Rocket Ships, Power Rings, And Super Serums: Exploring Origins In A Single Image
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We’ve all heard that old chestnut about a picture being worth a thousand words. By that count this article should be worth around 10,000 words, which maybe explains why I’m feeling so winded all of a sudden. Thankfully, even though the gorgeous images in this post can largely speak for themselves, somebody’s got to put them in context and actually tell you who made them, so I, the lowly middle man, soldier on.
All the images here are via the Las Vegas-based art collective the-ninja-bot. Honestly, with a name like that we may not be entirely objective when it comes to judging their talents — we have a thing for robots, don’t you know — but thankfully ninja-bot’s “Origins” series are objectively awesome. (We’re at least 97% sure of that.)
The idea is simple: break down the origins of some of comicdom’s most beloved heroes into a single moment or image. We generally leave the superhero stuff to our sister site CinemaBlend since it’s become its own huge genre of late, but some of the more science fiction-y origin posters are so good we just had to share them. Like Bruce Banner’s unfortunate run-in with a massive dose of gamma radiation…
…or the potent combination of Barry Allen, a rack of chemicals, and an unlikely lightning bolt…
…or even the passing of a ring that was so much more.
There have been plenty before who have observed that comic-book heroes have become a sort of modern-day mythology, stories of larger-than-life characters to impart lessons of morality, serve as tragic examples, and occasionally punch enormous cosmic menaces right square in the kisser. So it’s only appropriate that their essence can be distilled down to its most primitive form: a single representative image.
If you’re keen to slap one or more of these up on your wall, you can pick them up for five bucks a pop right here.
