WONDERWOMAN COMICS! Amazonia, JLA:League of One and the Hiketeia.

My instructor suggested I find some reading material to help inform my work. I took this as an invitation for me to spend some money on comic books under the legitimacy of "home work". Despite this humour, they really were helpful. For along time I have been interested in Wonder Woman as a character and as a queer Icon. However, any time I attempte to pick up a single issue of her monthly comic, I kinda felt burned by bad story telling and lack-luster art. So I searched around for a bit this fall and found three graphic novels with self-contained stories I could read. Hopefully I would gain some insight on the wonder woman interpretation of the Amazon tribe.



The first being Wonder Woman Amazonia, which takes place in a parallel dimension to normal continuity. Wonder Woman was brought buy force as a child to Great Britain in the late 1800s. Their she deals with general cruel male dominance and the villain Jack the Ripper, who for some strange twist has become the King. This also ties into my earlier post about Circus Strong-Women, as that is Wonder Woman's profession in this book.


What I liked about this book for starters is that it is a self contained story. I kinda already get the concept of Wonder Woman, and they clearly explain how they are altering her story to take place in the Victorian era. Secondly, I love the art. Which is referential to classic printing press line styles. (Seen Below in an Image from the Book Women: A Pictorial Archive from Nineteenth-Century Sources)



I would love to see a black and white printing of this comic, as the coloring occasionally muddies the image quite bit. Another complaints with the story, in that some times the mysogyny of the male characters seemed a bit heavy handed. But then again I don't know what it was like back then, or how society might treat women if Jack the Ripper was the king of England. Actually I take that back, when women have n uprising it is a nice reversal, as they had been taking it through out the book.

Also for Amazon culture, this book shows them as a helpful and perhaps naive tribe. The help a shipwrecked man return home, but unfortunately expose themselves to advanced weaponry and get slaughtered. Yipes.




The second book is JLA: A league of One, with the story and painted illustrations by Christopher Moeller. An crazy amazon prophecy say that the Justice League will face a dragon and die defeating it. Wonder Woman, believing that this is true, decides she will take on the role as the sole member of the Justice League, sacrificing herself so her team-mates can live. She uses the teams trust to pull off several clever tricks, eliminating her team-mates from action. The whole concept was a very Batman style plan and execution. Neat to see Wonder Woman pull it off. Funny I couldn't see Aquaman pulling this off.



The art is pretty nice, and considering it deals alot with dragons, gnomes and fairies, I'm gonna guess the writer/painter works illustrating fantasy book covers. It really lends itself to the superhero genre well. The fantasy elements build a world more like greek mythology that Amazon could live in. Their interaction with magic is nice too.



Third: Wonder Woman: the Hiketeia. This book centers around the an ancient ritual apparently described in the illiad, which inspired me to find in audio-book format. A young woman request the Hiketia of Wonder Woman, which basically means she puts her self into humble servitude in exchange for protection. If Wonder Woman fails to protect her, she faces the Furries, demons who are gonna kill her. Oh and there is an extra sweet twist, in that the young woman is wanted for murder in Gotham City, and she's being hunted by Batman! Oh the drama.


This book describes some nice greek traditions carried on by this contemporary amazon, as well as an interesting look at Wonder Woman's work as an ambassador. It has some great art by J.G. Jones too. The downside of the book is that it is quite short. I would have like to seen the story stretch out a bit longer, but oh well.

Circus!

A big beautiful book put out by Taschen.
It high lights the history of the circus and provides some nice pictures of performers and perhaps more importantly vintage promotional artwork.



What struck me right away as how the costuming of circus performers clearly informed the the creation of superheroes and wrestling, two things I've been intereste in for a long time. All three have an awesome sense of physicality and spectacle I love.


Second, I've been interested lately in the Strong Woman persona and both conceptually and sexually . I like the concept of gender-fucking the strong man image. Just as I seem engaged by taking the perceived aesthetic female beauty standards and applying them to males. I like when I see this macho physicality performed by women.



Physically these women are really interesting. Unlike contemporary body builders who fast approaching competitions to attains muscle definitions, these old timey body builders maintain a good ammoung of bulk too them. Which, is nice.



As a transgendered person, I relate to these strong women, both as an person to cherish and maybe personify myself. My masculine features are pretty dominate, so maybe I fit in physically with these types of women, and they provide a strong physical image to give me moral strength.



BEARS! I have been thinking about bears for a couple of years. I haven't really gotten into explaining how this project relates to bears yet, but I will go into that in further posts. I don't have much to say about these images. But I do find the bizare tagline on this first bear poster to be mind boggling.


"Nature's Real Comedians..." (Enslaved and cruelly trained to perform fro your delight.)

Wow. Some explanation is in order.



A few more awkward bear pictures. I guess I would like to point out clearly that I dislike the mistreatment of animals in the circus. Cats ad dogs in sweaters, is funny. Bears in dresses... doped up tigers... confined elephants... not funny.

What a fall I’ve had!

This is the second year that I went through a gross metamorphosis mid-October. I can actually pinpoint the moment seasonal depression kicked in and bummed me out. It was when I had to ride my bike home from work in a cold rain. I curled up on the sofa and was unreceptive and unproductive for almost a week. Luckily, now that it is December, I have remembered how to survive winters. It’s funny how I forget every year. I love summer.

School - a second layer of difficulties. I had a strong determination in the summer, that this year I was going to make school work for me and my project. For most of September and October I was quite productive on my Polar Bear project (the one this blog is about). I had spent a lot of the month working on my bird. About the same time I got all emotionally S.A.D., I had to switch gears in my studies and put a lot of energy into my other classes. Some of my assignments took far too much of my energy for what little I perceived to be gaining by completing them. Who knew I could get so bitter and whiney, but I displayed a lot agitation this fall. Wow.

I feel a lot better now. Despite that I have not reached certain production goals I had set, I have taken comfort in the realization of how much I’ve learned in the meantime. A lot of my annoyance came from my own uncertainty of an action plan. I wanted to make two costumes, a Bear and an Amazon to use in my video project this semester. I shifted my video energy to edit a Collective Itch project (Robot Boi and the Amazing Plant People) that I had volunteered to edit, but had much apprehension knowing how much work I would need to put into it. But now that I finished it to pleasing results, I know I did the right thing. This Polar Bear project can take as long as it needs too. No need to rush.

Read the following in a faux Jerry Seinfeld voice: What’s the deal with learning? You go to do something… and all of sudden, something else happens to ruin all your plans…. But then you have all this other stuff you never wanted. But now… It shapes your perceptions of reality. It’s Crazy! Am I right? And what’s the deal with those razor disposal slots in airplane washrooms, are there people shaving in there?

THE POINT OF THIS POST: I’ve decided to post a few updates reflecting on the media I have consumed over the past four months. I’ll be posting pictures as well as brief text reflecting on what I have gained on the experiences. The posts will be labeled under Tasty Media, as well as any other appropriate tags. The process of writing for me can be painful at times; so I’m going try to be as quick and concise as possible. So this will be merely a log of items and quick reflections and/or links to my work/thought process.

A BBC Bird Video

Here is a video about how male birds pick up chicks.

Work in Progress: Blue Jay's Head

A quick update about the finishing touches of my bluejay's head.
Took me a long time problem solve the wire neck, but I finally decided to cover the area with black velvet. That velvet area should make it hard to see any continuity errors Im sure to have with my first stop motion animation I'll ever do. I mounted the additional feathers and such all up on the foam head, so they shouldn't cause much constriction of the neck movements. I'm quite happy with the colorful yet moody results I've gotten with the bird so far.

Work in Progress: Blue Jay Puppet

So I've been working on my Blue-Jay stop motion animation puppet for some time now.
For some reason I thought I could finish this up in a day or two... but now its day 5. I guess I was being unrealistic, considering the complexity involved here. Most my crafts are essentially 2d, but here it is. My work in progress.

I began by using a pink piece of foam insulation I found on the street and making the body. I made a pipe cleaner neck and covered it with this fabric, but the babushka wasn't giving me the flexibility I needed.

Further along now, I've fashion some pipe cleaner legs, and made a little face with magnets I planned on attaching a beak and eyes too later. I did a quick animation test to see if I could get the bird pecking at the ground, which is did ok, the the whole structure was kinda wobbley. I decided to take a step back.

I attached the bird to a the wire neck of an old lamp which I can screw to my desk, making the whole thingmore stable for animation and able to leap into flight. Also, after a trip to the dollar store for fake flowers I have some nice brown stems I fashioned into legs and feet. There is wire inside so the can be posed to some degree. Also I made a nice white fuzzy under belly.



I fashioned some outstretched wings, out of a simple card paper and pipe cleaners. I ran a quick test to see if they'll give me the flexibility I need, and it seems okay.


Many many hours later, I have reshaped the head and added a beak and magnet eyes.


A detail of the Beak. Look it moves!... although it doesn't rest completely closed... which I haven't decided whether that's a problem... ayway, its made out of FEMO, cause you are curious.
I have made two sets of wings. Above are the wings at rest. They are made with a combination of card paper, fabric, felts, faux flowers and a blistering amount of hot glue.


Here are the wings stretched out. Pretty wild. I am pretty happy with the results.


So, I still have more work to to on this, such as;
1-Feathering the face and making it look all nice. I want to make a few sets of eyes, one that squint, and are completely closed.
2-Problem solving the neck. I think I'll try hiding the wire with some loose feather roughage, as to not obstruct the movement.
3-The tail... which birds spread an manipulate to control their flight paths. I'm not sure if I should worry about this detail... but mentioning it seems to make me more accountable.


And finally when I've made the whole thing, I have to make a replica that is mountable on a brassiere, like so...

Sketch Book - Of Birds and Brassiers.

As mentioned earlier, each Glamazon has a bird mounted on their chest. Our main Glamazon has a blue-jay, and for my video project I need to create a Stop-Motion version as well as the mounted version. The following is some sketches on the subject.

Above: An early sketch, problem solving what I need the puppet to do.

Above: 2 key frames on how birds kinda hover... shrug.
Also, the blujay mounted on a very wonder-womany bustier.

Above: The bluejay and potential designs for the lead Glamazon.
Perhaps tha blue hair is over the top...
I am not sure yet how the Glamazon choose their bird spirits...
so maybe it would be bizarre if it was completely reliant on aesthetics.

Above: My original drawing of a Blue-Jay Mounted on my second life size Glamazon.

Above: This full sized Glamazon collage grace my residence door this summer
at the Explore program in La Pocatiere. I chose the blue-jay, cause I had lots of blue paper that I had saved from being dumpstered...coincidentally back at home, I have a bunch of blue felt that I picked up for nuthing at a yard sale... So that's the practical reason that I am making a blue-jay.

I guess I could go further on about the Bluejay being a north american bird, that is relative to canadian identity, partly due to the Toronto Blue Jays. And then never seeing a Blue-jay my entire life, having grown up in Saskatchewan. The Blue-Jay carries this odd exoticism, of a country, my country that is tottally unknown to me. My Grandma had a book on Birds when I was young, that my cousin and I would look at and draw pictures from. My two favorite birds where the Blue Jay and the Cardinals, probably partly due to the baseball teams, despite me never actually liking sports. Now living in Montreal, I occasionally see Cardinals and when I fist saw one I was amazed that they actually exist. Their image was imprinted in my mind only in graphic format, and too see it in 3d real life, was awesome. (Kinda like seeing a great big red maple-leaf my first fall in Montreal) Anyway, I am losing sight of my blog... Blue-jays. I still haven't seen one, except for in photos of taxidermed at the wild-life museum. One day... one day...