The Sketch Giveaway was a big success. Thanks to everyone who participated. Below are the results. This proved to be a very successful promotion. I think I may do it again some time.
Month: June 2014
Make Me Draw
I’m bored. The next 5 people to contact me via any means they prefer will get a free sketch of their choosing.
You may have noticed…
A crapton of new posts down here in the blog section. I just imported the tumblr blog’s old posts here for archival purposes. Feel free to explore them. They include a lot of the old comics as well, which will allow people to go back and comment on individual pages. There’s also a few of my own musings there as well as a few junk posts. Feel free to look through or ignore as you please.
And one of the weirder things to come out of Marvel
http://comicsalliance.com/marvel-unlimited-edition-ego-living-planet-digital-comic/
Ego the living planet. I love how Marvel doesn’t even bother trying to be realistic, but rather fully embraces the weirdness of a living planet with a giant face on it. It’s like they just said “yeah take this crazy shit and roll with it.”
If you hadn’t figured it out already, in this chapter, Pooky drops the other shoe (although Pooky doesn’t wear shoes), and becomes a full blown film noir narrator.
Thus concludes Chapter 2: Wicked Sister, with a lead in to both chapters 3 and 4, to be resolved later.
I think #36 should have been 2 pages. It would have given me the chance to have an establishing shot to better explain that Penelope went to a coffee shop where Hannibal works. I think someone can gather that, but it might be confusing the first time.
I’m personally waiting for the trades, but Archie is taking their sweet time releasing them. Can’t wait to read this story arc.
Yeah, Juju is prone to rapid mood changes.
Superhero Costumes: Batman
Batman is another iconic costume design. Interestingly enough, he was originally designed as a detective wearing a domino mask, and was little more than a knockoff of The Shadow at first, but his design was revised to the big batlike guy we know today before his story went to print.
Now when it comes to concealing identity, he’s not quite as thorough as Spiderman. The bat costume has changed over the years, but it has the same basic elements. The cowl, the cape, the dark suit, and the ears. The cowl would become the standard for most superhero masks. Previous heroes had typically used small domino masks that did little to conceal identity. Batman went with a more hood like approach covering the upper half of his face, and only exposing his thick masculine jaw. Later revisions added lenses to the cowl as well concealing his eye color. The ears tend to shift lengths depending on the artist, but all serve the same basic purpose. They don’t look much like a real bat’s ears do they? No they have a more psychological purpose. They resemble demon horns adding to Batman’s menacing appearance.
Batman’s cape serves several purposes. It resembles a pair of wings adding to his winged demon bat motif. It also obscures his movements, and adds to his mystery. Furthermore as someone who fights from the shadows, Batman isn’t often seen very well, so the cape makes it even more difficult for someone to judge his height and build at a glance.
The suit its self probably changes more than the mask or the cape ever did. The original was based on a circus acrobat and was focused on ease of movement, but over time Batman’s suit has changed to be more of a suit of armor protecting him from knives and bullets, but more importantly is something as simple as its color. The bat suit is always dark either dark gray or black. It serves much like his cape to obscure his movements in the shadows, and give shim a ninja like quality.
Batman proves to the the prototype and archetype for the dark hero character. Others who’ve come since all borrow from Batman’s design (including my own character Nailbat).
