PARADEMON

SUPER POWERS (KENNER)

“Although the Parademons of Apokolips wear protective armor and can fly, their true strength is in their numbers.  There are literally thousands of them, and, the acting together, they can overcome even the most powerful heroes.”

After the first year was really focused in on the heavy hitters, in terms of both heroes and their antagonists, subsequent years of Kenner’s Super Powers run would dial in a bit more on the weirder side of DC.  Jack Kirby was brought in to do some work on the line, and a focus was placed on his creations the New Gods, who would serve as a notable backbone for the antagonistic side of the line.  It also gave us I believe our earliest instance of an army builder in a super hero line, in the form of the Parademon!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Parademon was released in the second series of Super Powers, as one of the six Fourth World figures added to the line-up that year.  The figure stands a little over 4 1/2 inches tall and it has 7 points of articulation.  Most of the Fourth World characters got some degree of redesign for the line (only Darkseid and Mr. Miracle kept their originals), and the Parademon is pretty much the most divergent design of the bunch.  Steppenwolf and Mantis both got pretty hefty re-works, but the Parademon winds up sharing no elements with its original comics look.  Perhaps there was a feeling that there was too much green amongst the villains?  Or maybe that the proper Parademon look, with its more ogre-ish features, might not be as kid friendly?  It’s hard to say.  I’m hard-pressed to say this is a bad design, mind you.  It’s actually pretty decent, and feels like a respectable take on a retro-inspired alien design.  It just doesn’t really read as a Parademon.  That said, the sculpt is fun.  It’s more cartoony than the rest of the line, but maintains the same level of detailing and general stylizing, so it doesn’t feel out of place with the rest of them.  The color scheme, heavy on reds and oranges, feels a bit more like Firestorm than anything else from the line, but it’s generally unique, and certainly stands out on the shelf.  The Parademon was packed with a yellow blaster pistol, which is easily lost (especially since the hands don’t really grip it all that tightly), so there’s reproductions available.  The Parademon also featured a wing-flapping action feature, triggered by squeezing the legs.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I purchased the Parademon for myself, more than two decades ago.  I’d gotten $20 to Cosmic Comix for Christmas, and used $15 of that to buy an Elongated Man, so I had $5 left, and that ended up going towards this guy, mostly because I didn’t have it.  He lacked his accessory, bit in more recent years I’ve “completed” it with a replacement gun from Made Like Old.  It’s a kind of weird figure, in that it’s got pretty much no connection to the comics, but it’s certainly not a bad toy, and it’s memorable for it’s sort of out there nature.