The Great Comic Mad Scientists
December 30, 2012 ~ 8 Comments
This is one of my all-time favorite Sunday features. I did it for my own amusement and had lots of fun drawing it. I tried to get a range of mad scientists I love from different types of comics. From top to bottom, the scientists are:
1. Dr. Sivana, arch-nemesis of Captain Marvel, created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck.
2. Dr. Wonmug, inventor of Alley Oop’s time machine, created by V.T. Hamlin. Wonmug’s name is a pun on Albert Einstein (“ein stein”=”one mug,” groan) so I, um, gave him a mug.
3. Dr. Tenma, creator of Astro Boy, both of whom were created by Osamu Tezuka. In the manga, Dr. Tenma built Astro to replace his son Tobio, who was killed in a car accident.
4. Gyro Gearloose, created by Carl Barks.
5. Jeremy MacConnor, protagonist of Platinum Grit, created by Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy.
I wanted to do an illustration of a Marvel mad scientist too, either Doctor Doom or Doctor Octopus, but I couldn’t come up with a concept I liked. Still, this is quite a lot of mad scientists.
That is an impressive Jer fanart. And that Gyro fanart is… impressively deceptive.
Oglaf is great at all, and I know this isn’t even the longest hiatus PG has survived, but I sure do wish Trudy & Co would come back to it.
That is a really creepy Thaddeus Boddog you’ve got there. Kudos!
As a HUGE Dr. Doom fan, I would love to Shaenon’s take on him.
I’m not sure which is more frightening: that I recognize Sivana despite having never been noticeably into comics, or that I don’t have any idea who the others are even with the annotation. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of the sources for 2 and 3, but nothing beyond that.
Never got that before.
One mug… heheheh…
I am ashamed to admit that I briefly mistook Dr. Tenma for Franken von Fogler.
Now I want to see Shaenon as a mad scientist!