My Supergirl
As a comics fan and the father of a young Supergirl-loving daughter, I have been following the recent controversy surrounding the recent appearance of Supergirl.
Recently, a meme has sprung up in response, wherein various artists have contributed their concepts toward a new vision of Kara, the last cousin of Krypton. Above is my effort.
I do not claim supremacy in the sequential arts.
You may click to see it larger.
UPDATE: Unable to leave poor enough alone, I have fiddled with the shading to make her a tad more realistically lit.
MUCH more logical uniform redesign, and believable although she looks a bit too happy to start stompin.
But I just can’t get my eyes off of the monitor and ultimate trainwreck-coverage that is a bald Britney Spears, long enough to be able to really look and consider any “Supergirl”.
I like to think that my Supergirl would be happy while stompin.
With things like “bald Britney Spears” taking over news coverage, it’s just a matter of time before I give up web-surfing in addition to television.
Ah – more clearly, you have her wearing the stompin boot of choice, Doc Martens. And leg muscles ready to do so. What, doesn’t she fly anymore?
Sure, she flies. She just lands harder when she lands. And woe betide the people she lands on.
You said it, and with thighs which look as they were made of collapsed neutronium there won’t be much left of the nasties on which she lands. You just did one of the rare healthy-looking Supergirls in that list. Most of the others in that meme list look so scrawny and thin that it would take microscopic amounts of Kryptonite to bring them down. Villains would just have to dust their trained mosquitoes with trace amounts of the stuff.
Well, technically speaking, Supergirl does not need to have a massive body in order to be strong. The images created of superheroes (I do not need remind you) are designed for their appeal to the reader, not in any logical way regarding their powers. Therefore, most male superheroes have absurdly developed muscles to announce their power and most females are slender and curvaceous and spend most of their time posing as though in a photo spread for Maxim (which is where, I’m afraid, a good deal of photo-reference for female superheroes is found).
I always kind ofassumed Superman kind of just worked out on the side… kinda like Batman. He just had to work at it less.
Frankly, this whole “mainsteam comics continuity” thing is so odd. Comics characters that aren’t Harvey Pekar or “alt” titles confound me. Watch as I attempt to tie this back to the mainstays of this blog:
1. How does Justice League Unlimited‘s portrayal of Supergirl compare?
2. Did you ever the see Supergirl movie?
Thank you.
The characters do not confound me, but the nine billion interrelated titles do. I recoil in horror when I confront the New Releases rack.
The Bruce Timm-designed Supergirl is a spunky, adorable girl-next-door who can kick your ass and literally kill you with a look. She has the same abilities as Superman but less of his overwhelming sense of responsibility. I love her and my daughter worships her.
Supergirl, however, like many (most?) female DC heroes, has been re-jiggered and re-formulated many many times, to the point where there is no “official” Supergirl. She’s been the horse-loving, boyfriend-troubled teen of the original comics and she’s been a robot sex-slave for Lex Luthor. The kind folks at DC seem to have no problem killing off their female characters and then reinventing them as something contridictory and disposable, to the point where the average reader has no idea who the character is supposed to be or what she is supposed to represent. I wonder why that is.
I have not. I saw Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and now feel that I have done my time on bad Salkind-produced Superman Universe titles.
Yeah, Bruce Timm’s a champ. He puts life and motion in all the characters he draws, the famous as well as the relatively obscure. Take a look at what he did as a single shot drawing with Leeja and Magnus (Robot Fighter 4000 AD) and with Yuri and Kei for a Dirty Pair: Run from the Future cover.
It’s continually astounding to me how he can make me care about some of the most laughable characters in the DCU. Captain Boomerang? Kilowog? Despero? Amazing.
Captain Boomerang was much better in Identity Crisis. However that itself included some pretty odd bits. What Bruce Timm does is appeal to what has ever made the character interesting, and not in an ironic or throwback sense either [a la Morrison]. He appeals to what makes the character fun. Kilowog I remember discovering through the Timm cartoons. When in mainstream comic you have a pathetic 32 pages to tell a story, chances are you won’t focus on Killowog [much like Morrison didn’t focus on the middle eastern character whose name escapes me in his ‘New X-Men’ run, despite his plans to…]. Its like selling a movie for three bucks for every 10-15 minutes. Absurd.
Hellboy’s good… as is the Goon, and the Runaways. For all the noise made about old superhero characters, its really a shame few eyes are looking at the new bits and pieces created.
As for Supergirl… well… Michael Turner copies from Porn Magazines for his women. Fan service is very obnoxious. A female counterpart to Supergirl is herself an odd character. There may not even be a point anymore. Also she doesn’t have a crotch are. The legs just kind of come out from that hanckerchief tied around her waist. [Not the best thing to fly or kick in. Must get cold…]
The key to what Timm and his team do, to me, is that they imagine the characters as personalities first and worry about what their “powers” are second. That’s why Justice League is scintillating, thought-provoking drama and Superfriends is crap.
No doubt you’re aware of Heidi McDonald’s crusade for the “substantial chunk of story” that she feels is missing from most mainstream American comics titles, and is her explanation for why manga currently outsells American superheroes even in American comics shops.
Hm. Well, how bad has ‘Pride of Baghdad’ done? There’s about three excellent issues of comics in there, but they never got sold seperately. The comic seems to have gotten a lot of mainstream appeal… what Manga does is offer you a good chunk of story for a reasonable price [seven dollars]. It cost six dollars for Jeff Smith’s Shazam!, which was a mere 48 pages. Americans like stories, irregardless of where they’re from [heck, what could seem more foreign than Civil War? It reads like an ignorant’s view of the Bush administration. Like a foreigner judging thier view of America on Dr. Strangelove and a JibJab cartoon.]. Until American comics stop seeing angst as key, Manga will always outsell. [Also, frankly, American comics are caught up in things that happened a good while ago… I like Jhonen Vasquez, a polarizing choice, but at least like Will Eisner he experiments…]
I’m aware of ‘the chunk theory’. I even remember your comment on the chunk theory in that entry with Naruto’s face on it. 52 is actually pretty good when you get into it… although I stopped following it on Week 22… its kind of like Timm’s Justice League in its all encompassing view of this odd universe… only slightly convoluted and drawn all too meticulously [another plus on Manga, actually fun to look at…]
Don’t tell me, tell him.
I’m sorry. I’ll delete it.
Gosh, don’t delete it, I’m happy to see it — I was just directing you to the central location.
Just browsing the Supergirl links, and realized I’d totally forgotten your entry in this.
Also — OMG! You deleted!
Hey, I didn’t delete ghostgecko, he deleted himself!
Get Gecko
Maybe it was Michael Caine.