ICON: Riptide from X-Men, First Class
Nice tux - check. Awesome hair - check. Superhuman power to create tornadoes - check. Riptide image from X-Men: First Class sourced from http://marvel.com.
Comic book geeks out there – name the bad guy in X-Men: First Class with the killer sense of style, long hair and mutant power to create tornado-type winds?
To be honest, we didn’t know either – so it took a bit of digging through the Marvel Universe to figure out which character it was.
The name of the cool baddie in the movie is “Riptide” and he was played by Alex Gonzalez (according to IMDB Alex Gonzalez’ A’s are supposed to have some weird ass hyphen in it, but we couldn’t find it in the keyboard). We took notice of this particular character because of (what else?) his sick style in the movie.
Long hair, well tailored suits, chill demeanor and one of the better super powers to have (definitely better than that porcupine dude), we felt “Riptide” easily qualified to meet ESM Icon standards.
I mean seriously, can just anyone pull off a purple suit?
How to pull of a purple suit without looking like Prince or the artist formerly known as or... who knows. Image from http://marvel.com.
To make things even better, we found out Riptide kicks some serious ass. According to Riptide’s Wiki entry:
After Sinister dispatched the Marauders into the sewers under New York City to kill the subterranean mutant collective known as the Morlocks, Riptide was responsible for severely injuring X-Men members Nightcrawler and Colossus. Having seen the results of Riptide’s actions (Riptide’s mutant power to launch barrages of sharp projectiles had enabled him to kill more Morlocks at any given single moment than any other Marauder), Colossus had been pushed close to his emotional breaking point. Colossus was further enraged and grieved when Riptide badly injured Nightcrawler, and finally snapped when Harpoon maimed his former girlfriend, Shadowcat. Colossus lunged at Harpoon to mete out vengeance, but Riptide got in his way, believing that his power would fell the Russian mutant. He boasted to Colossus that hurricane force winds could punch a piece of straw through a solid oak and that his spinning caused his blades to fly even faster than that. Despite being hit by a deluge of blades which penetrated his armored skin, Colossus managed to reach an incredulous Riptide, seize his throat, and snap his neck. However, Mr. Sinister was able to clone the Marauders thanks to samples of their DNA, and Riptide returned to die once more during the event known as the Inferno.
Okay so he died. So what? I bet he did it in style, which was most important.
For more information about Riptide and the rest of the Marvel Universe, you can check out the official Marvel site at http://marvel.com/.
Coincidentally, X-Men: First Class has just been released on DVD and more information can be found on the official site at http://www.x-menfirstclassmovie.com/. You should get yourself a copy if you haven’t already.
To create Essential Style for Men, mix 2 parts petrol, 1 part secret agent, 1 part rock and roll, 1 part hip-hop and a shot of tequila in a shaker with ice and vigorously shake for 20 seconds. Pour into a martini glass rimmed with explosives and have a supermodel serve for all your friends to enjoy.
