What do Pebbles Flintstone, Ariana Grande, and Steven Seagal have in common? If you said they’re probably all mutants, you’re not on the same page as me, but you’re still in the right place. Welcome to Ten Things: Ten Ponytails!

Whooshman-Bicarbonate Films, in conjunction with An Amateur Comics Historian and Karl Lagerfield, Presents:

TEN THINGS: TEN PONYTAILS!

10) SPIDER-MAN

Earth-9939 diverted from the prime Marvel timeline when a mystically powered time-traveling villain called Charnel began targeting and eliminating hero and villain alike. By the year 2020, only a few remained to fight for their reality, including this Peter Parker who couldn’t find a barber. He and his ragtag crew of Avengers (under the command of their world’s version of the Punisher, which is damn near unbelievable to me) traveled back in time to 1992 to prevent their dystopian crap sack timeline from ever existing.

It totally works, but ends up costing the heroes their lives (but only until somebody came up with a really good idea for a sequel).

9) WITCHIE-POO

Another hero from an alternate future, this time the future of DC’s New Earth, Jamandagni Renuka joins with other heroes as a new team of Teen Titans. Witchie-Poo possesses (in addition to one of the worst noms de guerre in superhero history) the ability to manipulate energies and runic magic, taking on the archetype of psychic/magician Raven. Their battle to stop alien war machines from destroying their terraformed space colony was successful, at the cost of the Robin archetype.

She pulls off a ponytail much better than Spider-Man could.

8) MICHANA LOOMIS

The daughter of General Calvin Loomis, Michana and her sisters were traumatized to watch their father murdered by intergalactic executioner Nexus. Though Daddy Loomis was legitimately responsible for the deaths of half-a-million sentients, the girls vowed revenge for his death, even though Nexus made good on his promise to the General to protect and support the Loomis sisters. Sometime later, Nexus rebelled against his mission, giving up the powers of cosmic avenger of evil, only to have his (by this point clearly insane) mentor The Merk turns around and gives the powers to Michana and her sisters.

It was a spectacularly bad idea, especially since the mind of a tween isn’t really fully formed yet. Suffice to say that this cutie with the side pony is now a mass murderer who killed at least one Nexus and was last seen wreaking havoc across the galaxy.

7) BRICKBAT

1994 was a boom year for comics, with the recent success of X-Men #1 driving a remarkable number of mutant ripoff teams. And nobody had more of ’em than Dagger Comics, whose entire publishing strategy was seemingly “Clone The X-Men And Keep ‘Em Coming.” Scorpion Corps? X-Men. Team Anarchy? X-Men. And their longest-running title, The Mavericks, flipped the script by having the team be a group of outcasts with genetic gifts who lived in a secret mansion headquarters owned by their billionaire leader who uses his last initial as the team’s logo.

But this secret mansion’s headquarters was in MONTANA, so it’s totally different.

Oh, and this is Jeff Styles, one of the indistinguishable yutzes that make up the team, something something kinetic energy, I guess?

6) GREEN GENIE

A member of Freedom Force, and video game hero of Patriot City, Jani Al-Majani was struck by a bolt of Energy-X right before she was to be placed in an arranged marriage. Empowered with a range of mystical powers, including shape-shifting, teleportation, and defensive powers, Green Genie is known as “the giggling glamour girl” which… Woof, that’s super hard to get past.

The fact that her costume is basically Barbara Eden’s from I Dream of Genie, with a Jack Kirby headpiece, so that’s pretty cool.

5) SHAZZAN

Speaking of genies, siblings Chuck and Nancy gained the assistance of their genie after discovering a magic ring in a cave. Transported back in time, they agree to help Shazzan return the control rings to his true master, calling on the powerful genie to assist them in overcoming dangers. Being as Chuck and Nancy are a couple of complete idiots, they’re separated virtually every episode and forced to deal on their own until they can get it together. It’s a little bit like Billy Batson getting gagged every third story so that he couldn’t say Shazam, except for the flying camel and the casual ’60s ethnocentrism.

4) SHATTERSTAR

A native of Mojoworld, Gaveedra-Seven has been known to have as many as FOUR ponytails at one time, mostly because his creator doesn’t pay attention to things like visual continuity or physics, or realistic human proportions. Still, somebody seems to love Shatterstar, because he keeps coming back unexpectedly, no matter how bad his last appearance was, a trait he shares with said creator.

When he died in Deadpool 2, the only thing left was his bloody ponytail, which will probably be the entirety of his pop culture profile for the next decade or more.

3) UNIC

Unicorn-themed superheroes are relatively rare, which makes this member of the cast of SpeedRunners stand out even more than his massive purple ponytail and pink uniform. The unnamed city where he plies his trade is pretty saturated with supers, making the race to any given crime a free-for-all to outrun the other would-be heroes, but Unic is not only fast, he’s sneaky, agile, and skilled with the occasional explosive device to give him the edge.

After all, crime waits for no man, woman, or unicorn!

2) ASAMI KOIZUMI

A teenage runaway, Asami was abducted by the alien Reach and experimented on, triggering her metagene. The resulting ability to manipulate her chi gives her a limited force field and the ability to almost fly by launching herself through the air. An associate member of the team (the lack of a name is one of the biggest reasons that I have never been able to get into Young Justice), Asami and her friends (Native American Longshadow, Latinx youth Ed Dorado and Virgil “Static” Hawkins) are all allusions to the Hanna-Barbera additions to the Super Friends in the 1970s, with Asami being roughly analogous to Samurai.

1) NAMORITA

The younger cousin of Namor The Sub-Mariner, Namorita Prentiss grew up thinking that she was the daughter of Namora, once a superhero in her own right. In her early twenties, she discovered that she was in fact, a clone and that her unstable genetics were a proverbial powder keg. Before all that, though, she founded the New Warriors, during which time she proved to be the queen of ponytails and green scale mail swimwear.

It’s a shame what Civil War did to her. I’m still angry about it fifteen years later.

Once again, this week’s topic, Ten Ponytails, is all me, but feel free to follow along @MightyKingCobra to suggest a topic of your own! There’s always more Ten Things madness on my Twitter or check out the full Twitter archive here! As with any set of like items, these aren’t meant to be hard and fast or absolutely complete, if only because haircuts . Either way, the comments section is below for just such an emergency, but, as always: Please, no wagering!

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