Friday, March 25, 2011

Pure Fantasy

My mom loved making costumes for us.  I don't think I bought a costume for Halloween from the time I was 5 until...well until I was done trick or treating anyway. She made some crazy stuff. I was a refrigerator one year, I was a Nintendo cartridge another.  My sister was a banana, a piece of pizza, and a potted plant. For some reason my brother always went for store bought zombie and wolfman stuff, but my sister and I would be planning cardboard, foam and chicken-wire monstrosities every year.

So anyone who knows me knows I dig comic books. Starting when I was around 10, I read Batman, Superman, Teen Titans, Justice League and pretty much whatever else I could get my hands on. For those of you not familiar with him, and that would be pretty much everyone in the world, Wild Dog was a late 80's vigilante hero who had a 4 issue mini-series and then has really never been heard from again. He looked like this:

All summer before fifth grade I read and reread the Wild Dog mini-series and thought he was so cool and such a bad-ass and couldn't wait to be him for Halloween. So I convinced my mom make me a Wild Dog costume. The costume was spot-on accurate. Camo pants, boots, blue jersey with laughing red dog on it worn over a long sleeve black shirt. Hockey masks for Halloween were easy to come by and probably still are. I think I may have even had the yellow piping, such was my attention to detail.

No one knew what the hell I was supposed to be. Only one other kid at school did and he was any even bigger comic book geek than I was. My teacher was mystified. I was disappointed. "I'm Wild Dog. You know...Wild Dog. From...from comics." Didn't anyone else visit Time Frame, the local comic shop in Fayetteville Mall, on a weekly, if not twice-weekly, basis? Didn't anyone else have their world shaken from the Anti-Monitor's attempt to destroy the Multiverse just 1 year ago in the Crisis On Infinite Earths? Supergirl and The Flash died for fuck's sake! Was it that I skimped on the lasso and the pouches?

Trick-or-treating wasn't any better. Most people assumed I was Jason and didn't know what the hell the dog was about. All they saw was an 11-year-old in a hockey mask with an Italiafro. I didn't give a shit by that point. I had acquiesced to being whatever people thought I was, but still holding out hope that my taste in heroes would win out in the end.  Give me your candy, sure, yeah I'm Jason, whatever, but listen, next year when Wild Dog is huge and there's like a Wild Dog movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme you'll think "Whoa that kid was really ahead of the curve on this whole Wild Dog thing" and I'll be like "Yeah, goddamn right bitches! WILD DOG!".

Come on, the superhero genre has proven immensely lucrative for Hollywood. Green Lantern, Thor and Captain America have movies that are coming out this summer. Supes and Spiderman are getting reboots. Wonder Woman will be on TV again soon. Yes, the timeline for the Wild Dog media storm I predicted in fifth grade is longer than I had anticipated, but I'm confident I'll be proven right in the end.

Wild Dog, bitches. Wild. Dog.