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