On Purple and Green

As promised, a short discussion of the color coding of super-villains in old Marvel and DC comics.

In the 60s and 70s, both Marvel and DC used costume colors as a kind of shorthand for indicating a character's status. The main colors used for this activity were purple and green; often in combination, sometimes alone. The two companies made a distinct split, however, in how they presented the characters in these colors. We'll look at DC first, and then move on to Marvel's handling of the sumptuary of its villains.

Over in DC, the combination of the color purple and green was a clear indicator of villainous status. The two obvious poster-boys for this are Lex Luthor and The Joker. Lex Luthor spent much of the 70s running around in green pants, boots and a purple top with a flared collar over a green undershirt. The Joker was rarely seen without his purple suit, and of course has green hair. Brainiac, at least in his pre-floating skull days, was also clad in purple over his green skin (a color scheme maintained in his reboot appearances). Over in DC, when a character appeared with purple and green in his or her costume, you were pretty safe assuming it was a villain.

Meanwhile, Marvel uses the purple and green colors as indicators of reformed or redeemable villains: Quicksilver first appeared clad in green, Hawkeye in purple, the Prowler in green and purple, Wonderman in green. All of these character later turned into heroic characters, though some more so than others (I'm looking at you, Quicksilver). In general, when reading an old Marvel comic, if a character debuted with a green, purple, or green and purple costume, at some point you could expect them to turn out to be not so bad after all. In the case of someone like the Green Goblin, they might be bad but not entirely aware of their badness, or the best friend of the main character. In other cases, like the Beetle, it might take decades before someone would reform them and turn them into Mach V.

Of course, these weren't universally true – The Vulture and The Scorpion debuted in green, and they were pretty irredeemable. Over on the DC side, the Green Arrow and Green Lantern (well, until the Parallax thing) were heroic despite their color choices. Still, as a fair bet, you can't go too far wrong watching the color coding of the characters. Heck, when Gambit appeared, he had purple under that oh-so-cool trench-coat. You knew he had to be more evil than he was letting on…