size of a sparrow.

Oh, and I’m the Amy from the forums.

seriously, it seems… kinda cliche.

but maybe i’m theonly one that watches anime…