I've been getting a lot of traffic from When Fangirls Attack! again, as there was a link posted to my Batman Night post, mostly, I'm assuming, due to my pictures (and accompanying captions) of my Black Canary statuette.
This inspired me to watch one of my favorite episodes of Justice League Unlimited, a Black Canary-centric episode entitled Grudge Match.
The basic premise of the episode is that Lex Luthor's team of villains, the Secret Society, has found a way to use Justice League comm links as mind control devices and is using them to make various female League members fight each other in an arena, making a tidy profit off of bets placed on the outcome of the matches.
The Huntress tumbles onto the scheme, and manages to free Black Canary from their control. The two heroines are promplty caught and thrown into the arena. Not to fight each other, but to instead fight two other powerful female Leaguers, Hawkgirl and Vixen. They manage to shake Vixen and Hawkgirl free of the control, but they're not out of the woods yet, as Roulette, the villainess behind the arena scheme, has an ace up her sleeve:
Vixen appears to be a woman after my own heart - I would say the exact same thing to Hawkgirl ("Keep her busy so I can take her from behind!").
My perviness aside, what I love most about this episode is when the four Leaguers see who they're up against and shrink back in the realization that they're boned.
(I also love an earlier scene in which Huntress is watching Canary, who is off her game due to the fact that, unbeknownst to her, when she's supposed to be sleeping she's actually off wailing on her teammates in the arena, is getting creamed by some thug she's trying to take down. Huntress steps in and takes him out with a garbage can lid. As Canary is securing him, Huntress asks, "What did he do, anyway?" Canary quietly replies, "He stole a wallet." Huntress' response is perfect. "Shut up! You got creamed by a pickpocket?")
The more observant among you may note the number of voices provided by actresses who appeared in some of Joss Whedon's projects, such as Angel's Amy Acker, who provides the voice of the Huntress.
You'll also note that Black Canary is lacking her trademark - and difficult to animate - fishnets.
Showing posts with label black canary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black canary. Show all posts
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Batman Night (Plus: Fishnets!)
So apparently I started a new tradition last night and henceforth Christmas Eve shall be known as Batman Night in the Heimdall household.
It started out with me deciding that I should get kind of into the spirit of things and watching the Christmas With The Joker episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
That episode has one of the greatest Batman lines ever. Robin, convinced that it’ll be a slow night in Gotham on Christmas Eve, makes a deal with Batman that if they go on patrol and nothing is happening, they’ll head back to Wayne Manor, enjoy a delicious Alfred-prepared meal, and watch It’s a Wonderful Life.
Batman says, “You know, I’ve never actually seen that. I could never get past the title.”
(One of my other favorite animated Batman line comes from an episode of Justice League Unlimited adapting Alan Moore’s excellent Superman story For The Man Who Has Everything. He and Wonder Woman are on their way to a private celebration of Superman’s birthday. Wonder Woman comments on how difficult it was to find an appropriate gift. Batman says, “Yes, it’s a difficult question: what do you get for the man who has everything?” There’s a pause, and then, horrified, Wonder Woman says, “Bruce…you didn’t get him a gift certificate, did you?” Batman responds in an offended tone, “Of course not!” Then, a little more weakly, adds “I’m giving him cash.”)
After that I decided to watch Holiday Knights, another holiday-themed episode from later in the series’ run. Watching that made me want to watch Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the animated movie. That actually maintained the Christmas connection, as while the move itself doesn’t have a holiday theme, it did open in theaters on Christmas day back in 1993.
Watching that made me want to watch Batman Begins, which I did.
So it was an all-Batman night for me.
I don’t think I have anything else Chrismas-y to watch, unless you count the video of the photoshoot from which I pulled the reference image for my Christmas Eve picture, which, all things considered, probably isn’t the most appropriate Christmas video.
(I will just say that there are several other girls besides Eve in the photoshoot/video, so make of that what you will. I had been thinking about drawing a picture that featured Eve with her arms around two of the other similarly-clad girls and titling it Ho Ho Ho, but it would have been too much work and the other girls aren’t nearly as hot as Eve.)
Though all of the anticipation that accompanied the prospect of Christmas morning in my youth is long gone, I still traditionally have a difficult time getting to sleep on Christmas Eve, so I actually ended up being up until sometime after 2 with all of my Batman watching.
This morning I was off to Scott and Stacy’s for Christmas brunch, where I finally got to open a gift.
Scott had gotten me an Adam Hughes-designed Black Canary statuette (seen in the midst of unleashing her “Canary Cry”) from the same Women of the DC Universe series as the Power Girl statuette I got him when he got his new job. So now once I have my cubicle at my new job I’ll have some geek bling for it:
“I said, ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS AND STOP STARING AT MY BREASTS!’”
“No, I don’t know how my waist can possibly support my upper body.”
The Benes’ Eye View.
From this angle she looks like she’s preparing to catch Ollie’s “trick arrow,” if you know what I’m saying. (Hint: I’m talking about oral sex.) Coincidentally, it also looks a lot like the majority of the thumbnail previews of many of the video files on my hard drive.
He was torn between getting me the Black Canary statuette and getting me the Zatanna statuette, but the Canary won out due to the odd expression on Zatanna’s face, what with her tongue sticking out and all. Either way, fishnets, so I’m happy.
Of course, if they’d had it, he would have gotten me the Catwoman statuette, which would have been very cool.
Still, I have no complaints. I’ve always liked the Black Canary – except when she was presented as a strident, feminist cliché during the Giffen-Dematteis run of Justice League – and I really came to like her when she was handled by Gail Simone. Of course, Gail’s deft handling of the character worked against her, as she made Black Canary so popular that DC editorial took the character away from her to make her the current head of the Justice League and to give her a title of her own (shared with new hubby the Green Arrow).
I’m actually still waiting on a couple more presents, as my sister Kim got my address wrong, and presumably at some point today I’ll be getting one from Kathleen (and giving her one).
For some reason I’ve been getting flooded with MySpace friend requests today. I usually get a few a week, which I pretty much always ignore, as they are invariably just spammers, and I don’t actually spend any time on MySpace anyway, but they’ve been coming in non-stop.
Oh well, it gives me the illusion of popularity, which is important when you’re a jerk that no one likes. I think I’m going to make a T-shirt that says, “I’m the jerk that no one likes,” and include the text of the Emily Deschanel fan forum rant on it.
What can I say, apart from once having a commenter here call me a “whiny, pathetic buttwad,” I’ve never really been flamed – that I know of – on an Internet message board, so it feels kind of like an honor, albeit a dubious one.
Once I got home from brunch (I left just as they were preparing their marshmallow guns for battle and the grim specter of all-out marshmallow war was looming over everything. As a conscientious marshmallow objector, I could not in good conscience stay to watch the puffy, sugary mutually assured stickiness of their insane war. Marshmallow war is, after all, hell.) I called my sister and talked to her and her brood, then gave my mom a call. It’s a good thing I punked out and just gave money, as I was going to buy my mom a DVD player, but the grandkids got her one.
My plan to buy my nephew Jeremy a PSP for his graduation got shot down, too, as he got one today. His response: Get me a DS.
Because, you know, an X-Box, a Wii, a PS3, a PSP, and who knows what all else simply are not enough gaming systems.
It started out with me deciding that I should get kind of into the spirit of things and watching the Christmas With The Joker episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
That episode has one of the greatest Batman lines ever. Robin, convinced that it’ll be a slow night in Gotham on Christmas Eve, makes a deal with Batman that if they go on patrol and nothing is happening, they’ll head back to Wayne Manor, enjoy a delicious Alfred-prepared meal, and watch It’s a Wonderful Life.
Batman says, “You know, I’ve never actually seen that. I could never get past the title.”
(One of my other favorite animated Batman line comes from an episode of Justice League Unlimited adapting Alan Moore’s excellent Superman story For The Man Who Has Everything. He and Wonder Woman are on their way to a private celebration of Superman’s birthday. Wonder Woman comments on how difficult it was to find an appropriate gift. Batman says, “Yes, it’s a difficult question: what do you get for the man who has everything?” There’s a pause, and then, horrified, Wonder Woman says, “Bruce…you didn’t get him a gift certificate, did you?” Batman responds in an offended tone, “Of course not!” Then, a little more weakly, adds “I’m giving him cash.”)
After that I decided to watch Holiday Knights, another holiday-themed episode from later in the series’ run. Watching that made me want to watch Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the animated movie. That actually maintained the Christmas connection, as while the move itself doesn’t have a holiday theme, it did open in theaters on Christmas day back in 1993.
Watching that made me want to watch Batman Begins, which I did.
So it was an all-Batman night for me.
I don’t think I have anything else Chrismas-y to watch, unless you count the video of the photoshoot from which I pulled the reference image for my Christmas Eve picture, which, all things considered, probably isn’t the most appropriate Christmas video.
(I will just say that there are several other girls besides Eve in the photoshoot/video, so make of that what you will. I had been thinking about drawing a picture that featured Eve with her arms around two of the other similarly-clad girls and titling it Ho Ho Ho, but it would have been too much work and the other girls aren’t nearly as hot as Eve.)
Though all of the anticipation that accompanied the prospect of Christmas morning in my youth is long gone, I still traditionally have a difficult time getting to sleep on Christmas Eve, so I actually ended up being up until sometime after 2 with all of my Batman watching.
This morning I was off to Scott and Stacy’s for Christmas brunch, where I finally got to open a gift.
Scott had gotten me an Adam Hughes-designed Black Canary statuette (seen in the midst of unleashing her “Canary Cry”) from the same Women of the DC Universe series as the Power Girl statuette I got him when he got his new job. So now once I have my cubicle at my new job I’ll have some geek bling for it:
“I said, ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS AND STOP STARING AT MY BREASTS!’”
“No, I don’t know how my waist can possibly support my upper body.”
The Benes’ Eye View.
From this angle she looks like she’s preparing to catch Ollie’s “trick arrow,” if you know what I’m saying. (Hint: I’m talking about oral sex.) Coincidentally, it also looks a lot like the majority of the thumbnail previews of many of the video files on my hard drive.
He was torn between getting me the Black Canary statuette and getting me the Zatanna statuette, but the Canary won out due to the odd expression on Zatanna’s face, what with her tongue sticking out and all. Either way, fishnets, so I’m happy.
Of course, if they’d had it, he would have gotten me the Catwoman statuette, which would have been very cool.
Still, I have no complaints. I’ve always liked the Black Canary – except when she was presented as a strident, feminist cliché during the Giffen-Dematteis run of Justice League – and I really came to like her when she was handled by Gail Simone. Of course, Gail’s deft handling of the character worked against her, as she made Black Canary so popular that DC editorial took the character away from her to make her the current head of the Justice League and to give her a title of her own (shared with new hubby the Green Arrow).
I’m actually still waiting on a couple more presents, as my sister Kim got my address wrong, and presumably at some point today I’ll be getting one from Kathleen (and giving her one).
For some reason I’ve been getting flooded with MySpace friend requests today. I usually get a few a week, which I pretty much always ignore, as they are invariably just spammers, and I don’t actually spend any time on MySpace anyway, but they’ve been coming in non-stop.
Oh well, it gives me the illusion of popularity, which is important when you’re a jerk that no one likes. I think I’m going to make a T-shirt that says, “I’m the jerk that no one likes,” and include the text of the Emily Deschanel fan forum rant on it.
What can I say, apart from once having a commenter here call me a “whiny, pathetic buttwad,” I’ve never really been flamed – that I know of – on an Internet message board, so it feels kind of like an honor, albeit a dubious one.
Once I got home from brunch (I left just as they were preparing their marshmallow guns for battle and the grim specter of all-out marshmallow war was looming over everything. As a conscientious marshmallow objector, I could not in good conscience stay to watch the puffy, sugary mutually assured stickiness of their insane war. Marshmallow war is, after all, hell.) I called my sister and talked to her and her brood, then gave my mom a call. It’s a good thing I punked out and just gave money, as I was going to buy my mom a DVD player, but the grandkids got her one.
My plan to buy my nephew Jeremy a PSP for his graduation got shot down, too, as he got one today. His response: Get me a DS.
Because, you know, an X-Box, a Wii, a PS3, a PSP, and who knows what all else simply are not enough gaming systems.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Servicing The Fans
In comics fandom there is a concept that is often referred to as “fan service.”
It’s a term that is rather broad and vague, but in general it refers to instances in which some element is added to a story solely for the purposes of pleasing a certain segment of the readership. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to do something to keep the people who are paying your bills happy, many people find it objectionable when the fan service is tacked on or gratuitous or detracts from the actual story.
Given that comic fandom is largely composed of males, a lot of fan service comes in the form of gratuitous depictions of women in skintight and skimpy outfits, or in suggestive poses, with said women usually having physiques that are so ridiculously out of touch with how real women – even Playboy models – actually look that they border on parody.
Fan service in the art doesn’t really bother me that much, and more often than not I’m more amused than aroused by it. I’m more likely to object to fan service in the writing, particularly if said service involves having a character do or say something that is outside the range of his or her normal behavior and serves no purpose other than to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Even so, it’s fan service art that I want to talk about here, and the reason I want to talk about it is this image from the first page of a recent issue of Countdown to Final Crisis:
Clearly there’s no narrative reason that we need to be treated to an upskirt shot of Mary Marvel immediately upon opening the comic. It’s utterly gratuitous and obviously is nothing other than pure fan service.
That, however, is not my complaint. I honestly have no problem with cheesecake for cheesecake’s sake. I might find it silly and juvenile in many instances, but I’m certainly not offended by it.
No, my problem with this bit of fan service is simply that it’s not very good. If you’re going to throw in some cheesecake, do so with an artist who’s actually good at drawing cheesecake.
This would have been a perfect opportunity to let an artist like Ed Benes shine, especially since it’s a shot that’s so clearly in line with Benes' particular predilections when it comes to presenting the female form.
Benes likes to work from a very specific perspective, which was always apparent when he was the artist on Birds of Prey, in which fans were regularly serviced by scenes similar to this one:
Of course, for the full Benes’ effect, the “camera” would be tilted up slightly, and Dinah’s thighs would likely be framing our view of Babs.
I’m not complaining, of course, and I do actually like Benes’ work, but pointing out this particular foible gave me an excuse to produce my own gratuitous shot of Black Canary’s ass.
(And for the record, as an artist, Ed Benes is vastly superior to me. Also, my dialogue for the scene is a very poor imitation of the kind of crisp, well-characterized exchanges that went on between Dinah and Babs when Gail Simone was writing the book. I also never knew that Benes was from Brazil before seeing his Wikipedia entry. It explains so much. And fan service is not limited to comics. It pops up all over the place.)
It’s a term that is rather broad and vague, but in general it refers to instances in which some element is added to a story solely for the purposes of pleasing a certain segment of the readership. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to do something to keep the people who are paying your bills happy, many people find it objectionable when the fan service is tacked on or gratuitous or detracts from the actual story.
Given that comic fandom is largely composed of males, a lot of fan service comes in the form of gratuitous depictions of women in skintight and skimpy outfits, or in suggestive poses, with said women usually having physiques that are so ridiculously out of touch with how real women – even Playboy models – actually look that they border on parody.
Fan service in the art doesn’t really bother me that much, and more often than not I’m more amused than aroused by it. I’m more likely to object to fan service in the writing, particularly if said service involves having a character do or say something that is outside the range of his or her normal behavior and serves no purpose other than to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Even so, it’s fan service art that I want to talk about here, and the reason I want to talk about it is this image from the first page of a recent issue of Countdown to Final Crisis:
Clearly there’s no narrative reason that we need to be treated to an upskirt shot of Mary Marvel immediately upon opening the comic. It’s utterly gratuitous and obviously is nothing other than pure fan service.
That, however, is not my complaint. I honestly have no problem with cheesecake for cheesecake’s sake. I might find it silly and juvenile in many instances, but I’m certainly not offended by it.
No, my problem with this bit of fan service is simply that it’s not very good. If you’re going to throw in some cheesecake, do so with an artist who’s actually good at drawing cheesecake.
This would have been a perfect opportunity to let an artist like Ed Benes shine, especially since it’s a shot that’s so clearly in line with Benes' particular predilections when it comes to presenting the female form.
Benes likes to work from a very specific perspective, which was always apparent when he was the artist on Birds of Prey, in which fans were regularly serviced by scenes similar to this one:
Of course, for the full Benes’ effect, the “camera” would be tilted up slightly, and Dinah’s thighs would likely be framing our view of Babs.
I’m not complaining, of course, and I do actually like Benes’ work, but pointing out this particular foible gave me an excuse to produce my own gratuitous shot of Black Canary’s ass.
(And for the record, as an artist, Ed Benes is vastly superior to me. Also, my dialogue for the scene is a very poor imitation of the kind of crisp, well-characterized exchanges that went on between Dinah and Babs when Gail Simone was writing the book. I also never knew that Benes was from Brazil before seeing his Wikipedia entry. It explains so much. And fan service is not limited to comics. It pops up all over the place.)
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