Champions in Color Special: Ripper

Stepping back to the early days of Champions we have the cover of Stronghold:

That's one of my favorite covers from the whole line. The subject of the piece is "Ripper", a Vietnam veteran who was subjected to some horrible experiments and who can boost his strength to *100* when he needs to do so. He's an awesome villain and that cover really makes him look good. Those poor guards and security bots clearly stand no chance against him!

However there is the ... color ... issue: he is colored a sort of ... pink. It's hard to admit, but there it is. We can talk about this openly, can't we? It's a little odd to have a badace ex-military villain who is potentially stronger than Grond and then color him pink. I'm going to go with the "interpretation" and the "printing error" theories here and say he was supposed to be either flesh-colored or purple instead of pink. Either one makes more sense, or at least looks better. Even if one insists he must be pink, he's still one of my favorites. Then look at what they did to him in 4th edition's "Classic Enemies" (I know it's not color, bear with me) 

So I guess he stopped working out and started eating a bunch of pork rinds in prison? Decided it was safer in there and gave up trying to escape? Gained a few levels of horizontal growth har har? I don't know but compared to the lean and mean guy on the cover of Stronghold, this is a disappointment. However, he did get the cover picture of that book which made up for a lot:

Now that's an image that lives up to the original!

(Side commentary: Oh look, it's Seeker being beaten like a rented mule. Clearly this is a 4th Edition book!)

Some time after this, though, he seems to have joined up with Viper, to the point they put him on another cover:

Well, he at least looks meaner here. Still kinda pink though. Hmmm, I wonder if he's around for 6th edition? Don't know, I'm opting out of that one. But Champions Online is a fun game and it's pretty closely tied to 6E. How about that?

Ugh! Too much cyber and not enough altered human! I'm still not sure about his color there either. Bleah, I'll take early 80's Ripper over that generic-looking cyberzombie any day!

Yeah, that's better.