written by David Wyatt
Shockheaded Peter is a
character created by noted
comic book writer
Alan Moore and artist
Gene Ha for their
Eisner award winning series
Top 10.
Pete is an ordinary beat patrolmen in the city of Neopolis, a city designed for the world's science beings, which is Moore's term for supeheroes and super villains, to live. It is like every other city, with prostitution, graft, cheap diners except that almost everyone wears a cape. Gene Ha originally designed Pete as a skeleton with steel 'snakes' linking his bones, but decided that design, while cool looking, would make showing emotion difficult, and keep him from many normal police activities, such as donut consumption.
The final design for Shockheaded Peter made him not at all, cool, but rather ugly. He's got Jimmy Olson's freckles with a long face, and his hips are a lot wider than his shoulders. It looks like he doesn't work out much, which makes him the opposite of most superheroes. His orange costume, featuring black boxers and a deaths head, plus antennae, hits a ten on the geek meter. With a bit of white trash mixed in.
Peter is pretty ordinary cop in the Tenth Precinct. He has a limited education and excess of porn videos, including actresses with tentacles. He's singularly unsuccessful with women, but his lack of success is easily understandable with his looks and rather clueless attitude toward them. Peter's probably a virgin and sexually interested in anyone with breasts. A bit of flirting can talk him into about anything. He's not very bright. But he genuinely wants to be a good cop, and in the early issues was quite a sympathetic character.
Unfortunately, Peter has a dark side, a genuinely racist attitude toward machine life, who along with monsters make up Neopolis' underclass. He supports groups like one flesh, a neopolis speciesist group, that remind me of the Aryan Nations or the National Alliance. His prejuidices became revolting when robotic officer Joe Pi joined the precinct to replace the fallen Girl One.
Shockheaded Peter is normally partnered with Duane Bodine, the Dust Devil, a cowboy superhero who wields two "twelve-shooters". Duane shares some of Peter's weaknesses with women, but none of his prejuidices. He's quite willing to let Peter know that too.
Peter's super powers, not surprisingly, center around electricity. He can generate and direct
lightning, which he used to capture
serial killer M'rgalla Qualtz, a fallen member of
The Seven Sentinals. He can also create his own radio signals. Using his powers makes his skeleton visible, bringing back elements of Ha's original design. But he is vulnerable to shorting out.
Labels: comics review
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