The Hero Business

A little something different for today’s “Rough Monday.” Since Bravado is in the middle of getting a makeover, I thought I’d share a makeover of my own. Remember those goofy junior Superfriends, Wendy & Marvin? It was like the first season of the show, when anti-violence in cartoons prevented the Superfriends from throwing too many punches. They would end up fighting a lot of misguided scientists and their gone-awry experiments. Wendy & Marvin were there for youthful “viewer identification.” And it’s all as terrible as it sounds.

As a challenge to make these guys hip and interesting, I re-imaged them both. Above is the pencil sketch… below is the finished piece. Give yourself a cookie if you can identify the Superfriends-universe villain on the screen!

I got more of these cartoon makeovers if you guys wanna see ‘em….

Or, perhaps this is “Rough Tuesday”, if you are celebrating Memorial Day.

This week, I thought I’d share something that popped up from this past week’s strip. I don’t usually like to explain or point out a joke, but I thought this was one of those inspired little homage-y moments. I originally sketched it out like this:

But I wasn’t exactly happy with Bravado in that first panel. An artistic little voice in my head said, “not good enough.” Bravado should look a little more pissed, or something. Ah… then it occurred to me:

Yup, that was one of the revamps that floated around in my head while developing this storyline. So I began sketching this:

Yeeeeeeah, that feel right. See? I work hard for you guys. ; )

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!

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.