My Illustrative Life

International Women’s Day! I hope you all had a good one. I wore purple, and green, but no white. I don’t really own white, because it requires you to be so careful when wearing it.

Have you ever read anything about Suffragette Jewelry? It’s very interesting. In political movements, particularly in the push for rights that are denied due to what is perceived as basic inequalities in the people who have and do not have them, image is terribly important. It’s used as a weapon by both sides, of course, but the underdogs are generally cleverer about it, I think. They have to be - if you can intrigue, visually, you have your foot in the door of a person’s opinions.

I’ve got my mind on the Suffragettes at the moment because I’ve been doing some illustration for Sherin and Orchid’s Political Awareness gig’s fliers. The aim is to get people who aren’t that fussed about voting interested and maybe a little bothered - but first things first: my part’s about getting them (you?) to the event in question.

When I asked for a basic brief, they said they wanted a goat motif involved somehow. Gotta have a gimmick, as the movie said! And honestly, the loose guidelines mixed with the one specific (weird) bit of imagery is right up my artistic alley. When I think “votes!”, I think “for women!”, so this was the natural port of call at the head of my list (if you want to see more, and the images in a later stage of ‘finishedness’, keep your ear to this ground):

I figure, that a goat-headed person is unusual enough to catch the eye of an uninterested party.

I allow that it might be taken as an insult to female voters - that would suck. I took pains to depict a benevolent (but not weak!) goatface, and to keep her posture capable. I’d hope that the pagan / faux-satanic air of subversion would keep the image from appearing straight-up offensive.

But to be honest, people who don’t care about voting probably don’t care about showing respect for women who were prepared to die and endanger for the right. When was the last time you heard someone truly, honestly “sing in grateful chorus, Well done, sister suffragettes?”

If you are me, never. So I am singing it now, via blog via youtube via film via book. Well done, sister Suffragettes! Your movement wasn’t perfect, but whose is? You paved a great road for us, and we shall continue to alleviate the tolls.

If you think you might be interested in giving any sort of help to a London multi-band gig that wants to inspire the yoof of today to care about their ability to vote, send Sherin and Orchid a note. Every little helps! Your daughters’ daughters will adore you.

I am “an illustrator” and my beloved is “a writer”. We do a lot of creating, but have nothing ready for public show. Which sucks quite a lot, because it makes us look like big lazy sub-par arses. But for tiny, everyday practice, we decided to start a story game. And now, we share! I drew a picture I had no story for (and honestly, no like for; the anatomy is terrible. I have been so lazy with my lifedrawing studies recently AND IT SHOWS), he made a scenario out of it. I drew a picture inspired by that, he wrote a little bit. And so on, and so on. I was baking, he was hoovering, during..

Him: It seems like the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament are training an airstrike unit for their next protest… But inkeeping with their liberal leanings, they aren’t against letting under-18s apply for the job!

Him: “You see the figure on the chimeny?”
“Yeah…”
“She’s demonstrating the correct launching-off point for our airstrike. Now–”
“Isn’t that a nuclear chimney?”
“…What was that about the chimeny?”
“Chimney. Isn’t a nuclear power station?”
“Well… There’s ‘nuclear’, and NUCLEAR nuclear. This plant is just nuclear.”
“Isn’t there a fundamental ideological flaw in launching an anti-nuclear airstrike from a–”
“SO THE NEXT SLIDE IS………”

Me:

Him: “WAIT WAIT! That chimney’s–”
“Chimeny.”
“–DEFINITELY nucular, ‘cos I used the shower at that facility this morning… What? My dad works there. So I used the shower, and now I have to wear this coat ALL the time or my blood falls out and I have to drink other peope’s!!”
“…Huh. Alright, MAYBE we should choose a different chimeny. Does anyone know of any?”
“You don’t need a take-off point if you outfit the wings with a VTOL system.”
“…Genius! But how can we fuel such a thing without sacrificing our anti-nuclear morals?!”
“Nucular….”

Me:

Him: Ok, mental block. But they’re in disguise to find a new source of power or… SOMETHING.
Me: What I was imagining was, they were pretending to have been RUINED AND MUTANTISED by nucular power, so that they had an excuse for using it for their advantage. Did you notice chubby frankie muniz?

Hope it gave you a pleasant enough pause!

Three days left of February and I still haven’t found the time to read this:

My SPOILERS! challenge started to well! The first and even the second posts were finished before Feb. even started.. and Tank Girl (numbuh three) followed.. actually, now I check, that one was on January thirty-first. Darn! It started SO well!

Oh well. It’s still coming! I WILL find a way to squeeze it in.

To compound my folly though, I hereby declare the start of another SPOILERS! Month-challenge!! Hurrah!

This time it’s films. And this time, I’m giving you warning - homework, if you will. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to write about, so that you can watch them first if you feel like it; you’ll know if you agree with me or not when you read what I write.

There’s even a theme! As I mentioned on twitter: Greatest Makeover Movies. As I also mentioned on twitter, every girls-are-pink site ever has also done this list, of course. But you know what? Mine will be better!! Because I read their reasons, and they were a load of old conkers, I tell you whut.

I know it runs against the Davina/Oscars method of reveal, but here’s my list:

• The Legend of Billie Jean
• Gigi
• Clueless
• Desperately Seeking Susan
• Oldboy

I’m telling you that now (and in no particular order) because it’s not the which that matters to me, but the why. And if you’re thinking “that’s not a makeover movie!” then you may be correct, in the general sense! But you are wrong QUITE WRONG in the “to me” sense. And this is my domain, cowboooyyy. So: watch these movies, if you please, and then come back here and see if we agree or if I can posit something you hadn’t considered. Or don’t watch them, and then come back here and see if I make them sound intriguing! It’s a big ole challenge!

I recommend doing Billie Jean first, because that’s the only one without an English DVD release. If you’re Spanish, then lucky you! You can own it on a shiny disc and love it forever! If you aren’t, then veoh has it. Or you can do what I did, which was fall for it so hard that I amazon marketplace’d a vhs copy (with what may be the greatest cover ever, I WANT THAT POSTER).

The rest are all available on DVD. Clueless, Gigi and Susan should all be pretty cheap; Oldboy is probably more expensive. But it’s worth it.

Go on. Tell me what I’ve left out.

I aquired this advert page (got my sister to rip it out of a magazine (she was in the corner, I was in view) in a cafe) last weekend. And not for the reason you may suspect! Compared to my beloved this dude is weaksauce. Not to disparage his objective attractiveness..

I think that the current ad campaign for Gaultier’s Le Male (and whatever the girly version is called) is pretty much super-great. Because it’s a male/female pair, and both versions are almost exactly the same. They’re both soft, but not too soft. Both a little bit fetish-y; the corset for the lady, the sailor outfit for the guy (I love his little hat!). Mimifroufrou.com says

The advertising plays on the ambiguity of a masculine image that is appealing to the gay community for its Querelle de Brest reference but is shown in the TV commercial to be heterosexual.

I don’t know if that’s the intention or the precise direction of the direction (I can certainly believe it) but I do know that I enjoy the heck out of it. This “appealing to the gay community” isn’t just doing that - it’s appealing to the me community.

I don’t want to see ‘traditional’ manly man men man in adverts. They’re boring; I’ve seen them since forever. They don’t interest me because I like balance.. and that applies to all areas.

I like to see trad-masculine balanced with trad-feminine. Why does Hokuto No Ken appeal to my heart so well? Because it’s about uberdudes whose hearts are crying even as they tear off heads. Why do I like to read Being Manly? Because it’s about ‘manliness and masculinities’ (emphasis masculinities) approached in a gender-inclusive, polite way that makes me (a lady!) feel welcomed, and talks about gender relations and gender roles in a positive way. Why do I like to wear Dr Martens and a heavy leather coat on my wide shoulders and army surplus(/inspired) hats? Because I really like to wear pink skirts! Why did I make Laurence Llewellyn Bowen my style icon (and nickname, though I didn’t make that happen, so much) in sixth form?

Because I was at an all-girls school and most of my friends were vocally into lipgloss and high heels. Why do I love the Runaways so hard? Because they were girls who wore girl clothes and who were assertive and who weren’t ladylike and sang about screwing and drinking. I did a whole great long poorly formatted post early on in this blog’s life about my enjoyment of Jean Claude Van Damme movies due to the, perhaps, “masculine femininity” or “feminine masculinity” of the majority of them. Why do I stare so hard and long at my beloved’s Disney-princess eyelashes (other than the whole “I love him” thing)?

For the same reason as why I think these two adverts are the bees knees. Because they’re not so flippin’ gender binary as most of what gets thrown in my face in the everyday.

It’s some kind of mad dream to see a “I just had sex with a lady” gent doing anything other than thinking “I am SO AMAZINGLY THE BEST because getting ladies means you WIN”. It is some kind of madder dream to see a post lady-sex guy doing semi-submissiv, emotion-based flexing about in tight pants and trousers, putting on a little hat (for his own enjoyment!). I’ve got no idea what these scents smell like, but I am fully pro-them.

You see? Advertsising CAN make me want to buy things! It just usually does the opposite.

They ain’t perfect. She could have a smirk after smelling the pillow too. But that? Is a pretty small complaint, considering.

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.”

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!

New Marple!

News from the Agatha Christie Official Site blog: The Blue Geranium is currently being filmed for tv! Excellent. Marple, as you may have guessed, is in my soul. And I rather like the particular theme of this story - some authors fail and just become snotty or preachy when they and their characters take the “magic seems to be real OH WAIT of course it isn’t, that’s ridiculous! Here’s why” route. But Agatha (Ms Christie, I beg your pardon).. she knew her stuff. She manages to avoid putting the focus of the entire story upon the spooks-or-not reveal like an amazon on a stiletto; it’s what happens that matters, not how.

Midsomer Murders (the TV series) does the same issue with marvelous panache, incidentally. I really dig that show.

In celebration of this news, I want to share this link: The The Blue Geranium episode of Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Marple and Poirot, one of my favourite faaavourite shows. “Great Detectives” is a Japanese show, animated, and believe me I have tried to get DVDs (ones I can watch, even). I’m gonna keep trying! It’s one of the most comfortable shows I know, and I would really, really like to be able to express this to the creators, animators, and all companies involved in its production via monetary exchange. It is such a bane that British Animation is in the dumps, because it means a lot of the shows that make my heart sing aren’t available in Region 2. Venture Bros Season 1 took how long to get here? TOO BLOODY LONG.

Great Detectives has its faults. Miss Lemon is way too young, and Hastings doesn’t bluster quite enough. Poirot is not as irritable as he is in my head (David Suchet, he is perfect) and Miss M doesn’t have quite the bite I feel she should. But I find ‘Maybelle’ perfectly charming: she’s a sixteen or seventeen year old original character, the daughter of Raymond West (mother has no presence; I presume her dead) who takes a job as Poirot’s junior assistant and thereby ties the two detectives’ stories together. They never meet.

I very much enjoy how the opening sequence makes Maybelle’s story. Give it a watch, I think you’ll see what I mean.

And here’s a link I’ll be adding to posts for a while: Craft Hope for Haiti, an etsy store that donates proceeds to Doctors without Borders.

It just occurred to me that I never bigged up my last BSB post! Don’t I know anything about INTER-TUBE MARKETING?

No.

Well, clicky piccy, chickies.

Like a lot of you (probably - still haven’t got enough internet to catch up on my ‘roll..) I got an email about the International day of Swishing. Which is January the 9th, which is tomorrow. I actually have a whole pile of things I’ll be putting up but NOT ONLY is my laptop refusing to provide its services, but the camera is also acting stroppy. Hnnnh.

So for now, all I’ve got to offer is this actually pretty fantastic jacket. Chiffon, byMetamorphose temps de fille, It’s bosom is not quite ample enough for mine, and so we have never become such friends as I hoped, but - perhaps it can be YOUR pal??

Click the picture to have a gander! And maybe sign up at posh-swaps whilst you’re there? It’s a grand idea! “Shop your wardrobe” nothin’ - shop mine, and everybody else’s!

Click it! YOU MUST CLICK IT!

After walking all day, a million miles around Manchester, and staving off trainsleep by reading the Invisibles (Apocalipstick) I start forgetting how to draw as myself. Immediately post-experience of a work of fiction or illustration that I honestly aspirationaly admire is about the worst time I could ever pick to draw anything. On the one hand, the desire to emulate. On the other, a complete and ornery desire to do nothing so humble. Result: mixed up creative (as in, I am creating, not I am being so creative) confusion.

Lunchbag:

I also read the following -

This book is wonderful. I can honestly say that since I started reading this series, via online free stories, previews and then this issue, I have found a blossoming re-appreciation for dogs (which the previous stories featured more largely). I was a Puppy in my Pocket fiend as a littl’un, but real live dogs alarm me and cats are just so much FUNNIER. But! Beasts of Burden (Dark Horse Comics, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson) is a reeducation.

The stories are great (truly spooky and touching), and the art, well, please observe:

Finally, Marvel Comics’ Models Inc.. Now, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I’ve been a Marvel fan near-on my whole life, thanks to the X-Men Animated Series of the 90s, but recently (or maybe I just didn’t notice before?) they’ve been basically flipping me off. Joe Quesada, Editor in Chief, has said that if people have a problem with the depiction of women in his company’s books, maybe they shouldn’t be reading those comics at all. I’m not going to get into the matter of costumes and sexist illustration in general. I’ve been put off by Event after Event after Event. The series that brought me back into buying Marvel Comics again after I quit on the cusp of house of M, Captain Britain & MI:13 (BUY THIS BOOK IT IS SO GOOD), was cancelled because it’s sales (in America, I believe), weren’t good enough.

They have been putting out the phonebook “Essential” trades (uh, that’s “compilation books”, for non-comics reading readers..) of a lot of seventies books that I love, though, and I was excited to hear that Mary-Jane Watson was going to be heading a mini-series.

Models Inc. was, when it was originally announced, going to be Mary Jane (famous for being the friend, then girlfriend, then Wife (no really fuck you, ‘phisto) of Peter Parker: Spider-Man) heading up an ensemble cast of the various “fashion model” characters Marvel has had over it’s decades. MJ has always been a model herself, branching into acting. A supermodel, in fact. They were going to team up to solve a crime. Detective story? Yes! All-female cast? Yes! Respect shown to models, a famously “female” profession? Yes!! I even saw the pencilwork for some pages, which looked like the artist had done real, true, actual research on the kinds of clothes that models might wear at public events. Yess.

of course, MJ’s involvement was nixed when the Powers That Be decided it was more important to have her character be puked all over in the Spider-Man main book. I have no happy faces here.

Anyway, the book was re-written and re-drawn and released, a four-issue mini series (with a tiny, tiny cameo by Mary Jane). I just picked up all of my copies last week, and it wasn’t actually bad at all. It had some issues, for sure, but on the whole? I’m not sorry I paid for it.

I’m working on a post showing the inside pages and a proper dissection of the plot/art/whole production because I think that this book deserves some recognition actually. But for now, here are the covers! I’m not gonna make more of a comment than “some of the ‘headlines’ are pretty funny, and check out the average cup-size they’ve given these supermodels”, except to warn you that the page art is not the same as the cover illustrations. Oh, and yes, Tim Gunn has a half-issue adventure in issue 1. Hah!

New post over at warmthblog! Click the picture to visit. Western-flavoured cosy undergarments: very fascinating, for you all!

Catching sight of this article whilst researching an upcoming post (no, really; just because I haven’t done what I’ve said I will yet doesn’t mean I won’t), “Boris rescued by feminists” I thought how absurd that sounds, as if we were some sort of species. Well, we aren’t, obviously.

I always thought those This is what a feminist looks like shirts were a bit ridiculous, but.. then again, I used to think that “feminism” was a bit ridiculous. How we grow!

Naturally, in the headline vein, my title is misleading. It is really only one door, repeated. And actually I only mimed knocking on it. But then AGAIN, I do fairly often knock on doors. So the title stands*.

*Not literally! In this case..

ETA: I just noticed that one might misunderstand my facial illustrations as a statement re: mentioned feminism. They aren’t, I just like to draw on my face for a) privacy and b) practice. I drew these two before I started thinking about what I would write today.