Tight Pants And Tiaras

!!!IMPORTANT FANCY BASTARD NEWS!!!

hijinks-ensue-godspeed-you-fancy-bastard-book

July 1st – July 31st will be your LAST CHANCE to get a PERSONALIZED HE BOOK 1 ARTIST EDITION until the 2011 holiday season!!!

ORDER NOW or forever (or for like 6 months) hold on to your funds!

After July 31st you will be able to order the book through my Topatoco store in regular and (non-personalized, as in “pre drawn”) Artist Edition flavors. If you want something special in your HE book 1 you must act nowish.

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Thanks to FB Michael for suggesting the setting for this comic based on me started “Couch to 5K” yesterday. And bigger thanks to Spike for suggesting that I get off my ass and get some exercise. I think I will do a podcast with my initial impressions of C25K after the first week.

I don’t really give a crap about Wonder Woman’s new costume or rewritten past. I stopped reading Marvel and DC super hero comics (by which I mean comics featuring the standard roster of characters that have been around for 30-60 years) when I was 13 or so. The traditional comics industry is a bit like a dog that eats it’s own shit. “So like… every dog?” you may say. Sort of. The idea is that the dog in question starts out by eating a tasty meal made with processed cow pieces, smashed up sheep faces and natural goat gravies. Then he poops it out, as dogs are wont to do. Then he’s like, “Hey! A giant steaming pile of something I should eat! BARK BARK!” and he gobbles it down. Eventually he’s going to poop out the poop he just ate. You see where this is going. Let this cycle run it’s course a few times and what started as a nutritious meal of pasteurized farm parts has become thrice-times-shat infinipoop.

How does this relate to the comics industry? I was hoping you would forget about that and focus on the poop eating dog. Marvel and DC have been feasting on the bounty of the same properties for decades. Then when the stories and characters get stale, they redigest them and shit them out in a slightly different format (clone Spider-Man, Electro Blue Superman, Azrael Batman, Robin Batman, Time Traveling Batman, etc, etc). The more times they rehash and reboot a character the lamer the whole situation gets. [This illustrated history of the X-men character Xorn sums up my feelings perfectly]

Most of these characters have been around for so long that they have literally done EVERYTHING they could ever possibly do. There’s no new ground to cover. I don’t expect the publishers to retire pop-culture defining heroes like Superman, Spider-Man and the like but… I don’t actually have any solutions or helpful suggestions. I guess I’m just bitching relentlessly about a subject that I don’t really have that strong of an opinion on that much invested in emotionally in the first place. Remember that part about the dog? That was gross.

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45 Comments

  1. I'd say you do have a strong opinion on the subject, given your dog poop analogy and the subsequent explanation. But I guess the problem you have in the end is the lack of new characters and the exploitation of their current properties. The way I see it is that some of these characters make up a modern American mythology, as they tend to be fairly iconic. Who doesn't know Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman? Each new story adds depth to the myth and character. Some are complete clusterfucks that waste our time as readers, but others work out a lot better. Spider-Man had a crisis of identity, Batman was broken but managed to rebuild himself without focusing on tactics similar to those that defeated him (instead of focusing all on brawn, he still made sure that he was using his brains), and Superman showed the frailty of those we all assume to be completely untouchable. The only thing noteworthy Wonder Woman has done is twist someone's head completely around. Obviously, they're still looking for something to do with her. I don't agree with the change, but maybe it will make her less boring.

    • "I'd say you do have a strong opinion on the subject…"

      Its just not that hard for me to come up with a rant whether Im really emotionally invested or not. They could shave her head and make her grow a fu manchu for all I care.

  2. I don't really have strong feelings toward the redesign one way or the other. I can definitely see how some people are pissed about it, but I also see how a couple trivial changes to the new costume can make it look a lot better.

    That said, I'm a recently converted comic book geek who never really got into Wonder Woman. I'm happy for this reboot (contrived as it may be) because it's a perfect chance for me to hop on board and give the character a shot. If I don't end up liking it, well, I guess that sucks. But better (for me, at least) to figure that out during a reboot than to bug the guys working at my comic shop of choice to figure out where/when I should start with the previous rendition of the character.

  3. Robin Givhan, the fashion critic for the Washington Post who always reads way too much into everything (like the messages sent by President Obama's choices in necktie color, or the fact that Elena Kagan doesn't cross her legs when she sits), has written a very short piece about how Wonder Woman's redesign says something big yet doesn't mean much of anything…or something. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti

    So of course it's all very culturally relevant. Ish.

    Personally, I like the new look better than the briefs-and-gold-bustier combo, but I don't really see what the point of it is, other than, as Joel has noted, refluffing the franchise in an endless tumble-dryer cycle of wankery.

  4. With the caveat that I'm no huge comics fan, I'm seeing two problems with this redesign.

    First, they were going for "urban streetwear" and failed. In that sense, I'm most frustrated by how CLOSE it is to being right. Add seam details to make the leggings into skinny jeans, make the jacket a hoodie, and it would totally invoke the feel they claimed to be going for, without making poor Diana look like an extra from Saved by the Bell.

    But secondly, I'm not sure the "modern street wear" thing was the right idea anyway. Maybe I'm out of touch with the modern comic world (my only real exposure was reading the trade paperback of 'Identity Crisis' at a friend's house — the plot of which might actually seriously impact this part of the topic) but I want my superheroes to be super. I don't want them to look approachable, or like a normal person in a bit of an odd outfit. Let Diana Prince dress like that, sure, but you could have given Wonder Woman something more awesome/less antiquated without making her look so… un-heroic.

    • omg you totally nailed it. I agree – super heroes are SUPER HEROES. They don't have to wear the same stupid clothes we all have to wear. Her human alter ego can wear whatever, but Wonder Woman should inspire the type of wonder that makes you think "Oh, crap, I wonder how hard she's going to hit me…" rather than "Oh, crap…I wonder where she got those ridiculous clothes?"

    • Amen to what you wrote here…all they need was a couple 20-something girls (yeah, as if they'd talk to guys that draw comix) or a couple of gay guys with some decent fashion sense (drag queens would make her look like a…drag queen) and they'd have something much more sassy/chic/ladylike.

      Is it a requirement that "her life story is changing, so let's get her some new coulouttes"…I can tell str8 men write/draw/ink her.

      Of course, Joel is str8 and does fabulous Bearjercise outfits, so there you go…

    • We hate you for that too.

      "Globalized" duds? Do these people even know what they're talking about? Oh, right… FOX… no they don't.

    • Well it doesn't really make sense in the first place that she be all stars and stripes patriotic considering she's from the "Amazons' isolated island homeland" which I assume is not Hawaii thus she's not even American.
      I think we need to demand to see her birth certificate!

    • The woman's GREEK, Fox, and the only major element missing is that the stars are yellow instead of white on a blue-ish field.

      What next, whining that Cap's A stands for asshole?

  5. It's not Wonder Woman. WW is an Amazon princess with a beauty pageant costume and tiara who represents what little girls dream of becoming- a princess with power. This new creature is just some modern, urban chick with WW's name. Fail.

  6. Does. Not. Matter. Anyone who's read comics from DC or Marvel for more than ten minutes knows that this costume change and origin retcon will be changed back to the status quo in a year, tops. Or when there's another Crisis – whichever comes first. It's completely meaningless – but it got press for a character whose book doesn't sell more than five copies a month, so there's that.

  7. Joel, superhero comics are a necessary evil in order for the less overused comics/characters to even have a chance to get sold. Mainstream superhero comics sell well, and are the only reason comic shops still exist. If they all went away, the income from comics wouldn't sustain anybody, and many people wouldn't ever even find out about the lesser known ones, because they'd never have set foot in a shop.

  8. I read the whole article. The look is very 90s yes, but hell all the 80s looks have come back. Only a matter of time for the 90s looks to come back too. All I got from the article was that DC wants to revamp her, blah, blah, blah. The thought that kept coming back to my mind. What do you mean you changed one thing in her past? Doesn't that change all of DC history. She obviously doesn't know or relate well to superman and batman now. She's not going to be the same character.

    Have to say I love the quotes in there about why the costume was changed. People asking how she fights in a strapless one piece swimsuit. How do he parts not fall out. So they feel a strapless bodice and a jacket solves that problem. Yeah, so do straps. DC want to give WW a warriors uniform? Then do just that. Make her into a Amazon Warrior. Give her full function armor. Instead they want to go with her looking like the "trendy, tough as nails, urban chick" . And whatever you do don't forget the WW branding, on her bracers, that leave a W on your face when she punches you out. She's gotta start the her logo branding sometime, right?

    Ugh. Revamps. Joel, one way for comics to saty somewhat interesting and new. With the 50-60 year old characters. They can do anthology type runs. They could bring creative teams on for 6-24 issues runs, and they're free to write however they want. The characters stay alive and we all get new interesting takes on these characters and their worlds.

    • I hate the fact that the 80's are "back". I grew up then and hated the fashions.
      I'm waiting 10 years for the 90's to come back, except for the fact that everyone will be in flannel that costs about 100x more than it should, and they'll think not washing their hair will be hot…like a lumberjack Robert Pattinson with French rolls on his pants.

      One would hope they have a direction/point with this change, but who knows. I'll just have to be satisfied with my Timmverse vids from WB, where they actually wrote decent stories.

    • To be fair, it looks like a tank or short sleeved top with a low neckline as opposed to a bodice. All in all, I'd say it offends my sensibilities a lot less than some revamps have. Not that I actually buy comic books any more, or that it'll last more than a year or so even if I did.

  9. well i fucking hate the new look but were stuck with it until Dc says otherwise..we had this biker-chick look in the 90s briefly and it just looked so goddammed wrong..no doubt some woman-hating hairy-assed misanthroype at DC thought itd be a good idea to raise sales..it will too, for five minutes then theyll have to change her back.

  10. Once we get to Hollywood and find those Miramax fucks who are making that movie, we're gonna make 'em eat our shit, then shit out our shit, then eat their shit which is made up of our shit that we made 'em eat. Then all you motherfuckers are next. Love, Jay and Silent Bob.

  11. When's the last time the comic has been 3-times a week? Seems like it's been twice a week for quite awhile now.

  12. For some reason, I find the link "Hard rod stuck in tight cunt! | Naughty Amateur Thinking […] HijiNKS ENSUE – A Geek Webcomic – 3 Times A Week » Archive » Tight … […] " somewhat out of place in this comments section – I mean, if there was a bondage theme, I'd see the WW connection, but this is just wrong…ish. Apparently, it's a "related blog" due to the word "Tight" in the comic title. Ah, the magic of the Internet.

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