The Wonderful World (-616) of Color

Children of the atom! Students of Charles Xavier! Mutants! Feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect! These are the strangest heroes of them all: The X-Men! Or, if you're Spanish, Patrulla-X! (That's the X-Men with paella on the side, and your choice of flan!)

Of course, the early overseas editions of Marvel comics occasionally suffered from...shall we say...some odd interpretations on their covers. As exhibit A, I give you: Los 4 Fantásticos!

But even when comic companies publish licensed Marvel Comics and use the original cover art, things sometimes get a little...colorful. May I present a Technicolor look at Marvel's Merry Mutants as seen in Spain: Los Weirdly-Colored Hijos del Átomo!

For instance, here the X-Men face off against the menace of...The Blue Magneto!





And the daisy-colored peril of Yellow Juggernaut!







Not to mention Red Polaris!





Can the X-Men survive The Christmas Sentinels? They'd better watch out!





And this is either The Red Beast or Wolverine with a Suntan! SPF, Logan! SPF!





But none of this can prepare you for the Sensational Character Find of 1980, Caucasian Blonde Storm! She's the mutant superhero even Nigel Farage can love!





Yes, Caucasian Blonde Storm! And her team-mate, Caucasian Blonde Nightcrawler!





And their team-mate, Emerald Colossus!





And they're all fighting against Blonde Jean Grey! Okay, okay, I'll admit this one's kinda pushing the joke. But she's Jean Blonde!





Yes, yes, yes, we laff and laff at Patrulla-X's weirdly colored X-Men. Still, it's not quite as bad a stretch as what Australia's Newton Comics did to the X-Men. Not only is Magneto color-coded by a six year old, but the original yellow-and-blue X-Men costumes have been recolored to try to look like their post-X-Men #39 new costumes! And not only what the Sam Scratch is up with the Beast's skin color, but is that monkey bar really hanging from the Avengers logo?!?





Here's an only slightly better attempt to match the original X-Men with their redesigned costumes. Makes you long for that free inside super color poster, doesn't it?





Yes, Newton Comics: home of Black Light Captain America!





And Yellow Daredevil!





Whoops. Well, here's Yellow Daredevil!





There's a lesson in all of this, and that lesson is: foreign comics sometimes get the coloring wrong, and we should laugh at them for that! Though, to be fair, Patrulla-X did eventually come out in a correctly colored version. Except they set the whole scene on a dirt road somewhere outside Hooterville.





Still, they even colored Samuel L. Jackson as a white man.

Here, have some OMAC. In Italian.

O.M.A.C.! It stands for (if you follow the Kirby definition, and why would you follow any other?) One Man Army Corps. But in a future without national boundaries, that solo fighting guy with the big-ass mohawk might be known as different acronyms. For example, in Italy, let's call him UUAB! (Pronounced oo-abb.) Un Uomo Armato Battaglione! Mmmm, I think I had one of those after my spaghetti and meatballs down at Aunt Suzie's Italian restaurant last week. Oh, let's just continue to call him O.M.A.C. for copyright sake. Signor O.M.A.C.

Panels from Classici DC: OMAC trade paperback (Planeta DeAgostini, 2007), Italian translation by Margherita Galetti, Italian lettering by Silvia Romano; originally printed as OMAC #1 (September-October 1974), script and pencils by Jack Kirby, inks and letters by Mike Royer, colors by Jerry Serpe

(Click picture to speak-a the English)

Now that's a passionate, romantic version of OMAC! Be sure to join us here next time for "Here, have some Mister Miracle. In Norwegian."

Until then, always remember!:

Here, have some Avengers. In Chinese.

Panels from Avengers: Saving the Day one-shot, published in conjunction with Visa (May 2012), script by James Asmus, pencils and inks by Andrea Di Vito, colors by Laura Villari, original English lettering by Dave Sharpe

(Click any picture to Great Wall-size)

Here, have some Planet Terry. In Greek.

Panels from "Η επίθεση των ταραντούλες" ("Attack of the Tarantalugs") in Marvel Star Comics #31 (October 1987), originally published in Planet Terry #6 (September 1985); script by Lennie Herman, pencils by Warren Kremer, inks by Jon D'Agostino, colors by Peter Kremer, original English letters by Grace Kremer

(Click pictures to it's-all-Greek-to-me-translate-to-English)

Here, have some Witchblade. In German.

Panels from Witchblade - Neue Serie #1 (Infinity Verlag, 2001); translated from Witchblade #40 (June 2000), script by Paul Jenkins and Rick Veitch, pencils by Keu Cha, inks by D-Tron, assisted by Jeff de los Santos and Andy Kim, colors by Steve Firchow, letters by Robin Spehar and Dennis Heisler

(Click pictures to groß-size)
In der nächsten Ausgabe von Witchblade in Deutsch:

Here, have some Married...With Children. In German.

Panels from Eine Schrecklich nette Familie #2 (Bastei, 1993), script by James Bradshaw, pencils by Tom Richmond, inks by John Stangeland, colors by Holly Sanfelippo