Not every interdimensional warlord can have the success of Blastaar or Annihilus. Some lack strategic brilliance or raw power, and some, like the Living Eraser, just bite off more than they can chew. Nevertheless I’m proud to welcome this obscure Silver Age villain into my Eaglemoss collection.
Introduced in the early days of the Marvel Universe by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Living Eraser debuted in 1963’s Tales to Astonish #49 as an invader from Dimension Z. Using a palm-sized “dimensionalizer,” which transported people to Dimension Z by “erasing” them with several swipes of the hand, he abducted several Earth scientists, with the intention of forcing them to reveal the secrets of atomic power.
The Eraser returned in 1976 angrier than ever, and battled Morbius and the Thing, who (naturally) ran amok in Dimension Z and helped stoke a rebellion against the Eraser, who had seized power there. Unfortunately for the Eraser, it only took one blow from the Thing to thwart his grand schemes of conquest.
Next, a different Living Eraser appeared in 1992 during John Byrne’s run on She-Hulk. Like his predecessor this Eraser seeks the secrets of nuclear power, and decides that abducting the gamma-irradiated She-Hulk was a good place to start. Shulkie ends up (surprise!) running amok in Dimension Z before stealing a Dimensionalizer to return to Earth.
Byrne treated the character as a joke, and not until 2018 was an effort was made to recuperate the Living Eraser and explore his world in greater depth. In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Living Legends #1, the titular heroes return to Dimension Z to help a group of rebels overthrow the draconian rule of Cutza, the original Living Eraser.
I knew I wanted my Living Eraser figurine to have the classic pose used by both Kirby and Byrne: angrily scowling in a slight crouch, and slashing his arms in an X across his chest as he erases his unsuspecting foe. The Eaglemoss DC Cosmic Boy figurine provided the perfect base. I repositioned both arms and changed the angle of his head, and also had to file down his upper back considerably to create the hunching-over effect.
More difficult was the decision of costume. With only three appearances (four, if you count Byrne’s second iteration) by different artists spanning several decades, the Eraser has no standard costume, though he generally appeared in some combination of reddish-purple and lilac. (Together with his green skin, this makes him yet another of the army of green-and-purple villains of the Silver Age).
For his costume, I went with John Byrne’s design, since it
retains the zigzags down his pants and sleeves from Jack Kirby’s original drawings,
but uses these zigzags to demarcate the two zones of lilac and reddish-purple. His
facial features have changed quite a bit too, ranging very from Kirby’s original
jowly bulldog-appearance, to fully human features by Arvell Jones in 1976, to
Byrne’s diminutive fish-monster. His kooky Silver Age helmet, at least, has
remained totally consistent over the decades.
And of course, for the finishing touch I had to include the
Dimensionalizer weapon in the palms of his hands!
With so few appearances of the Living Eraser it was a challenge to create a good Eaglemoss-style cover mockup, but I ended up using artwork from Ant-Man & the Wasp: Living Legends #1 (Aug. 2018) by Andrea di Vito. The logotype was made using the typeface Black Tulip.
2. Sensational She-Hulk #37 (Mar 1992). A new Living Eraser strikes at She-Hulk, but fares no better than his predecessor -- although he does manage to erase the last few pages of the comic!
3. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Living Legends #1 (Aug 2018). Wasp and Ant-Man battle the original Living Eraser on his home turf in Dimension Z, and thwart his latest plan to invade Earth!
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Next up: One of Marvel's deadliest villains - the mind-controlling Purple Man!
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