The Hero Business

With DC’s recent revamp announcements, I’m a little taken aback with the push to make everyone “bad-ass.” And, apparently, “bad-ass” also means overly complicated costumes with a lot of needless lines and seams all over the place.

So, I found this sketch I did a coupla weeks ago. It was just a doodle of Aqualad and his gal pal, Aquagirl. From artist Nick Cardy, on the introduction of Aquagirl: “I think it stemmed from the idea that the Aquaman character had Mera, while Aqualad was sort of left out. So George and Bob wrote in a young girl character, Tula. Like with Mera, I designed Tula’s outfit and overall look. She was Aqualad’s companion, being of the same age, they could relate to one another, or oppose the elders. We played up the fact that she was this wild, “hip” 1960s modern girl and Aqualad was more reserved and introverted.”

I dunno. Maybe I’m crazy…. but I think a lot of these characters had untapped potential. Not every hero needs to be a grim dude, all super-serious about his crime-fightin’. Sometimes they can be fun-lovin’ teen heroes with goofy haircuts. I’m fine with that.

So when I developed The Hero Business, I wanted each of the characters to be distinct. And that means they would also DRESS distinct. I decided on color schemes for each of them, but then I vary up the ensembles. It gives the comic some variety, and allows the characters to express themselves a little differently. The exceptions (for now) are Bravado and Malefactor, who wear more-or-less costumes, like old-school comic book characters.

This storyline, there’s quite a number of outfit changes for Bravado, but there’s also lots of different wardrobe selections for Parker, Simon, and Morgan, too… because things take place over several days time.

For Parker, I want her to look youthful and a little on the alternative side. She usually has black nail polish, heavy eyeliner, wrist cuffs, leather boots, and cute tops and skirts. So her outfits vary within that theme. Here’s a sketch of what she’s wearing in the next couple of strips (Thursday!). I always sketch out the outfits before I draw it on the page:

With “The All-New All-Different Bravado” storyline still running, I though I’d share another revamp I’ve been toying with: Jem and the Holograms, the truly outrageous toon from the 80s featuring an all-girl rock group.

It’s airing again on The Hub! No lie, I love the concept of “young people in bands having crazy adventures.” JEM delivered this in spades, along with hologram powers, secret identities and soap operatic continuity.

Here’s my first swipe at revamping Jem/Jerrica:

And here she is, along with revamped roadie Rio:

And here’s the final:

Now let’s take a rough look at the revamped Jem and the Holograms:

And the final version:

Next up: The Misfits and even the Stingers!

So, it was fun developing these obvious X-Men analogs for this week’s strip. The challenge is how to change them up enough for further use… but still keep them recognizable for easy-identification jokes.

Wolverine proved the toughest, as you see from the wide variety of versioning. Once I decided to make him more wolfen, the alpha male thing popped in my head. Totally a Wolvie trait– and then Alpha Mauler. Ah, perfect. Storm became Weather Witch, so I shifted her powers to become Voodoo in nature. Cyclops, I just turned into an actual one-eyed monster. I almost called him “One Eyed Monster” (tee-hee) until I thought of “Eye Sore,” which I liked better.

Poor Downer didn’t get to appear. She’s the Rogue analog – a goth girl who sucks the energy out of the room. She’s also morose and kinda depressing.

Yeah, these guys gotta appear again at some point. I have one definite idea in mind for Alpha Mauler!