Poe Through the Years

Ever since the inception of this site, I’ve had some sort of graphic avatar to represent the “Poe Ghostal” character. I thought it might be fun to do a quick rundown of the various versions of Poe’s look that we’ve had through the years.

This was Poe’s very first look, from the site’s very first incarnation in 2007. I’ve always had a fondness for the look of 1930s pulp heroes like The Shadow, Sandman or their Batman: The Animated Series homage, the Gray Ghost. The raven perched on Poe’s shoulder was a obvious reference to Poe’s “The Raven.” This was drawn and colored by my good friend Red Kryptonite, and it served as Poe’s look on the site until the redesign in 2011.

In summer 2009, I held the terribly-named “Make Your Masterpoece” contest, in which I invited readers to submit their own artistic visions of what a MOTUC version of Poe would look like. My personal favorite version was created by Mecha-Shiva, and this version served as an unofficial avatar – it was never incorporated into any of the site logos or banners, although it did pop up in other places like my Twitter page.

I’ve had not one, but two custom figures of this look in development (from separate customizers) for years, but I have yet to actually hold one in hand.

The “Gray Ghost” look was slightly tweaked in summer 2011, again designed and colored by Mecha-Shiva. The version in the logo was a bit more realistic, while this graphic along the bottom was based on the packaging for the Batman: The Animated Series Riddler.

Finally we have the latest entry – the Poe-Bot. My idea was for a Shogun Warriors version of Poe. Mecha-Shiva found some creative ways of incorporating some of the elements that had become an established part of the character, such as the red eyes, the hat, and the cape. The art was colored by Nathan Newell of Dork Dimension.