Marvel Flipside

Were I to Write: Ms. Marvel

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America, Wolverine-- these guys are the headliners, the Big Guns, the heroes that not only represent their corners of the Marvel story-verse but serve as icons for the company itself. But... where are the women? If one Marvel heroine deserves to be a headliner, it's Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel!

Here's Ms. Marvel's current look, as illustrated by the eminent George Perez. Certainly it's distinctive, memorable, and has a strong brand identity. But every look Ms. Marvel has sported would have to fall on the "basically a swimsuit" side of the costume spectrum, and this is no exception. Ms. Marvel, to really be a headliner, would do well to have a costume that's more of a costume-costume. I mean, if it were up to me, Ms. Marvel would go on to headline not just her own comic, but also movies, animated series, video games, and, of course, Marvel office stationary and correspondence. Do you really want someone in a swimsuit on all of that? (Okay, don't answer that. You might want it, I think, but would it be best?)

  

And if Ms. Marvel steps up to the big leagues, that means she should headline her own corner of the Marvel Universe-- and that corner pulls out two of her backgrounds and mashes 'em up together. Ms. Marvel is an alien hunter - slash - secret agent.

Ms. Marvel is already a bona fide hero-- soaring through the skies over an adoring public that she both protects and serves. Unfortunately, the alien Kree have Earth in its sights-- no, they aren't interested in an alien invasion. We are a place for experimentation. We are their petrie dish. Thank goodness Ms. Marvel knows all about Kree and their experiments. By taking out one of their latest Sentry robots, she dedicates herself to safeguard Earth from all Kree.

But things get complicated when she rescues a Young Genius from an alien menace. The Genius points out to her the obvious-- Earth has had some pretty significant alien activity over the past few years, particularly the Kree. And all that alien tech isn't just laying around-- it's falling not only into the wrong hands, but hands all over the place! Foreign governments, terrorist groups, corporate thinktanks, even clandestine U.S. black ops! Thank goodness Ms. Marvel came from a spy background. As "Codename: Warbird," she's an independent operative infiltrating and destroying alien tech wherever it may be.

So, in a weird way, her superhero identity is actually her public persona, kept up so that her "real" secret identity-- the costumed secret alien-destroying agent Warbird-- can act with impunity. It also lets her corner the all-things-alien on Earth corner of the Marvel Universe, such as Nova and Quasar used to do. (Just avoid taking too many trips to space-- that's what killed Ms. Marvel's chances of headlining when she became Binary. And what killed Nova and Quasar, too, interestingly enough.) It also gives Ms. Marvel such friends and foes as Project: Pegasus, SWORD, A.I.M., Brood, Kree and the Lunatic Legion, the Inhumans, and the Supreme Intelligence.     

Of course, what does this all mean for her identity as simply Carol Danvers? And what happens when our Young Genius' true self is uncovered?

CBR: D-Manbot

Still always wishing I could play  along at home with the Comic Book Runway over at Comic Book Resources forums. But without the dreaded deadline as incentive, it's not really a priority, you know? Here's as close as I came with this week's challenge: Avengers + Transformers. I chose Demolition Man and the somewhat obvious choice of a wrecking ball crane.

D-Man was once Captain America's junior partner, but found more purpose as the superhuman champion of an underground dwelling homeless community.  I tried to convey his beard with a bunch of wires, and I had some trouble adding the tank-like tread to the sides of his legs. I think I would try a different tactic and even a different character if I had more time (and inclination!)

CBRunway: Songbirds

Here is my entry for CBRunway challenge #3: Songbirds. "For your next challenge you must design a superhero identity for a female musician based on the title of one of her singles."

Already I was disappointed. If there's one Jeopardy category I will always do poorly in, it is anything resembling music. Sure enough, I was assigned Kylie Mingoue, to which I responded-- "who?" Only when I started looking over songs and videos, I responded "Oh, THAT Kylie Mingoue."

Inspired by the song Can't Get You Out of My Head, I re-imagined Kylie as-- the Headmistress! Here is my design and write-up:

You see, Kylie's song was in fact autobiographical-- she literally couldn't get someone out of her waking dreams and sleeping thoughts, until she tapped into her power to physically enter the dreamspace and force the guy out! Now, she uses her songs to enter the dreamscape as the world's dream-hunter extraordinaire, often with her back-up chorus line of Headcases!

Kylie's costume has a few elements from the Head video's plunging neckline but it's largely based on general elements of current fashion with a decidedly 80s color scheme to keep her with her "roots." (The white robes/sarong is only lined with color, as is the cape.) Her stockings/shoes are sheer with the words "la la la" repeated in the pattern, as in the song I've chosen. She makes no apologies for how she appears in the dreamscape-- as someone who regularly out-Madonnas Madonna and has gone on record saying "There's been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits."

So, I realize that I didn't have the costume as rendered as I usually prefer, but I WAS going to Thailand for a week to scuba dive, and I had to rush my design. I still like the various elements, but, as the director MattBib says: "voters genuinely enjoyed your concept, but found the costume to be overly busy and not necessarily tied to your artist or song strongly enough."

Uh, I don't know about that. Because people did comment in contradiction to that, but ultimately the votes did end up with others, so who am I to say. In other words, yes, Virginia, I received ZERO TOTAL VOTES. Damn. If all I did was vote for myself, I could have stayed alive at least enough to force a tie run-off or something. I'm really bummed, because you just KNOW there are people who really do vote for themselves and thus stay in the game. Or maybe that's just sour grapes. I would really have liked to play some more. I hate that I'm cut in just the third challenge. Gah! Music sucks!

CBRunway: Wonder Beaver

Can't say that I'm too crazy about this round's challenge. This time, we had to take a character concept from a previous CBR-hosted writer's challenge and design the character in question. Shrug. Not that it's a bad challenge per se, I just am not that inspired by the idea that won. Here it is (by the poster Flâneur):

Memory is the most fluid of all things, some events imprint themselves upon us and some disappear without a trace while others still are created, constructed, conceived from a blend of what we hear from others and what we want to believe. Rosalie was very aware of this fact, painfully so, and took advantage of it every day. You see, Rosalie had a rare disorder where her brain was unable to store memories for very long so that every time she went to sleep, she woke up without any notion as to who she might be. To counter this, she kept a diary on her bedside table explaining who she was for her to read each morning but eventually Rosalie became tired of this continual rewind with nothing of value that she could remember for herself so she started altering her diary each night before she went to bed. At first, Rosalie only changed little things, add a flirtation with a nice girl for instance or maybe having someone give her a wonderful complement but eventually things got bigger and bigger until one day she decided to write herself as a superhero, even though there is no such thing. She sews together a costume that she hangs in the closet, chooses a set of criminals as her rogues gallery and gives herself the name of 'Wonder Beaver' knowing that in the next day she'll wake up and assume life has always been this way, so she will follow up on it without any internal struggle and fight (or fail in) the good fight.

And here's the design:

 

I couldn't help but see a mixture of tragedy and comedy in this tale, so I tried to draw something that would be at first funny, but if you took some time to think about it, you'd start to see the tragedy. So I skewed her a little young and slightly anime-ish, but kept some solid-ness to her form, too, without overdoing it. (My first design sketch had her really plump indeed.) Notice that her outfit is created from things she already had in her closet-- this was something she decided to do before going to bed that evening. It's her pink cotton/lyra sports bra and shorts, a metal-studded black belt, white leather suspenders, and heavy boots. She cut her faux-beaver fur coat to make the collar, fringe her gloves and boots, and create a cape-like skirt with a deliberate wing to one side, to be reminiscent of a tail- cape combination. A mask of spare black material to top it off. Something super-heroish but grounded in reality. Is she ready for this?

Comic Book Runway: McSherlock the P.I. Pup

Welcome to the Runway! The judges liked my initial designs, and I'm in! Yay! So this is what it feels like to be let in to Hollywood on American Idol. Uh, or on Project Runway. (Do they even go to Hollywood? Ulp! Don't show ignorance! Just draw!)

The first challenge is to "create and design an original and memorable non-powered, human, plain-clothes detective or private investigator."  

I thought long about this. To me, just having a trenchcoated, fedora-sporting guy would just be to wrong way to go. He'd need a gimmick. I came up with many intriguing ideas-- without boring you with details, let's just say that at various times the following were involved: a fat man, a giant eyeball, a Santa man, Roy G. Biv, and Reese Witherspoon. (That actually sounds like it would make for a great party.)

Instead, what I couldn't stay away from was the idea of a giant plush company mascot thrown into a world of film noir. Perhaps a company symbol engaging in corporate espionage? Or maybe a Magic Kingdom analogue? What I couldn't figure out is how would the guy actually get into the suit in the first place. Until I figured out the story behind the mask....

"He sniffs out the clues, and crooks get locked up! He saves the day, he's our own P.I. Pup!"
McSherlock the P.I. Pup, everyone's favorite public service announcement who encourages us to "Yip, Yip! Chomp Down on Crime!", is always available for parties and school assemblies-- or, at least, the three police officers who are tasked with public appearances that day will be available. Two in uniform, one in the Pup, that's how it goes.

Until Officers Kate, Lyle, and Arman went missing. They were supposed to perform at the birthday party for Congressman Vanko's li'l daughter, but something went horribly wrong. The Russian mob attacked the party, accusing Vanko of being a rival gang leader. The officers were caught in the middle, and believed to have died-- because no one saw any of them again.

That is, until McSherlock showed up at a similar crime scene a week later. McSherlock is helping the police uncover the truth about the Russian gangs, Vanko, and possible police corruption. But is McSherlock really Kate, Lyle, or Arman? Or all three at different times? One thing's for sure-- when your only safety in the world revolves around your anonymity behind a furry anthropomorphic dog suit, you know you're in trouble!

The McSherlock costume is based on the "walk-around characters" popular at theme parks. It's a full-body costume made of synthetic fur (body) and nylon (ears and clothing) with special padding to create the desired shape. The head, hands and feet are separate from the main costume, although the other elements like the deerskin cap, bowtie, and cape are sewn onto their respective parts. The nose is a special fine mesh that allows the wearer to look out while keeping his/her identity hidden. In the rare case when McSherlock actually speaks (he usually acts in pantomime), the wearer's voice is also sufficiently muffled, and the wearer also affects a mock-McSherlock cartoony voice. McSherlock's signature oversized magnifying glass is freely removeable. 

Comic Book Runway

One of the things I've been looking forward to is the possibility of entering CBR's message board version of Project: Runway. It's redesigns of superheroes! How could I *not* do this?

Here's my audition entry.
The requirements for this audition entry were simply "superhero, superheroine." Nothing fancy, I'll admit, but I wanted to stay true to the pure essence of that idea-- the hero. I wanted a costume that a citizen in their world would look at with awe and respect and hope-- a costume that couldn't be construed as anything but a heroic champion's by visuals alone.

The lady's has some Greek overtones, with a cape coming from one shoulder and a motif of white and yellow (two-sided colors), accentuated by the headpiece and leg bands of gold. The black torso keeps a contrast and helps accentuate the golden velvet texture of her upper torso and the same color, but transparent, of the golden arms. Notice the silk leaves the shoulders bare and extends to the base of the fingers. Imagine a modern-day Artemis with long, flowing blonde hair.

The man's costume took a life of its own. I went through many variations, but wanted to keep a more iconic motif centered around a theme. In this case, an animal. Big, bold colors keep it classic, but some slight touches keep some modern touches-- a gradient in the cape, tapered stripes on the tips of his gloves and boots, simulating claws without being threatening. Similarly, the costume is classic spandex and synthetics but with a more "realistic" style that is more of a modern military costume. Most notable for this guy is the mylar eyes, shaped as a catseye, and the wild mane of snythetic hair.