My Illustrative Life

I don’t always illustrate my face subject to the thoughts I had when I dressed for the day. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I just add what I think would look fitting based on the taken photograph, or to add a balancing agent to the mix (for example, if I look bodaciously Disney-buxom, I’ll probably add a manface). Sometimes I add a completely new element, to see how it changes the story of the clothing and my body language.

Today my creative process went like this:

“Haha, this outfit looks way sixties! A thinking socialite, like the ones from the movies, who took the Sound of Music straight to heart. Such things were nowhere near my mind when I put this stuff on! How interesting! I think I shall add a snooty model head, to complete the ensemble.”

“Hmmm. A lot of my thighs are visible here. How can I make a thigh look interesting? Well, much as I dislike him, Batman has made forearms look interesting.. how can I improve on that.. fins.. fins.. mermaids?.. fishpeople.. Gillman!”

“I can’t be doing with drawing ANOTHER set of thigh scales. The Creature’s only my second favourite type of classic movie-monster, anyway; I’ll show that Kate Beckinsdale what for. What a twit.”

Badly taken pictures, because I worry I will get robbed if I photograph on the street.

(To check my map; if you think I’m gonna indicate that I don’t know my way around in public, I laugh at you.)

More coming, if the Cathedral are cool with my sharing snaps from within. I couldn’t find a sign saying “don’t!”, but I don’t wanna assume.

Post up at warmthblog with a tutorial on fixin’ jeans (and making them look even better than they did before).

It’s actually a pretty old tutorial; I did it in.. October maybe? November? Last year and never got round to writing it up properly.

Click the picture to visit, as always!

Scuse the wimpy pose, it’s kinda freezin’ outdoors. Yeah yeah, three of the same dress in a row. If I’m not going in to society, I can wear what I like! Just showing another example of bloomers-as-faux-underskirt. These are better quality and slightly shorter than the blue pair, secondhand-with-tags originally from Metamorphose. They make the whole thing look a little prettier, a little more elegant, a little less like bloomers and more like a common underskirt layer.

Consequences Creed

Consequences Creed has great hair, especially for a professional wrestler. His body has an unusual chunkiness that looks dependable - I’m not worried for his health, or for the crowd of his opponent - and non-monstrous; he’s not scary thin or scary ‘roidy, he’s not super Hollywood-guy ripped but he looks like he is strong (especially in the thighs!). His costume doesn’t have too many elements to it, but it does have enough, and it makes me think of Wonder Woman a little. He doesn’t look nude like the guys who wrestle in pants, and the short shorts are sporty. I dislike watching matches where people are wearing those long spandexy leggings, because I think about them riding low in the crotch and feel sympathy irritation. The colours of his getup complement his skin tones. He springs about and is cheerful. This is a good wrestler image.

Awesome Kong

I am not impressed with the fact that Awesome Kong’s bodice didn’t fit her boobs properly when I was watching TNA semi-regularly. “Get her a tailor, management!” I shouted. But it looks like they did! I dog the Xena look, and I dig that she is FIERCE not a fuckdoll. She pulls great faces and tends to ignore the crowd, I think. She also has cool hair, and I like how she lets it fly about all over. I like her little wrestler boots! Her NAME is AWESOME. And she really, really does make good faces. Good wrestler image.

Sting

Gothy wrestlers (there are more than you’d think, unless you are a big ole wrestling fan) are some of the funniest things, in my opinion. But I like Sting! He is old, for one thing. Kind of. He has a neat gimmick (the lights go out. They come on.. AND THERE IS STING!!!!!!), and he reminds me of the Misfits I like Vampiro by default. I like that he paints his face, all spooooky and that he used to wear pink leggings with bleached hair. I very much enjoy that he had (has?) a major beef (or whatever wrasslin’ calls it, I forget) with Kurt Angle, who I find one of the most boring Entertainment Superstars around. Sting threatens to bite fingers off! He believes in respect, hence troubles with Angle. I dislike his coats, because great big muscular types need careful tailoring and better fabric and better, non-hideous stadium lighting to look purposeful in structured-flowing garments in my opinion. But I respect that he wears it! Good wrestler image!

Samoa Joe

I liked Samoa Joe because.. OK, I liked Samoa Joe because he had a slight rockabilly bent but mainly because his name had “Samoa” in and one of my favourite moments of Dog the Bounty Hunter is Tim yelling “MY WIFE IS SA-MOAN!“. But! Then I didn’t watch TNA (the only wrestling we get on our TV, which is good, because it is my favourite) for a while. When I came back, Joe had a sleeveless Hokuto leather jacket! And (I think?) different facial “tattoos”! And he went around doing peoples’ bidding, like he had been to the future and come back a badass brainwashed cyborg. Duh, obviously I like that. GOOD WRESTLER IMAGE.

Best of all: Booker T

He has a couple of namesakes to choose from. The musician, seen above, and the political leader Booker T (who you should read about). He wears pants, with massive great boots and sometimes T-shirts, which makes him look so nude that I am simply amused rather than squemish. His use of colour in his gear is skillful He also makes great faces, and pretty evidently has a sense of humour that I enjoy. He uses GOLD and CROWN MOTIFS in his ring-wear. He involves his wife! he wears his hair in a ‘princess ponytail’ sometimes, and his boots look like platforms half the time. I just froze the first video here on a frame that shows him jumping reeeally high, which I admire. He also also has massive thighs, which would alarm me in real life but just make me go wow, really?? when watching on teevee. And he just looks like a “nice man”, silly and subjective as that is.

My beloved adds, Booker T is cool about racism because he called Hulk Hogan NIGGA when he got carried away and then laughed and his wife patted his shoulder! She just pats him and stifles her mirth!

 
“A definite challenge there from Harlem Heat~”

Best wrestler image.

Aw, shit, wiki just told me he’s TNA No More. Shucks.

Why do I take this post to get all this opining (is this the correct word?) out? Partly out of frank enjoyment. Partly out of an inclination to let people know about stuff they might not know. And partly because I want to do my part, if possible, in making sure that we never, ever return to the days of..

“Wrestler hair”

That is exactly what “wrestler hair” looks like. Youtube, for example, Royal Rumble 1992. Or I could do it for you! Jake the Snake is a marginal offender, but watch for Sid.

He was NOT ALONE IN THIS.

Bad wrestler image

Picture credits here
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Sunday Sunday Sunday.

Well, I finally got to reading Tank Girl: Armadillo. I read it in bed, reading reading reading for a decent couple of hours like I always, always used to. Was it good? Should you buy it (or borrow, or.. loan it)? Let’s start at the start! And finish before the end (of the book), FYI; the second half is short stories and suchlike, and I haven’t read’em yet. You can do THAT for yourself.

There’re two prefaces, from the author, and I want you to read this little bit of one of them and understand why I didn’t read past it, in the common room lunch place at work, because of having “something in my eye”.

That’s kind. Kindness and fiction-appreciation are important. Honestly, I think this book is worth the purchase for that sentiment alone.

When I was reading I started out feeling uncomfortable, to be honest. You may be different and probably are but I really don’t find it easy to come in fresh to a story and start yellin’ WOOO, BLOW HIS HEAD OFF! I mentioned in the Jennifer’s Body SPOILERS how touchy I am about cannon fodder. I don’t need ameri-dubbing on my Dragonball to her “I think I see their parachutes!”, or whatever it was. I only catch six pokemon per game if I can manage it, for goodness sake, because shoving them inside a computer seems mean. I’m a big ole bleeding heart and hearing the idol of the novel say Okay, so we shot down a cop in cold blood. So fuckin’ what? makes me go “eeeeehhh” and squirm a bit. But what felt unusual is that the book (author/protag both) seems to acknowledge that. She say the italicised sentences in a page-chapter devoted to explaining how that’s not as muddy as it seems, how I shouldn’t judge her anyway, and how she doesn’t even care if I do. And not in such a deluded, self-convincing, distancing way as the way I put it makes it sound.

I still wasn’t completely cool with the thing of it, though. Which is why it was a relief when everybody revealed themselves to be such complete stinkers who were just as willing to solve problems with murder and carnage and pain as Tank Girl and her gang, only without being fun and kind and caring the rest of the time. In a world of shooting out brains before breakfast, motivation comes to be very meaningful. It’s an interesting authorial quirk, I think - the mixture of boisterous cartoonery and irredeemable-to-the-point-of-2d villains with the 3d motivation and realistic emotional resonance. Tank Girl really does, after a while, become a vessel for violent revenge/lesson fantasies. I don’t really feel ok thinking about feeding grenades to real world despicable people, or people who have crossed or simply annoyed me - it just feels counter-productive and even in my mental Holodeck I can’t ignore that people have.. well, whole people within themselves. But here? These people whose innards I can see are bad, bad, no-good people through and through. I have it on highest authority.

Tank Girl really was my armour, as I read this book.

It’s not just that though; Armadillo is a novel. It has a story. She and her peeps are making war on this one town full of heinous characters, who’ve ruined or messed with the lives of two (really three, I guess, but Sub Girl’s ex is never relevant as her ex) of the crew. It’s full of backstory, and re-weaving of now-story, and I think that makes it backstory for some of the previously published comics cos there’s no talk of any babies. I have no idea how Tank Girl canon works. I sort of don’t want to.

There’s also (I warned you in the post title here, SPOILERS) time travel. Which I enjoyed as a plot contrivance and a method to get extra emotional facts out there, but also because it was a very, very similar method to the one used in the film Somewhere in Time. I really dig that movie; Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, gorgeous clothing, heart-wrenching plot. Excellent rainy day movie, and the leitmotif is a keeper. Tank Girl yammers on about a movie (and a particular song from it) she accidentally managed to see as a child which no-one else had heard of periodically, too, so I figure this is an extra relevant tangent.

Reading this book made me feel better about things. She’s not “the perfect person” and she’s not, of course, “real”. I’ve said before that reading T.G. comics make me want to dress like myself, not like her, and want to celebrate being myself, not like her. And that’s true, because you know when you read her that if you were to meet her, then she would either think you were rad or disgusting - and thinking that oneself is not rad is not the way to go about encouraging Tank Girls esteem. Plus, she speaks a lot of wisdom:

Buy it.

Wearing today addendum:

You may or may not know, my little (though actually bigger than me) sister is in a band. They do some of their own songs, and cover a bunch of songs in the Queen/The Who vein. I am very proud of her. But because of that, the fact that she can’t drive by herself yet, and the fact that her exams are over for now my family took a daytrip to the town where they’re playing tonight. Let’s explore Moreton in Marsh!

This first thing deserves a paragraph of its own - I walked around a tiny park, and the tiny park had no, I repeat no crisp packets outside of the bin. Say it with me: LET’S KEEP BRITAIN TIDY!

Moreton in Marsh is one of those confectionary towns. It’s “the gateway to the Cotswolds”; the main streets are just picturesque, all big blocks of sandstone, heavy doors (some giant, some tiny), great large windows on antique shops and gift shows and tea shops.

Speaking of tea shops. We ate lunch in The Marshmallow(where I got to read about four more pages of TG:Armadillo). I’d been pulling for Thai, but Dad pointed out that this Marshmallow had been honoured by UK Tea Council multiple times. And I do love a good cuppa. One of the Christmas presents I asked for - and received! Hurray! - was a subscription to the Twinings Tea of the Month club! I drank a pot of “Kenyan” (or.. was it “Kenya”?), because the menu described it as colourful. It was tasty, but it paled, actually, when lunch proper arrived. Cottage pie. Creamed mashed potato. Perfectly cooked vegetables. The end of my Mum’s beef casserole with cobbler. A fair bit of my sister’s portion of veg. A taste of my Dad’s liver and onions. I swear, I coulda kept going and going.

Would you like a loyalty card?
Dad says no. Of course. What do I say? Oh come on, you can guess.

I also enjoyed the wallpaper in the hotel the band’s (I did their logo!) playing at.

I felt just about right in what I was wearing, situationally (sweaterdresses + antiques = Just Right), but I think I’m gonna sew buttons around the inside of the hem and around the lower half of the neckline. I feel OK with a shorter skirt and a high neck, or a lower neckline and a longer skirt, but short and low (I know it’s not extreme. But it is for me! Especially with this long jacket warping perception) makes me feel a bit flashy. Dickies and faux-slips, from now on!

I took some video on the way home. The light was so beautiful, and the countryside really should be seen and appreciated! Good editing practice, too. Which reminds me! Can I get some volunteers to give me constructive criticism on a video? It would be really, really useful!

I’m still adding the new comments format! But I’ve figured out a way to keep them off the front page. Click the title, or normal “comment” button, and see!

I don’t want to change my hair. I like it a lot how it is. And I don’t really tend to envy people - just approve of them, because I am a Queen and thus imperious. But, here is an exercise: If I had to change it. If a villain was holding the world to ransom, and their only demand were that I MUST get a hair transplant.. Here is what I would choose. Three choices, in case they don’t have many scalps for me to pick from.

I like hair with texture and rhythm and impact. The hair I have now allows it its optimum.. boosh, if you like, and it holds my face like pincers. It’s short in the back, which lets me feel punchy, and it’s swishy in the front which makes me feel serene (but not too swishy, so I remain controlled). These three also have that mix of KA-POW and gliiiiide, I think. Don’t you? Or maybe you read them differently, that is the interesting thing about opinions! Do share.

My fourth choice - which doesn’t really count, because It’s more of a “style” than a “do”, if you see - is the hair I saw on a lady in the Jimi Hendrix documentary my sister and I watched on the train on the way back from her last uni visit. I didn’t see the start so I didn’t know her name! But I had to show her cool, cool hair to my beloved, and so: I found her. Fayne Pridgon. Here are a very bad picture and a link, because for some reason the clip has embedding turned off! Bah!

This documantary!

What about you? Got back-ups?

This really is the worst type of post - re-posting part of Someone else’s entry - but this dress made me say “Oh wow” out loud like Joel Robinson. I’m looking for a clip of that for colour but I can’t find one!

Oh wow, right?

Learning by Doing is excellent; today at work I learnt about twenty things about website fiddling and coding by being thrown in at the deep end, finished a marketing video and started reading Tank Girl: Armadillo. I’m only.. let me check.. seven pages of preface/story in (I spent all my breaks doing extra learnin’! I have all these ideas I need to be able to include!) but I have laughed and YEUHH’d and thought “Hmm, I might wear that”. I won’t say more! Let’s keep the spoilers for the SPOILERS post!

Gonna have a quiet evening of horror illustration, working on a logo for my beloved, and having another strike at Rachel’s tattoo. And watching Martial Law.

Unrelated tangent: I decided to start buying summery-appropriate clothes. So I have something to wear when it isn’t chilly chilly.. I’m just so picky. So far I have my eye on a Jane Marple (of course) skirt and Gogol Bordello ‘track shorts’, and I cut the arms off my too-big and previously unflattering Misfits pumpkin tee.. Anyone got any suggestions?? I like layers and structure! So not summer-ideal!

Trying out this new, extra comments format since people’ve mentioned they’ve had trouble with the built-in form.. :O

Four whole pictures. Because I say so!

These next two, see, I find interesting. Because if you could see the expressions I have under the pixels you’d know they were completely different to the ones that I drew. But the ones I drew look like they might be similar, don’t you think?

Listening to (hence double mus-tash whammy):

Gonna be talking about ART this next week. I just found out that one of my favourite artists is the son in law of another of my favourite artists, to whom my mum compared some of my stylings (best compliment in memory, possibly). And after I cook these blueberry muffins, I’ma start reading Tank Girl: Armadillo for SPOILERS v.3.THE FUTURE! IT GLISTENS!

First day of British Waterways volunteer Appreciating, yesterday. It was good! I feel useful, I think I am useful, the people are really welcoming, and I get to draw and be creative. OH OH and, I am working where Chucklevision used to be filmed.

TO ME, TO YOU!

Wearing yesterday:

This is actually a picture I took today, though, since I didn’t get home til it was dark. Hence the underskirt secret during picture taking:

Oo la la! Pyjama troosers!

I asked, and I get to wear my DMs in the future. Marvelous.

I don’t actually know if there is/is going to be a softcover of this book.

Jennifer’s Body, first-off, was a horror movie out last year. Written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox (jennifer) and Amanda Seyfried (Needy); about a pair of teenaged, highschool friends who give up pretending that they don’t feel like enemies once Megan’s character, titular Jennifer (and no, I’m not taking that pun out - it was accidental and I don’t feel like redacting it to avoid rubbish jokes), becomes some sort of demon. I hated it when I saw the posters, I resented it when I saw Megan Fox being used for sexyface yet again, I rolled my eyes and sneered at it when I heard the “HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL!” tagline. But when I read the coverage it got on Jezebel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (’6 reasons to love Jennifer’s Body’)) I started to think it might actually be really fantastic.

I still haven’t watched it, though. I’m a rubbish cinema-goer (I still haven’t seen Where the Wild Things Are, for goodness’ sake!).

I was and am super-keen on the idea of a horror movie about teenage friendships full of resentment and stangancy (not a real word?), about how objectification and patriarchy turn people against themselves and each other, and a deeper examination of high school/teenage problems than “my parents don’t understand or listen to me” or gender-divided court hierarchy. Not that those things aren’t interesting and true and painful, but that isn’t all that sucks so hard about growing up. I was-am also super-keen on examination (& debunking) of sexism within horror movies. And how that comes from, reflects and focusses sexism and gender-based assumptions in ‘real life’.

But like I said, I haven’t seen the movie yet! So I should shut up about it, and talk about the comic which I HAVE read!

They were still shooting when I was writing so I haven’t seen the film but I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. - Rick Spears, author of the compilation, to Atomic Comics

I mentioned that I bought my copy in a regular book shop rather than a specialist comic shop - this meant that I got the Cho-drawn cover:

Now, I twitter’d this before, but the fact that this comic came wrapped in cellophane makes me go HAH and then EWW.

When I started writing this today I decided I should check good ole wikipedia to see if it had any interesting facts I had missed. it didn’t, but it did provide me with this paragraph synopsis of the book:

The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her “going in for the kill” several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.

I’ll just day that “conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered” is not what I did when I was reading. Why? Oh! That’s right! Teenage boys DON’T deserve to be murdered! You nutter, anonymous wiki editor.

I don’t actually think that that was what the author intended me to do either though - I got much more of an impression that this was a book written out of a funny sort of sensitivity. Boys don’t deserve to be murdered, but horror movies need victims.. but victims mean nothing if they weren’t people first. I leave the room when Luke’s rebel friends are being burst like fireworks as they’re all assaulting the Deathstar, because it’s sad. Phelous often mention that the films he reviews miss the mark because the characters who get skewered (or whatever) are so irritating or vapid that the viewer doesn’t care or is glad when they pop their clogs - the more a victim matters, the more of a reaction will be gleaned from their demise. Or from any trouble they meet, really.

Just like in Nation X there are four stories, and just like in Nation X the first one is the best.

Chapter One: JONAS follows a jock who vaguely wants to bone Jennifer despite his girlfriend’s presence, and who’s feeling the strain of staying the sports hero he’s always naturally been whilst living the life of sofa-riding and snack-scoffing that he’s also inclined towards. It’s drawn by Jim Mahfood, who is great.

Second-page in and Jonas is getting a Strickland-esque dressing down from the headteacher - Jonas is never going to go anywhere, his life’s peaked already, he’ll end up hating his whole life and his whole life caving in on him. Jonas shrugs it off, but he can’t.. quite.. ignore it..

He gives it a good try though.

Spears keeps adding little extra bits of pending doom onto Jonas - ones that are unrelated to Jennifer.

Then he figures out his girl isn’t quite all his, then classmates are lost to a mysterious fire, then Jonas can’t keep it all in any more when the school’s grief councillor schedules a visit.. Jonas knows his life’s not what he wants. He knows his story is supposed to be better than this. And then, beautiful powerful popular Jennifer appears, and Jonas knows she can make the right things happen.

Jennifer’s not so into making out or hooking up any more though, so she whacks his head off.

Jonas’s story is over, and Jennifer was really only the end of it.

Chapter two: COLIN is about a kid who wears a shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, who has been “in love” with Jennifer since childhood, and who cannot bring himself to buy music from a mainstream record shop in a mall.

He can’t even speak in front of Jennifer, even after they become lab partners (is this really such a romantic appointment as the movies suggest?). Until..

So he can talk to her, but when he decides to overcome the dismissals of his sub-culture peers and ask Jennifer out, DISASTER STRIKES.

Don’t worry! Jennifer isn’t going to let him get away so easily. Romance may blossom after all! In an building site. Nice, Jennifer. But Colin’s not so impressed.

Jennifer looks like she’s hoping for some naked time, and Colin’s thinking of backing out because he’s a kid with emotions, you know? I’m not making fun Colin, I think that’s nice.

Sorry, Colin. Jennifer wants your body.

Chapter three: Ahmet from India made me ask “What the fuck is this?”. Is this dialogue straight-up racist, or is it just me?

What’s up with the sentence construction?

Also, is circumcision that common? Really? Uncommon enough that a team of baseball players will taunt their new expert bowler off the team based upon his present foreskin?

Really??

I don’t know if there was a Bollywood scene in the movie, but either way its inclusion here makes me feel uncomfortable. Ahmet is at the club everyone goes to, a band plays, the music is SUPER AWESOME and Ahmet gets Bollywood vision, rainbows and bare-chest-waistcoat and all. Dance routine time.

???

I liked the character that came through from Ahmet. He seemed like a decent kid. It’s interesting to get a view of a character whose international schooling year goes terribly, what culture shock feels like, and it’s true that food from ‘back home’ can be immensely comforting to someone in a place that feels hostile. For example, I started eating courgettes having hated them previously because I was glum in my uni town, and our crop at home had just ripened. It’s good to be reminded how extremely unkindness can effect people - you really never know how much other stuff someone’s dealing with as well. I am just completely baffled by the way that this section is written. The art’s pretty good - it’s just not used entirely for good, I think!

I considered that the odd dialogue might have been an author’s technique to bring home how culturally out of place Ahmet is or seems to the other kids at school. But if it is it is SO badly applied.

This last couple of panels was smart though, I think; Ahmet starts his story by talking about grasping his own American Dream, and ends (doubly) by quoting an American film classic.. about his ‘foreign’ home.

The last story is Chip’s. Chip is the boyfriend in the movie, Needy’s boyfriend. He wants to have sex with her, a lot, she’s intimidated by her body (Chip’s words) and doesn’t want to do it much. He fantasises about Needy, and sometimes about Jennifer too. Eventually Jennifer kills him and it is sad. I thought this was the most straightforward of all the shorts, which is why I didn’t include any pictures.

The four short stories are bookended by Jennifer, at (I assume) the beginning of her rampage and at the end of the film. The caption boxes show her inner monologue.

Start:

End:

And they say it all, really - there’s zero insight into Jennifer in this book. No more than I got from the trailers, anyway, or the exchange between her and Needy:

Needy: You’re killing people!

Jennifer: No, I’m killing boys.

She knows boys want her, and partly because of that she disdains boys. She knows she’s hot, and partly because of that she disdains her body. This book was about the boys, and it causes me slight to middling pause that they went ahead and called it “Jennifer’s Body” on the cover.

Jennifer’s body wasn’t what killed them, and the stories show that. What killed them was Jennifer’s actions. What led up to Jennifer’s actions were the pressures upon her, and upon the boys. and their reactions to these pressures. Oh, and of course, what caused Jennifer to start “killing boys” was the demonic entity which possessed her, after she was murdered in a misogynist ’sacrifice to Satan”. Thanks wikipedia.

It’s true that each of the boys in these stories are sexually attracted to Jennifer and her body, but in no story does the kid in question simply want to fuck her. They think she’s ‘hot’, but they also want what she (with personality, standing, artifice) represents. Jonas wants the comfort and potential of a partnership with her. Colin wants to spend time with her doing things he likes that it turns out she might enjoy too. Ahmet wants someone to be his friend - a bond, maybe even someone he can share love with. Chip is the only one interested in Jennifer’s body, and even he rejects her because he doesn’t want her body. He just responds with boners to the sexual interaction that she flaunts as a possibility. Maybe all this is why they kept the title, I don’t know.

It’s all over pretty fast, anyway. I was left with that feeling oh “oh.. huh” that I also got from the Buffy season six/seven tie-in comics I read years ago. It does feel like a tie-in, I think is the problem, and I think the psychology of the various attractions to Jennifer (and her reactions to them) are set out a bit simplistically. Or maybe I mean straightforwardly? In Colin’s story, particularly, I felt like I was reading the bad sort of soap opera webcomic, where relationship dramas are settled by enormous speech bubbles of self-help book join-the-dots. This was a really bad comparison to draw, because I can;t link to a comic that I think does this sort of thing because that would be terribly rude. I think what I’m saying is that I felt that some of this book were too neatly drawn. And when I say ‘drawn’, I mean ‘written’.

Apart from the baffling aspects of Ahmet’s chapter, I think I recommend this book. It is, at the very least, an interesting artifact: the “but what about us?” response to a feminist slam of internalised misogyny’s effect on teenage sexuality. What about you, boys? You matter too, of course! And that’s why you should be on our side.

Oh, pee ess, the reason that I actually did turn out to write a review with no mention of the character design or wardrobe choices? Because it was apparently no-one’s priority here at all, and I barely noticed what anyone was wearing ever. Bah.

Sorry this got so long.

Ugh ugh ugh, sorry for the multiple edits! >_<

OKIE DOKIE! ‘Review’ numbuh one: NATION X, issue 2.

Nation X is an anthology miniseries, far as I can see. All sorts of things are going down in X-Men proper; Mutants now have an island home and Magneto’s joined them, apparently. I don’t read any X-books regularly anymore (except X-Men Noir. Which is alternate reality stuff, so does not count) so I am in the ignorance boat, and I really don’t feel like doing much deep searching of info right now. The X-Men’s various threads tire me, currently. The whole freakin’ sliding time-scale, mash-up, retcon, blahblahblah MESS of it tires me!

But like I mentioned, for Jubilee (and No-Girl, and Quentin), I’ll take a peek. Here is my peek.

The book has four stories - one for each of the cover characters. Jubilee goes first, and it’s the winner of the collection: She’s writing a letter (to who? Who else?), she’s sort-of mentoring mutant teens, she’s dealing with her loss of mutancy (Dear M-Day, I hate you), she’s finding her head and the balance of the dear past with the painful past with the possibilities of the future with the dearth of direction currently. And all within eight pages. Nice work, CB Cebulski, Jim McCann, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback.

I like the letter ‘voice over’ concept and I like the repeated editing of what she just wrote. I like that she’s a hero to (most of) the current teen X-members. I like that she’s still in touch with Wolverine because Logan is best when he’s profound-emotional, and since he is so unlucky in love I feel he really, truly shines when he’s got a kid on one arm and the mentor-stick in his hand. Jubes + Wolvie 4eva, no??

What I am also honestly impressed with is the character design. Junilee’s wardrobe. That must be Mike Choi, I think? I’m assuming Sonia Oback’s on colours since I know Choi does pencil and the penciller usually comes first in credits. Whoever it is though, it’s great.

You see, Jubilee used to look like this. Well, she’s looked a few different ways, variously enjoyed and meaningful, but the “classic” Jubilee outfit - to me.. I don’t think I’m alone? The choices I’m talking about suggest I’m not - looks (as wikipedia shows us) like this:

She looked like this for the 90s cartoon (<3) and it bled into the comics. She looked like this because she was a mallrat and it was the early 90s. In this comic, she looks like this:

That’s a pretty fantastic blending of classic look with current trends.

One of my never-ending rants about comics from the Big Two is that a LOT of their illustrators seem to care bugger all about civilian dress modes. Seeing comics published in the last three, four, seven years which feature teenage girls wearing exclusively belly tops and boot-cut jeans makes me go “argh”, only louder and more intensely than “argh” looks”. Seriously, SERIOUSLY GUYS, it is not that hard. Look out the window. Copy what someone’s wearing. It is not 199X, or even 2001.

But Jubilee! Big yellow coat? Check! May I say, by the way, nice purple lining. And what luck that yellow coats are showing up everywhere just now. Google Yellow coat 2010 (I did it for you!) and you’ll get it-girl names and online shops just waiting to offload daffodil cheerfulness into your late-winter-spring. Some pretty stylish bloggers are having a ball with them, too. Coincidence or design? Who knows, but it’s a plus. In celebration, here’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who also happens to be wearing a yellow coat.

The pink shades are updated, the pink shirt is made an underlayer (and the cardigan’s a nice call; I have always been anti-cardi but the sheer number of varied designs made me waver, a little, last month purple Chanel-inspired Laura Ashley example, I am looking at you), the blue shorts become jeans. And, even, low-slung jeans that aren’t there to display a thong to the public! High five, Mr Choi

Pee Ess: one panel of this story made me feel a bit like I might want a cry.

Do you need to hear about the rest of this issue? Quick summary:

The Quentin vs Martha story was fun; I liked the Morrisonny pomp, Quentin was still in his “I’ve got a mad-on at the world” outfit, I liked that he seemed to just be having a bit of a fun go of villainy to pass the time, I liked that Martha got a moment in the sun.

Nothstar’s story was CUTE. I am pro-Kyle. More stories, please!

Gambit’s story made.. not much sense to me, to be honest, and I was saddened by his apparent character backslide. I also think that he looked too young and not quite.. mean enough? Self assured enough? Gambit, you see, was my ideal man from when I started watching the X-Men cartoon at maybe age six until when I met my beloved. I frown at stories which do not involve - I’ll be honest, naturally - he and Rogue being happy, being boisterous, being deep, and then going home and having loads of really excellent sex.

What? I ship that and they deserve it. Marvel fed us the “oh no, ALL PHYSICAL INTIMACY demands skin-to-skin contact!” for years (Rogue’s power meant, until recently, that skin-skin touch = lifetheft) and I did not buy it for a second– in maybe year.. eight or nine we had a sex education seminar where we were taught the possibility of condom-blowjobs, for goodness sake.

I liked this page though, because it reminded me of But I’m A Cheerleader!, and that movie is adorable.

No-Girl and Gambit pages from the official previews. Other pages ’scanned’ by myself. All characters copyright Marvel blah blah?

No outfit photos today, because I’m decked out in my Dad’s old boarding school sleepwear. It’s Sunday! I can laze if I want to!

Just after sawing up a bunch of wood; just before removing the two sad sad frozen frogs from the pond (reference pictures here, if you might need them. It just looks like it is resting, honest!).

This lace vest thing, I found it in a charity shop. It makes me feel like Maid Marian. Over or under, which is better? I think it probably depends.

Yeah. Depends.