oHOTmu or NOT Ep.31: Dreadknight to D’Spayre

Doctor Doom's archenemy. A Hydra robot. A 70s cartoon star. A depressing demon. Only the Girls can scientifically determine which are Hot, and which are Not, as coverage on issue #4 continues!

Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Amélie and Shotgun.

Listen to Episode 31 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to oHOTmu OR NOT? on iTunes!

Relevant images and further credits at: oHOTmu or NOT ep.31 Supplemental

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18 responses to “oHOTmu or NOT Ep.31: Dreadknight to D’Spayre

  1. Another fun episode filled with laughs. Thanks as always.

    For the record, I work in the Emergency Department. There is joy in the work, mixed in with the usual other emotions. On to the characters.

    Dreadknight looks like the sort of super-villain outfit that someone like me (with no fashion sense) would create. I am sure I would keep adding details to make it ‘cooler’. “Skull mask and chain mail! Great. But let’s add more … pirate boots! Buckles to the shoes! Wide belt! Wings on the mask! Tunic with jolly rogers! Holster! More flare!!” Poor guy though. With that mask fused on, how does he eat? I always wonder that with these sort of characters – Doom, Zemo, Dreadknight. Do they get fed intravenously? Through a tube in their stomachs?

    Jessica Drew is all sorts of hot, especially in that original Spider-Woman outfit. I get that the Manera cover was considered a bit too prurient, But I was sad to see that outfit go as being ‘too sexy and demeaning’. Like Spider-Man, she should be sleek so she can jump,flip, and punch. Siskoid, add this to the list of characters who you need to show the girls characters’ current looks. I wonder how they would feel about the yellow shades and action jacket look!

      1. I thought the new outfit was like someone running to TJ Maxx to cobble together a ‘costume’ for a Halloween party. So while ‘fine’, it isn’t Spider-Woman for me. Or even super-heroic.

        And I am not against costume changes by any means (Supergirl has had too many too count). For example, I love the new Captain Marvel jumpsuit costume, a huge improvement over the bathing suit and sash look (at least for me).

    1. Oh yeah, now I remember…

      I have never owned this issue, so I’m in for a surprise every month for a while. I had no idea about Dreadknight other than he was in the 90s Iron Man cartoon and in that toyline, and looked pretty cool. Had no idea Doom used his own metal face melting method as torture. That guy just gets worse with every episode.

      Man, I love the original Spider-Woman design. Okay, admittedly, part of that was the pre-teenage boy in me who appreciated the “body paint” look, but it’s a striking design. And the fact that it’s only nominally similar to Spider-Man’s look is a big plus, as was pointed out.

      If I remember correctly Stan was spurred into Marvel creating a Spider-Woman after he heard Filmation was developing a cartoon character using that name. Marvel got on the ball, and Filmation had to call their character “Web Woman”, who was part of Tarzan and the Super 7 on Saturday mornings when Siskoid and I were kids, but long before the girls were even thought of. We’re old.

      Wasn’t there some crazy version of her origin where the High Evolutionary mutated a spider into a woman? I seem to recall that idea was at least floated in her earliest appearances. And obviously Jessica Drew missed her true calling, not as a private eye, or even a magazine publisher as in the cartoon, but as an orthodontist, or OBGYN. The discussion of her pants was interesting. Not as interesting as fully functional robots, but interesting, nonetheless. I’m surprised Siskoid didn’t drop a Data clip in there somewhere….

      Great show as always, the group “HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!” bit at the end made me think they were going to break out into song like a Peanuts special.

      Chris

  2. Ladies, you were quite frisky this time around. I love it! If I didn’t know better I’d say the wine glasses were put to use.

    Dreadknight – At first glance I kind of like it but that fades the more I look at it. The face could actually stand to be a little more skull like. It’s just slightly less defined than I’d prefer. I hate the lance. I hate it’s design (it looks like the spaceship that Charlton Heston was in at the beginning of the Planet of the Apes had an inferiority complex and got a massive frontal extension,) and I REALLY hate the image of him holding it like it’s a shotgun. I don’t care if it fires blasts, that’s not how you hold a lance so it looks stupid. And the gun is wrong. Completely clashes with the entire motif. So he’s a not. But this has to be said: I. Want. That. Horse!

    Dreadnaught – I love how much thought the ladies put into how this could maybe work (with time spent on the olfactory sense and possibly programing a personality.) The spikes don’t intimidate me too much, because they look kind of shallow and they’re reminiscent of… how to say this… certain studded instruments of adult enjoyment. I’ve probably said too much. In the end though, this is a not for me because of the dead stare eyes. If they just got rid of the white dots and had just hollow black, for me that it might have worked. But I can’t deal with those bright unblinking dots.

    Drew, Jessica – Oh Jessica, Jessica, Jessica. She was EXACTLY what this lineup needed. I liked the whole thing, until the ladies pointed out the white trench coat gave it a dentist vibe. But even that isn’t enough to kill it for me. In terms of her Spider-Woman outfit I generally prefer the more modern look with the black on the limbs and a bit less of the “HEY! HAVE YOU SEEN MY BOOBS?!?” thing going on. And it made me smile so much that Siskoid brought up the Milo Manara alternate cover. Though I’m going to wave my finger at him for the “tracing from porn” comment. This wasn’t a Greg Land situation where an artist known for superheroes that are supposedly for family audiences used porn as a facial reference. Manara has been drawing since the late 60s and this is kind of his thing, it’s not far off from some of his best known work from Click and the like. So I can’t be mad at him for that bit of art. I can however scratch my head and wonder what in the heck Marvel was thinking when they commissioned him in the first place. He delivered what anybody familiar with his work should have expected. It’s like if Disney hired John Waters to do the live action Snow White remake, whatever mess results is pretty much their own fault.

    D’Spayre – I was inevitable with the whole “death” section having not been that long ago, but I’m really burned out on the skull faces, black hollow costume thing. It’s a look I like in general but WOW does it get overused. Sorry D’Spayre, it’s not you’re fault that I’ve moved on from this look. Though, you were the one who had to use that insanely pretentious spelling, so this is probably for the best.

    Finally, hooray for merch! I’ve ordered myself a Big Spoon travel mug. I’ll be showing it off on instagram and the like as soon as I get it.

    #JustTheTip

    1. Mea culpa on the traced porn comment. I knew it wasn’t true of Manara, but it was useful shorthand at the time.

      But now I want to see that Snow White Waters made in the 70s with Divine in the role. #FemaleTrouble

  3. Loved that moment when the Manara cover was discussed:

    “Google it!”
    “No.”

    When you cover the characters’ other looks, I’d love to hear the reactions to “pregnant badass Spider-Woman” from the most recent series.

    Dreadknight: With a name like Bram Velsing, he really had no choice but to go Gothic. Odd that he went up against Frankenstein’s Monster rather than Dracula… (And speaking of Frankenstein’s Monster, can’t wait until he comes up later this issue!)

    D’Spayre: I would love to see N’Ziety introduced into the Marvel Universe! “N’Ziety and D’Spayre: A Love Tale for the Ages.” (Also loved the comments: “He makes me uneasy.” “He just makes me sad.” Well, that IS his whole purpose…)

    As for the “red cape, yellow body” character they were looking at in the Book of the Dead issue for the group photo: My guess would be Count Nefaria, whose red cape had a yellow lining.

    I was recently looking through my issues of OHOTMU, and I rediscovered something I’d forgotten: When you get to the M’s, there are four pages that were misprinted with coloring errors, and then the following issue ran the corrected images. I can just imagine the ladies’ reactions to the miscolored versions, before showing them the real ones…

  4. I felt bad you made Amelie read all my Twitter handles during the LF segment, that’s your job Siskoid: you signed up for this nonsense but now you’ve dragged a poor innocent young woman into our web of geekery.

    Did I hear you say Dave Gibbons drew Dreadknought?!? That’s like needing a singer for a local supermarket opening and hiring Adele.

  5. I’m going to have to make a scorecard with names and voice clips. I can’t tell you apart. That doesn’t detract from my listening enjoyment, however!
    I want to chime in on Spider-Woman. I bought her title from #1 all the way into the #50s. It was never great, and often hard to follow, and I was really lost trying to understand who Jessica Drew really was , and who she had been, and her constantly changing supporting cast, etc. Spider-Woman was one of my “inertial” buys. I kept buying it, because I was already buying it. The comments on the costume brought me up short, and when I looked at the images you shared, they were different than the books I remembered. The black lines on the costume in the OHHOTMU pictures seemed to much thicker, and the yellow section was inconsistent. The black lines didn’t seem to accentuate hes breasts, but to show the yellow/red contrast and the three distinct yellow shapes, one high ion the sternum, and two on the abdomen. Actually, come to think of it, the most striking feature in those early issues was Jessica’s improbable hair!

  6. Well, a million points for the campness of the Kiss of the Spiderwoman song, one of the only decent bits of a horribly long and annoying show.

    As for Jessica, she was definitely hot as Spider-Woman, even with those awful Infantino boobs. But I WOULD say that, it’s those dashed pheromones. As for the question of how much hair dye it took to go do that long black mane, according to the first issue of her original run, one single bottle! Weirdly, within a couple of years Marvel decided her hair was a wig attached to the mask, despite still depicting her a long, black-haired lady.

    Dreadknight is hot only because of the loincloth. Loincloths always win.

    1. While there were many crap issues – oh, Marv Wolfman and his Briddish dialogue – I found Spider-Woman under Gruenwald and Infantino a terrifically intense, creepy read, with the peak being the Nekra storyline. I rather liked the Claremont issues, too. And oh, that photo cover!

  7. #SexySextiles
    #CopyrightMe

    I will now use these terms in everyday use. Thank you for enriching my vocabulary with every fantastic episode!

    P.S. – Why does Dreadknight’s lance shoot blasts and his gun shoot smoke? That seems…. backwards to me, knowing that lances don’t really shoot anything.

  8. Hmmm, first the ladies say “ugh, engineers” to Dreadknight, but then they want to hack Dreadnought, which I bet an engineer could help with. Hmmm.

    I guess D’Spayre and N’ziety could double-date with their siblings, D’Lyte and N’Sekure. #D’Spayre2Spare

    Glad the Hot Squad gave Drew-comma-Jessica a “hot”. The cartoon was the first I’d heard of her, and her joining the Avengers 10 years ago has made her a big part of the Marvel Universe. Put me down for liking both her classic and latest costumes. They’re both great!

    I’m also happy we got to Drew-comma-Jessica already, instead of having to wait for the J’s, or even worse, the S’s. I doubt the nursing home would let me listen to this podcast by then. But now I’m ready for the latest Marvel hit movie: Jessica Drew, Orthondontist of the stars! Thumbs-up!

    So if Dor-MAH-mmu is right, does that make it Je-SICC-a not JESS-ica? (I’m gonna start saying my name is Ti-MOE-thy!)

    Amelie did great reading the names. And hey, if any of you say my name with an accent, I am totally up for it! Having a “white bread with mayonnaise” name, any excuse to spice it up.

    And never forget, #RedCapeYellowBody.

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