Forgotten Heroes – Variations on a Theme

Whilst it is the last day of May and, strictly speaking, Forgotten Heroes 2019 doesn’t start until tomorrow, I thought I would explain how the idea to make this year’s Forgotten Heroes a themed event came about.

And also tell everyone exactly what I’ve got planned for this year.

So, as previously explained in the announcement (Patriot Games), this year is all about patriotic superheroes. During the month of June, those taking part will produce a figure of a costumed patriotic superhero, representing the country/state/county/planet of their choice, in whatever scale they feel most comfortable with.

It can be an existing hero, such as Captain America, Union Jack or Red Guardian, or a completely new made-up superhero. The only criteria/rules are that;

1. the base figure you use should not be a representation of the character, i.e. it must be a conversion, but this could be as simple as a repaint, and

2. it must be reasonably obvious to anyone viewing the character which country they are representing, so using the colours from the national flag or a symbol strongly associated with that country on their costume, such as a shamrock for Ireland, would be a wise idea.

But where did this idea come from? Well, I have always been a massive fan of both Captain America and the revised (Alan Moore) version of Captain Britain.

Being a long-term fan of the former and having a reasonably large collection of his ongoing exploits in comic book form, I have watched as various other costumed patriots from both America and other countries crossed his path and how the idea, and ideals, of this character were reinterpreted over different time zones, realities and in other non-Marvel universes. So, whilst Marvel has the Iron Patriot, Miss America, the Spirit of ’76 and U.S.Agent, you will find Cap-inspired heroes such as Sergeant States, the Golden Age Public Spirit, Super-Soldier and the Star-Spangled Kid lurking amongst the comics racks from a variety of other publishers.

However, it was the finale of Avengers: Endgame that finally cemented this idea in my head. If you’re a superhero fan and you haven’t seen this movie, where on Earth have you been?! However, as, the next part of this post will contain a minor spoiler for the movie, if you haven’t seen it, look away now…

At the end of the movie, Steve Rogers is no longer able to continue as Captain America and hands the shield on to Sam Wilson/the Falcon to continue as the new Cap. This has historic comic book precedent, as this did actually happen, but whilst this is the way the future of the Captain America mantle appears to be going in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (even though Sam was holding the shield the wrong way up! Jeez, Sam, get it right…), this got me thinking along the lines of who I would prefer to see as the new Cap in the MCU, which led me to thinking about other patriotic heroes I would like to see and thus this year’s themed event was born, as I thought it might be fun to see what other might do with this idea, once the shackles were off.

Right, you can look back now.

So, having decided what the theme would be, my next step was to decide what I was actually going to do. And I cheated a bit here, as I had already bought a figure many moons ago with the intention of turning him into a patriotic hero for a country other than America, but had not got around to it yet. And this is the figure I will be using;

This is a character called Stonewall, from the Heroclix Uncanny X-Men subset. I saw him and immediately thought “Hmmm, he looks a bit…Mexican.”

My original intent was for him to become…Captain Mexico, a south of the border knockoff of Captain America and kind of a joke character. However, it appears that there is already several variants of Captain Mexico out there, including a cos-player…

Not only that, Marvel themselves had done an Aztec alternate reality version of Captain America, Captain Mexica from Earth-1519, who featured in Marvel Zombies 3, having been turned into a flesh-eating zombie, the title of the series kind of giving away what was going to happen…

Now, regular readers will know that I like to plough my own furrow, so as someone has already done both a Captain Mexico AND an Aztec-themed Captain Mexica, I had to come up with something different and uniquely my own…

Now, Mexico does have a history of masked heroes, dating back to 1942, when a man in a silver mask stepped into a wrestling ring and forever changed the sport of lucha libre. I am, of course, referring to those masked Mexican wrestlers known as luchadores enmascarados, the most famous of which was the silver-masked wrestler known as El Santo.

So, by combining the colours and symbolism of the Mexican flag, the moustache of Zorro and heavuily influenced by the luchadores enmascarados, I am intending on transforming my base figure of Stonewall into…

El Aguila, national hero of Mexico.

“An eagle cannot be bound by walls”

So, join me next time to see how this crazy little project is progressing and be sure to check out what the other participants, Angry Piper and Mezmaron, are up to on their respective blogs.