Doom Patrol also had what I think was the most irritating case of artistic license ever: Negative Man's bandages.
I chose that panel expecially for Dorian. Anyway, the way they drew him has always bugged the living bejeebus out of me and I guess it'll continue to do so, since they've gone back to drawing him like this.
You can see his face in excruciating detail through the gauze. I defy anybody to fanwank this into anything even close to being logical. "Really thin gauze," you say? Well, for one thing, the gauze is meant to contain Negative Man's awesomely deadly radiation, so I have trouble believing it would let light pass through it. And anyway, why can't you see his ears? Are they like, really really really radioactive, so they have extra layers or sumpin'? And for Pete's sake, you can even see the inside of his mouth!
Must... not make... Cialis joke...
Aw, look at this! Major Matt Mason is dressed as a salt shaker for the school play!
Y'know, if my choices were either missing out on the transcendent wonder of exploring the moon or looking like that? I'd stay inside the space capsule and hope somebody brought along an InStyle Magazine I could read.
I'll leave you with your ultimate Doom Patrol masturbation nightmare. Ta!
8 comments:
Yow. I've never seen Trainor drawn like that. What the heck? Lazy artists is my theory. Or editorial spaz: "Ya gotta see his face or th' kids won't know how he feels!" or somesuch.
I have seen that moon suit afore though! And apparently it was an actual tested design that was featured on the cover of LIFE, according to this nifty Matt Mason page I found. Goofy yes, but damn if it isn't distinctive. It seems like the sort of thing Reed Richards would whip up to visit the Negative Zone, maybe to search for the Negative Man and fix Larry Trainor's weird...expanding sensation.
OK. So we have an image of Reed in that Suit floating around calling for a neg-energy being like a missing dog, trying to guilt-trip it because Larry's going all emo and TMI back home. Did I miss anything?
Elasti-Girl has growth powers and runs around in a miniskirt. Thank the gods that she's been brought back from the dead, so that modern sensibilities can inform the queen of the panty shot.
I like the cheesecake Elasti-Girl. Am I remembering wrong or is her origin basically that she's Linnea Quigley with superpowers? That before she became a superheroine she starred in bad B-horror movies? I, too, am looking forward to what today's artists try to get away with.
Speaking of today's artists, I feel exactly where you're coming from on Negative Man, but on the other hand, those guys hit their deadlines. If it meant drawing a face with redundant horizontal lines on it rather than taking the time to actually make it look like bandages, well, that's how superheroes ended up wearing spandex to begin with. I totally agree that it looks awful, but I'm getting old and snarky enough that when a comic is five months late and they try to placate me by adding three extra pages, when the whole shebang was so decompressed that the first 8 pages was Iron Man talking about his freakin' cell phone and the art isn't that good anyway because it's photo-referenced and computer colored so the fight scene, when they get to it, is drab and boring...
Wait! 60 seconds is up! Return to me, my Negative energy!!
Love that Moon Suit.
Chawunky: Negative Man used to be drawn like that all the time and Todd Nauck drew him like that a few months ago in "Teen Titans." It's perfectly ridiculous. And the "moon suit" was real? Holy balls! I guess the NASA engineers were really impressed by the papier mache ham costume from "To Kill A Mockingbird."
Anonymous: I can see the movie trailer now: "Sharon Stone is Elasti-Girl!"
Constantine: Yup, Elasti-Girl used to be a movie actress -- not sure how bad the movies were-- and gaining superpowers somehow "ruined" her career. Either that or she withdrew from public life over the shame of being a glamorous celebrity with amazing superpowers. 'Cause you know how the public feels about that. (I'm sure other writers have somehow tweaked her origin since then, so it makes more sense.) Also, I feel your pain about today's comic artists. Bruno Premiani's artwork in "Doom Patrol" was gorgeous, as you can see. I don't know why he chose to draw Negative Man the way he did. It wasn't a time-saver, that's for sure. My best guess is that he didn't feel confident he could draw a bandaged head with any range of expression. Which was nonsense, of course. He was one of the most technically-gifted men working in comics. I dunno. Maybe he just loved drawing faces.
So that is Premiani's work. I only found out about the guy relatively recently. He's definitely in the ad illustrator's school of comic artists. Great draftsmanship that shows real knowledge of how to accurately depict the human body in a few deft lines.
As for bandages and expression, a good recent example, I think, is Frank Quitely's "Unknown Superman of 4500 AD", in he and Morrison's All-Star Supes series. But then, Quitely's known for taking his time. (-:
Blockade Boy: Actually, I don't think it ever was properly explained: In Secret Origins Annual #1 by Paul Kupperberg and John Byrne, even Robotman is like, "really, why did she quit like that?"
On the other hand, this --
ROBOTMAN (looking up)
Hey, Rita! I think you need to wax!
-- would be funny.
In the backstory in the "My Greatest Adventure" introduction to the characters, we learn Rita supposedly was also a former Olympic swimmer before she got into acting, which probably means she was some sort of late fifties version of an action heroine with swim skills, sort of a blend of Irish McCalla and Esther Williams. And I'm guessing it was the very uncontrollability of her powers at the start that both wrecked her film career and forced her into hiding for a few years...otherwise she, not Allison Hayes, would've starred in the original "Attack Of The 50-Foot Woman" (if you somehow blended the real world with the comics world), because Rita would've provided her own special effect.
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