Gender Reassignment Challenge: Starfire

Before I get to the main part of the post, I have some good news and some bad news -- not affecting this blog one whit, so you can cut the hysterics. Honestly, you're more Pavlovian than the "Dancing with the Stars" audience! Quit yer bawlin'! ...Aw, heck, I'm lashing out at my audience again. I'm sorry! I think I'm having a meltdown! No, wait... that's just my robo-dingus. Hang on while I replenish the radiator fluid. Yeow! Too hot! Shoulda worn gloves! Or at least a condom! Gimme a sec...

...Aaand I'm back. Sizzling comets, what was I about to say?! Oh yeah! The good news: frequent commenter and all-around cool guy Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator invited me to participate in his group blog contest thingie, Last Gladiator Standing 2. That's where the elite invite-only crowd is divided into two teams and each week they individually write posts "in character" with predetermined story elements. After that, an independent judge (not Jon) picks the best post. That person's team wins for the week. The losing team has to e-mail Jon with the name of the person on their team they want to get rid of. (Do you see where I'm headed with the "bad news" part?) Yup, the bad news: I was the first guy voted off the island/boardroom/house/dance floor. Which, if you're a Shear Genius fan, makes me Paul-Jean -- or if your taste runs more toward "Dancing with the Stars", makes me Tucker Carlson. (Never thought I'd say that!) And no, changing that reference to Paulina Porizkova doesn't help. But I appreciate the thought.

Okay, let's get down to "bidness" as the ancient Mayans used to say. Last week I showed you how I imagined Starfire would look if she was evil. This week I'll show you how I envision Starfire, the hot extraterrestrial dude. And boy howdy, was it a tough challenge!

First, the before:

The art is obviously by Tom Grummett, but the design is pure Perez. Check it! We're talking early 80's George Perez at his finest right here: segmented boots, floral amulets, alligator-skin wrist guards, and a carnivorous perm. That hair-do could have headlined its own comic! Its arch-nemesis: one of those scores of disembodied mounds of straight black Japanese hair that one finds everywhere in manga and J-horror films -- and it would be a ninja, natch. Say! Why am I goin' on like this? I suspect most of you aren't even looking at Starfire's head, much less her hair. Yes indeedy, Starfire's astounding orange rack (doubtless covered with a short soft fuzz, like a peach) and the scientifically improbable way those thin purple strips keep in it check are the main reasons I even brought her up in the first place. Starfire's appearance is undoubtedly, whole-heartedly, in-your-face and poke-your-eyes-out feminine. Now, how can I transmogrify that into something suitable for a male hero?

Glad you asked!

I really, really, really wanted to give the male Starfire a ginormous Tamaranian beard like some of the "real" Starfire's relatives had (and a shaven pate for contrast). So why didn't I? For one, it would have obscured the costume. (And I didn't want to repeat myself by making the shape of the beard substitute for a costume element.) Secondly, I wanted to preserve the idea that it left a trail while Starfire flew around, and even I had to admit that a "beard trail" would have looked freakin' goofy. And thirdly, it wouldn't have read as "young" as I wanted. My compromise was to pull the hair back in a Samurai ponytail deal and let it flow from there. I coupled it with a modest Donegal beard because I wanted to make him look more leonine. (Starfire's people are descended from a feline species, after all.)

Costume-wise, the biggest alteration was in the color. Not that a guy couldn't rock a purple outfit -- I've designed plenty of them -- but in Starfire's case, the hue didn't exactly scream "bad-ass warrior." So I shifted it down the spectrum slightly, to blue. I didn't have to change the boots or the wrist guards. I did remove the texture from the wrist guards because I figured it was more masculine to have a simpler, more graphic costume. I also ditched the two bejeweled amulets, although I left a cut-out down around the waist where it would have gone. I made the collar bigger so it covered the neck and the shoulders and I integrated it with the straps on the torso -- which I widened to create a vest.

Do I like it, personally? Eh, not bad. The size of the hair always has been and always will be ridiculous and clown-like to me, so that's a wash. The rest of it I'm pretty happy with. Starfire Dude looks like he could have come straight out of a Jim Starlin comic. He and Adam Warlock would fight and then team up... to do each other's hair!

You'll notice the art is more stylized than is normal for me. That's because I want to experiment with more expressionistic linework. I definitely think this guy looks more solid than my mannered "air guitar" Lionfang drawing from last summer (your time). The big difference: I didn't use any photo reference for Lionfang, whereas I did for Starfire Dude (just like I've been using for most of my drawings). That's one pic (of a bald guy!) for above the waist, another pic (naked, natch) for below the waist, and the face I just made up. Who knows what kind of kooky crap I'll come up with next week? Not me! See you then!

Previous Gender Reassignment Challenges:

• Saturn Girl
• Scarlet Witch
• Looker (and a slight revision)
• Storm
• Marvel Girl
• Black Canary
• Phantom Lady
• Snowbird
• Dazzler
• Mantis
• DC's Enchantress in the Silver Age and the Suicide Squad and the
  Shadowpact
  

A Future DVD Purchase I Won't Regret: The Grudge (2004)

The Grudge opened last Friday amidst a brutal critical drubbing. Almost to a man, reviewers have described it as illogical, repetitive, clichéd, and -- the kiss of death for a horror film -- not scary. I saw "The Grudge" yesterday, and in my opinion these reviewers are out of their goddamn minds.

When deciding whether or not to see a film, I tend to give a lot of weight to critical consensus. Although I always take the opinions of individual reviewers with a grain of salt -- I remembered Roger Ebert's shrill anti-Bush editorials and his so-glowing-it's-radioactive review of "Fahrenheit 9/11" when I read how much he despised "Team America" -- when legions of reviewers hate a film, I figure it's for a good reason. Before I saw "The Grudge," the only positive review I read was from a guy who loved "Ringu." And as you can see a few posts back, I thought "Ringu" was godawful. But "The Grudge's" trailer had intrigued me and I'm fascinated by the film's Japanese setting and I'm a sucker for anything with Sarah Michelle Gellar in it. So I plunked down my dough for a matinee ticket. I'm glad I did.

"The Grudge," a remake of the Japanese film "Ju-On" (2000), concerns a haunted house so potent that even if you manage to escape it, the ghosts will just follow you home and kill you anyway. The story occasionally moves backwards in time, but unlike most of the reviewers who've seen it, I didn't find this confusing in the least. And I don't think most other people will either. The present-day storyline with Sarah Michelle Gellar moves steadily forward, and it's intercut with the stories of the man who killed himself after visiting the house and the first family to move into it after the deaths of the previous tenants. The film lays out these puzzle pieces for the audience and then proceeds to fit them all together into a compelling whole. This technique culminates with a masterful sequence in which the house seemingly transports Gellar to a day three years in the past, allowing her to witness the impetus for one of the deaths. Director Takashi Shimizu increases the tension with moments in which the dead character seems to be aware of Gellar's presence. As an amateur horror story writer, I can tell you that one of my biggest challenges is finding ways to impart backstory without making it tedious. "The Grudge" accomplishes this quite deftly.

Most of "The Grudge's" negative reviews focus on how the various characters always investigate strange sights or noises instead of running away or calling the police. I feel I must defend "The Grudge" on this score. I watched the film with an eye for this sort of thing, and I think in most cases the characters' behavior is logical. They are usually following what appears to be a small child or a cat (although it's actually something that manages to be both and neither) or someone in distress. At one point, a ghost even disguises itself as another character. Is "The Grudge" repetitive? In the sense that the house keeps killing people, I suppose so. The difference, however, is that the victims in the grudge are not the ciphers of a slasher film but are instead interesting, sympathetic people. If their personalities are only lightly sketched, I can forgive that in light of their limited screen time -- as opposed to something like "Don't Look Now," which had a whole film in which to make me care about Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and failed miserably.

I think a lot of reviewers were put off by a lack of a central character in "The Grudge." Although Gellar gets top billing, her story occupies only about half of the actual running time. The film's puzzle-box structure gives us glimpses of many characters' lives... before they are dispatched by the house's bloodthirsty ghosts. This is not a character study, but something far more visceral. The movie doles out its scares pretty regularly and always manages to keep them from being repititious. There's a powerful scene with a character in her office tower's stairwell, with the lights flickering out in the upper levels, causing darkness to sink down towards her while something is crawling up from the lower levels. During an elevator ride, we see through the window (but the character isn't looking) a ghostly little boy standing on one of the passing floors. And the same ghost is waiting on the next floor, and on the next, and on the next...! "The Grudge's" ghosts also have a sense of humor. When a character in an apartment building gets a phone call from another character who claims to be waiting several floors down -- and who the audience knows is dead -- the first character agrees to "buzz [him] in." She does so, unlocking a door several stories below. She turns around, aaaannnd... cue doorbell. (Candygram!)

Is "The Grudge" perfect? No, although it's pretty damned close. There are a few scenes that are meant to be frightening but just aren't -- like the shower scene with Gellar finding a dead hand (or as a brilliant Television Without Pity post described it, "zombie baby ass") on the back of her head. She feels the hand, looks scared, turns around, and that's it. That's not scary. That's just weird. Also, the film would have been even better if it had ended one scene earlier. Still, it was well worth my time and money, it did a great job of repeatedly scaring the bejeezus out of me, and I plan to see it again. And you can bet your (zombie baby) ass I'll be buying the eventual DVD.

Regrettable DVD Purchases, Part One: Ringu (1998)

I used to have the bad, lazy habit of buying DVD's of movies I've never seen. (I could have tried renting them first, but no...!) These were all movies that I'd seen praised to the skies in various reviews, of course. The problem was, I usually ended up hating them. Case in point: the Japanese horror film, "Ringu." "Ringu" was released in Japan in 1998, and spawned several sequels as well as a TV series. Hollywood took note and in 2002 released a slick remake: "The Ring." Since I'd liked "The Ring" enough to buy it, and since various internet horror sites claimed "Ringu" was better, I bought "Ringu." Huge mistake. "Ringu" is inferior to "The Ring" in practically every way. The film lacks the chilling atmosphere of "The Ring." The plot is threadbare, owing in part to the sheer brevity of the cursed videotape. The tape in "The Ring" is rich with surreal imagery that recurred in new forms throughout the film and provided only vague clues to the mystery of the little girl. The tape in "Ringu" has only a few images, none of them terribly interesting or scary. Instead of using the tape itself as a resource, the characters in "Ringu" often have vital clues literally pointed out to them by the specter of a man with a cloth over his head. The dude actually points to spots where the characters are meant to look. In "The Ring," the little girl's origins remain somewhat mysterious and there is an inferred supernatural element, but in "Ringu" she is specifically said to have psychic powers. Just like every other character in the film, including the girl's mom and the lead character's ex-boyfriend! (Psychic = boring to me. Sorry.) In "The Ring," the reporter's son is a serious little boy who ends up haunted by the little girl, and yes, the performance is reminiscent of the kid in "The Sixth Sense," but at least both these boys can actually act. (And for that matter, the kid in the "Ring" doesn't have psychic powers -- he only draws pictures of his cousin's death because she told him she was going to die beforehand, and the only "dead person" he sees is the malevolent little girl.) By contrast, the little boy in "Ringu" is a sour-faced, dead-eyed little mannequin who spends the entire film looking like he's crapped his pants and is feeling kind of angry about it. And then there's "Ringu's" set piece. Three words: climactic bailing sequence. The well in "Ringu" is pretty full, which means that the reporter and her ex-boyfriend spend quite a bit of time emptying it with a little bucket. This goes on for what feels like hours. In what passes for a plot complication, the reporter's arms get tired. She starts crying. The ex-boyfriend yells at her. It's just like one of the lamer challenges in "The Amazing Race." ("Bail faster, Mirna!") Needless to say, I felt utterly ripped off by this purchase. Sadly, I'm a bit of a slow learner when it comes to financial matters, so it would take a few more bad purchases like this before I finally learned my lesson. Up next: "Don't Look Now" (1973).