Hercules, Player

Lo! And in those days, did gods walk the earth! Smiting! Fighting! Annihilating! And...loving!

And as Kevin Sorbo would tell us, the most pitching-woo-iest of the ancient gods was the Lion of Olympus, Hercules! (A slight change to the program: the part of Hercules in tonight's post will be played by the mid-nineties metrosexual version of Hercules.) Let us poor mortals now watch the wooing tactics of Mighty Hercules! (ules ules ules ules...)

Panels from Avengers Annual #23 (1994), script by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema, colors by John Kalisz, letters by Susan Crespi
(Click picture to Steve Reeves-size)


Shucks, what with his arm candy of Tori Spelling and Shannon Doherty, us ordinary guys could take a lesson or two in picking up girls from Herc, huh?...And when Herc picks up girls, he picks up girls! (rimshot) But that old Greco-Roman temper is something he has to watch, because as Carrie Bradshaw might remind him in her popular weekly column syndicated in the Olympus Plain Dealer (it's Hera's favorite section of the paper, which always ticks off Zeus because it's on the back of the daily discus game sports section):

Are we all just looking for a Mister Big, a He-Man, holding our for a hero till the edge of night? And what happens when that super man turns into a super-jerk just because you happen to make a joke about the time he murdered his wife and kids? Is that a no-no in today's dating game? Are we all just in love with a hero who's really a zero?




Smooth move, Jerkules.

But that's crazy mulleted Hercules of the nineties, and I'm pretty sure his adventures have been rendered non-A-Canon by the events in Secret Civil Houses of the 198 Dark World War Hercs. For a look at how the real Herc would make the sweet, sweet kissy-ness, you oughta check out this or this or this or this...or you could just make with the clickety-click and check out this Herc, Prince of Passion:



Yes, millennium from now, humanity will have forgotten such mythical heroes as Knight Rider, Squirrel Girl, and Lou Grant, but forever shall we sing the praises of the man who can swoon himself a dozen lady-persons at the drop of a Grecian urn. What's a Grecian urn? About ten drachmas a...oh, I'm not gonna do that joke.