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The General Good, Pg. 3

Abt_Nihil

on Dec. 14, 2008

Picking up where we left off two weeks ago… third page by literacysuks1 (lineart) and myself (script/colors/letters).

Sometimes I get tempted to write a lengthier comment. Rejoice, for today is the day:

Creating Bombshell, I had to answer the question: why create yet another superhero? Well, I believe many superhero comics are quite autistic, in the sense that they revolve around nothing but themselves (meaning, their own mythology). There's an overflowing pool of genre clichees and character archetypes, and sometimes it seems that a superhero creator's job consists in not much more than casting characters to fill out certain roles: the role of the majestic super-strong hero, the quirky super-fast one, the stretching one, the dark and brooding one, etc.

Now, I wouldn't want to deny that what I've just described doesn't determine the quality of the actual stories. It's just that I felt that a certain question needed to be posed more often, and was answered too rarely: the question, what would YOU do if you had superpowers? (Or, in Bombshell's case: not exactly superpowers, but the resolve and the means to do extraordinary things.) That's the first and strongest connection to the reader, and the basic appeal that superheroes have to me. I find superheroes interesting insofar as they are thought experiments (much like most science fiction I like), and not just escapist mythology. We don't tell their stories just for the sake of telling stories, but also to find out more about our own world.

This is my basic train of thought regarding Bombshell, and in this 4-pager I try to hint at what I think sets her apart from other heroes.


REPLIES:

First off, it's great to get so many interesting thoughts on this topic! Thank you all!

lit: Yup, both deconstruction and distillation (of some imaginary "essence" of the genre) are what I find interesting too. The "distillation" approach is what often drew me in emotionally - the works I feel most attached to did exactly that (the Batman and Superman animated series, and Giant Robo and the newer Getter Robo series on the animé side). And I also agree that every once in a while, a work will come along that has its "unique voice", despite not being smart and deconstructive about it, but rather using the genre clichees in a very sincere way - some writers and artists do have that magic touch to make it work. And thanks, I feel the same way about my colors on this page :D

DAJB: Is that the statement of a broken hearted FF fan? ;-) I agree, but I do have to say: The 1st was cheesy fun in some way, the second was just torture. And thanks!

AzuJOD: Yup, that's another way of making it fresh (as long as the location isn't the only thing that changes ;-P)… as DAJB's shades, among others, constantly proves. Ironically I had no way of placing Bombshell in Germany… but one of the points about her is that she's a cosmopolitan (no, not the mag), and placing her at the UN HQ seemed the best thing to do. The next big UN building I know is in Vienna, and I know Vienna about as much as NY ;-)

Nepath: I really am a child of these late 70s/early 80s comics. I think there are many different eras that each have something going for them, and there are infinitely many possible ways of doing superhero comics right. I think that at any given time it's a question of balance… some approaches seem to have been done to death, while others seem neglected. It's only natural for the grim and gritty superhero stuff to backfire and eventually produce light-hearted stuff. I enjoy some of each, and I think Energize is a great mix. It's sinister to some extent too, but it's not angsty.

Mummymetaller, Emmzee, Hero, man in black, melsr007: Thanks!