Wonder Woman

So when DC Comics unveiled this new design for Wonder Woman's costume yesterday, a bunch of us took to facebook with howls of feeble, pointless protest. In all the excitement I may have even said unkind things about the costume's designer, Jim Lee, who is by all accounts a prince of a guy and certainly never did anything to me (actually he was very gracious the one time I spoke with him in a professional capacity). I really hate when I catch myself being a snotty internet nerd-troll. I then decided that the only way to right the karmic scales was to post my own attempt and let people tear it apart if they wanted to.

Actually this is my second attempt. My first is below. Apart from the tweaks I made to the costume, witness how stiff and lifeless it is by comparison. I haven't drawn superheroes professionally in a long time, and when I try to now the strangest thing happens: I revert to my skill set from 15 years ago. I actually forget that I draw better now. It's so weird.

Iron Man 2

I did this for a movie blogger who expressed interest in adding my stuff to his site. I was into it but unfortunately a bunch of paying work hit at the same time, which I had to prioritize, and I didn't get it done before the review went up. I actually could have gotten it done a lot quicker, but I succumbed to the pitfall of trying to find just the "right" image, and thus did a boatload of sketches when it probably would have been just as well to do something simple off the cuff. I have to break myself of this tendency.

I hid a little easter egg on War Machine's armor-- on the shoulder where there's some letters & numbers I instead spelled out the name of my old-time Marvel colleague Len Kaminski (I spelled his last name in 'leet'). My understanding is that Len was the person who came up with War Machine back in the early '90s. But because he was a staffer, War Machine was technically the creation of the 11th floor of 387 Park Avenue South, and long story short he gets no credit on the film. That's showbiz, folks.

Ryan Reynolds

This is just a practice drawing. I don't have anything to say about Ryan Reynolds. Although according to a lot of websites I apparently am supposed to be a fan of his. Because he is currently featured in some horrible movie that's based on some kind of illustrated periodical fiction which I used to shell out money for when I was a stupid kid. Apparently I have no choice in the matter, I dearly love all this dogshit.

Oh, I'm told I'll also want to see him when they spin his character off into another horrible movie a few years from now, despite the fact that his character in the movie has nothing to do with the awful character from the periodicals that it's allegedly based on. So now I'm all up to date on that.

Vampirella

A Victorian-inspired take on the Warren character from the '70's. (Or for you young bloods, make that Harris Comics from the '90's.)

THE SPIRIT

So, Frank Miller has made what appears to be a horrible movie of Will Eisner's The Spirit. 

Since Will Eisner and Frank Miller were my two favorite cartoonists as a lad, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this. On the one hand, nobody needs to prove their Eisner-fan stripes less than Frank Miller does. I wouldn't even know who Will Eisner was if not for Miller. This is a guy who used to take up space in his top-tier Marvel book to plug a strip that had been defunct for 30 years. It's just disappointing that he appears to have made a movie that's less about the Spirit comic than about Frank Miller's late-period preoccupation with boobs, blood and bad dialogue. Like practically everything he's done post-1980's, the trailer leaves me scratching my head; it seems like a bad parody, and I can't tell if he's joking or not.

I should have known it might turn out like this after having read Eisner/Miller, the book-length cross-interview that Dark Horse published a few years back. In parts you just had the sense that the two of them were on separate wavelengths. Like the following passage where Miller is about to talk about Sin City: Family Values.

EISNER: The book I'm working on right now is about a family that immigrates from Eastern Europe in the 1930's and struggles to make a living in the garment district while keeping their traditions alive.

MILLER: Oh yeah, my book deals with a lot of the same themes. These two hot chicks get it on with each other and then go around shooting everybody with uzis.

Okay, I might not have exactly transcribed that word for word, but it's not far off.