Black and White Lobo Month Continues
I’ve been doing a ridiculous amount of traveling as of late as well as tending to the healing of this cool new tattoo
(or at least two thirds of a cool new tattoo… Remember to whitelist MGDMT in your adblockers, it’s how I’ve been paying for this!)
So here’s another delightful uncoloured Lobo comic because they’re easy to bang out in an hour or two between running for buses and trains.
If you’re missing the context, DC comics has burned so many bridges and driven off such a substantial portion of their creative talent that they’re giving you, the fans, a chance to pick up the slack by showcasing your skills at drawing Harley Quinn, naked, committing suicide. Because DC appears to be at least a moderately tone deaf company and does not understand why their track record for poor attitudes to female characters and creators could make a “draw a naked woman killing herself” contest seem like a tacky move, regardless of the context they’ve tried to backpedal into the affair in the interest of claiming innocence.
But if DC really wants drawings of naked people being killed by themselves, okay, I’ll oblige.
New 52 was a bad decision for DC. I understand the need to refresh and renew, but the way they did it make me wonder if anyone but the writers know what’s the best choice now.
Do you really think the writers even know?
Maybe not at that point, but now, they are the only sane guys, actually wanting to write the plot as it really should be.
DC Comics are notorious for editorial mandates. The editors call the shots, and the writers are compelled to do what they say.
That seems like a really shitty way to write anything.
That’s not a mandate; that’s how comics are in general. Editors say what goes, the writer does his best to drop whatever he’s doing and somehow fumble in what the editor wants.
Nah, most of the guys who have walked out on DC lately have said that DC is not doing business the same way other companies are. Marvel is controlled by editors, but they are not half so bad as DC has been lately.
That’s because the editors at Marvel are more in tune with what their readers want. Note I didn’t say they do a great job of it but at this point, it’s not possible to do a worse job than DC.
I can understand wanting to reboot.
The problem is the reboot took everything I, as a fan not of comics, but of DC’s animated properties, knew and held dear about many of the characters.
Like, say, Mr Freeze, whose origin in the animated Batman series was THE definitive origin for the character until all this New 52 mess started. The retcon after ‘Heart of Ice’ aired was swift and merciless, faster even than Harley Quinn’s eventual migration to the comic series.
But New 52 threw that away and just made him into another generic deluded psychotic with no depth.
So he went from being a very limited character in terms of how you can integrate him into ongoing events, to a character so boring that he’ll only be thrown in as another body on the pile as everything compelling about the character has been removed. Something tells me that from a storytelling standpoint, being more limited was better.
The decision to reboot was fine. The way they handled it, well, not as much fine, as completely and utterly clumsy
Love you for this strip, Coela!
So… beautiful! TwT
^Correction: So AWESOME!! >_<
This is awesome. Just awesome.
Haha, okay, I should have known exactly what to expect from the tumblr link. Well played, Coelasquid.
Oh, and coelasquid, I updated the TVTropes page, Lobo needs tropes added. Guys, make it happen.
LOLs XD Nice job, DR!!
It was minimal really, but it could use more tropes, some I may have missed.
Do you mean the old characters killing the new ones?
Nah, there’s a contest for artists to create the first page in Harley Quinn issue #0.
Where all four panels they are to create involves Harley attempting to kill herself, with the last one being naked in the tub with a toaster :P
It’s pretty disturbing really.
What do you think when you see that picture above? I’m thinking Lobo kill his “nancy boy” counterpart to take his position back on track.
In my humble opinion anyways…
I am enjoying black and white Lobo month. Just saying. I am also saying that that is gonna be a nice sleeve when it is done.
I was just thinking ALL comics should be REQUIRED to do a Black-&-White Lobo Month, annually. Dilbert would be even funnier that month, Garfield & Peanuts abruptly would get one helluva “ha-ha” boost (plus, imagine Lobo drawn in the vein of Schultz… Doing the Snoopy dance atop the burning wreckage of a Sopwith Camel… RIGHT!? Gods I wish Waterson was still on Calvin and Hobbes), and stuff like XKCD, QC, and LICD would take a VERY strange turn that month (though Lar & Sohmer I suspect could pull those off w/ aplomb).
Far Side… Perry Bible… SMBC (another I’d totally expect to rock it)… Rex Morgan MD… Dick Tracy… Naruto… Ranma… Dragonball (“his Power Level… It’s at ‘X+1’!”)… Archie… Casper… I dunno if Disney Adventures is still put out, but Duck Tales? Little Mermaid? Lilo & Stitch!? Plus LOBO!?!
Oh. Hell. Yeah.
Gods, THAT’D be a contest! “Insert Lobo into your comic drawn in the same style as it is normally-drawn. Above all, everyone should ACT NATURLLY.”
We need a Kickstarter for this. Pronto. Proceeds go to running the printed book & paying the contest winners. Anyone else wanna get in on this?
You sold me on Lobo doing the Snoopy Dance. I can’t draw worth bupkus, but I SWEAR I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY IF YOU MAKE THIS A THING.
THANK YOU FOR THIS. I’m so disgusted by the whole thing; it’s not that a character tries to kill herself and fails humorously (DC’s intent), not just that she’s got to be naked in this, but that DC chose this as a representative piece is insulting. “Oh, just draw a sexy woman trying to harm herself. If you can do that I’m sure you can draw fight scenes and serious conversations and everything else.”
There are untold levels of sexiness hinted at by that ink. Taft approves.
So… DC is in meltdown mode?
I mean, eventually they have to run out of people willing to work on these titles just because of the title character, right?
Ah, who am I kidding, naive writers are a dime a dozen and the big two know it. Deep down, that’s why they’re such shitty places to work at.
The suicide thing might not even be the worst thing they’ve done to Harley lately. Her new origin in Detective Comics 23.2 turns her into a mad bomber who blows up a whole bunch of kids with booby-trapped video game systems. And such exquisite timing given yesterday, too.
Wasn’t it stated in Death of the Family that his Harley is just a Harley? Like, the Joker keeps kidnapping women, mentally torturing them, and turning them into his assistant? So its not really a new origin, just an origin for a new version of the character.
I have no idea anymore, but given that they were supposedly selling the New52 Harley series as “a fun and silly book that broke the 4th wall” it still seems like a bad move.
Remember, this is the Joker we’re talking about. He could have just as easily kidnapped and killed a bunch of women, dressed them up like Harley, and showed their bodies to her just to break her.
Well, it looked like most of them had been there a while. Natural decomposition is hard to fake.
Once again, This is THE JOKER we are talking about, he could have also just had a bunch of decaying corpses from different murder sprees laying around and thought to himself “Gee, wouldn’t it be a gag if I dresses these ladies up like Harley and showed them to her?”
Why did Harley Q even gain such popularity anyways? I mean what does she have that I … oh … right … I see. That’s deep.
Let’s face it, attractive women in skin-tight outfits are ridiculously common in comics, so that’s not why she’s popular.
No, Harley Quinn is popular because she had good character focus episodes on Batman The Animated Series. That’s it. Sadly, her comics career has been mostly garbage with the occasional piece that rose to the level of mediocre.
No, she got good character focused episodes in BTAS because she was popular. Her major episodes, Mad Love and Harleys Holiday, came 3 seasons after she debuted.
I think Harley became popular, because she was kind of a reversal of the ‘woman falls in love with a man and decides to change him’ in that -she- changed for the Joker and fell in love with him because of how deranged he was. I’m not saying it’s a better idea, but it’s fairly unique in comparison.
Not to mention, she just looked like she was having fun most of the time. Many of the most memorable Batman villains are either 1) bizarre but have a sad history or 2) are just enjoying whatever mayhem they’re causing.
Then there’s the interaction between her and the Joker. Their relationship was more interesting than the typical ‘girl falls for villain’ concept that crops up frequently in fandom, because it was messy and somewhat complex. It could also be treated as really horrifying or vaguely sweet, depending on how it was handled. It’s basically everything she needs to appeal to women and men, in my opinion. :I
And then there’s Harley and Poison Ivy. I loved when the series showed their friendship. That was also kind of a first, since it’s kind of rare that female superheros or villains interact in the mainstream media.
Again, that came later. Harley being corrupted by the Joker only came around in Mad Love – before then, she was just a ditzy henchwoman in clown makeup. As did the brutalities in the relationship, with the Joker beating her and her making excuses for him – came from Harley and Ivy, a year after Quinn was introduced.
I assure you that without those episodes, she would not _still_ be popular.
Interesting character design accounts for the initial surge
Harley was charming.
She was originally in Batman: The Animated Series. Which, to my mind, remains the only larger media edition of Batman to do any sort of justice to the characters. A favorite of children to adults for it’s high quality and lack of bland contempt for it’s audience, it’s held up much better to the passage of time than most of it’s programming counterparts.
Harley herself existed somewhere between loving devotion and self destructive infatuation for the Joker. Most of the time this was met with indifference or distain, but every once and a while it was shown that, in so much as he could, he cared for her as well. She was strong and aggressive, and oftentimes defined childlike whimsy at it’s most cruel. However, at the same time she was caring and vulnerable. Both powerful villain and innocent victim, she served an excellent foil for both Batman and The Joker while being engaging in her own right.
It was a pleasant dichotomy, both in of it’s own merits as well as in the context of the one dimensional characters that pervade programming aimed at a younger audience. The character was popular enough to be brought over from the animated series to their main continuity, where as with most everything DC has touched as of late, has been gradually brought to hopeless ruin.
I’ll be stupidly honest in saying that the moment that Arleen Sorkin retired was the moment that Harley Quinn died. I understand when actors retire, and I respect and still love Arleen, but I’m still a sad fan… She is what made the character… Literally!
Harley became popular because she was funny and sane enough to be somewhat competent and a tad relatable. Plus she made a good foil for the Joker, someone consistent to play off of, someone who was just enough on his wavelength to follow his thought process, that was something new and unique.
Sane and competent do NOT go together in Gotham in any possible way.
If a person was sane and competent, they’d get the fuck out of Gotham.
You realize that there are a ton of different types of insanity and levels to each, right? That you can’t just say someone is sane or insane in every facet of their personality.
She was funny and a character in a cartoon very many 20 somethings grew up watching, therefor giving her nostalgia factor for them.
Not to defend DC as a whole, because they’ve been really stupid lately, but this Harley thing is something I don’t really have a problem with. If you read the whole plot page, it’s pretty obvious that it’s supposed to be humorous…you know, because Harley and the Joker have always had that macabre sense of humor. And it wouldn’t be DC’s fault – it would be the author’s fault for not making the context clear. And Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner – who are fun, funny writers who I definitely think can pull off Harley Quinn (read their Power Girl!) – have come out and apologized for the lack of context. So I don’t think there is a problem here.
I’m with you on Lobo, though. That issue came out yesterday and it was AWFUL.
It’s clear it’s supposed to be humorous, but making a joke out of a touchy subject when you’ve got an ongoing track record of being kind of awful with that sort of thing is a pretty clueless move no matter how you slice it.
Some part of me still wants to believe that this whole “hey kids, draw a naked Harley Quinn committing suicide for us!” thing is some kind of very strange fever dream and any minute now I’ll wake up and return to the world where a company isn’t so hideously tone deaf that they have a “hey kids, draw a naked Harley Quinn committing suicide for us!” contest.
Any minute now.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaany minute now.
I unblocked the ads on your site JUST for your super sweet tattoo. It’s dumb that I block any ads, but that personal connection of “those are how I’m buying this” really worked on me.
Saw the suicide thing, it just…. *ew* way too strong for my taste
Not a tattoo fan (to get one myself), but this one is GORGEOUS – love the style *blingy eyes*
Hey, I’m probably really late to the party with making this connection, but: the newest New 52 Lobo looks like he caught the Nomura Virus.
Welcome to the club :D
Ah yes, make rapists into heroes (Yes, I’m still bitter about that “good Dr. Arthur Light” thing) and ask for fan contests of drawing naked women committing suicide…
It really makes me wonder who’s running DC these days and what they think about women. Or even what they think is good taste, for that matter.
I could have been EVEN worse. It could have been a “draw Batgirl getting paralyzed and raped”.
New 52 was a reaaaaally bad idea. Even Superior Spider-man smells better.
Too late for that. In The Killing Joke, the Joker paralyzed her for life. Whereas he didn’t rape her, he did strip her naked & photographed her.
I know. My point was that the contest could have been more crude and mindless than how it is.
If you kill your clone, is it suicide or murder?
I did find the whole Harley thing rather tasteless. I would be more into it if it depicts Harley doing it to some hapless sap with the air of boredom and/or testing out punchlines.
It’s self-mutilation.
I’ve just wanted to say that…well…if you want to keep doing the black and white I don’t mind. They actually look kinda bad ass…and I don’t mean a rude donkey either.
cite (always!!!) and face change for good times.
Sick tattoo, awesome comic, and nice, crisp lines. :)
Are you still using Manga Studio for your lines? I am jealous of them.
Quick! Everyone submit properly sized versions of goatsee to these ************* people… Silly silly silly *shakes head* Fight tasteless with tasteless or just walk away and let them fester in their pool of excrement they have made for themselves?
I appreciate your satirical look at the situation, though. I finished reading the Lobo series they put out way back when, the other day. The artist’s plight seemed fairly apparent in the last couple of issues. Regardless of whatever they put out these days, The Main Man will forever be…
The. Main. Man.
I’m considering drawing the first panel as described, then:
Panel 2: Harley is sitting on top of the building, knees curled in, crying with the antenna sitting next to her. Rain falls.
Panel 3: Harley is speaking to Selina Kyle, who is sympathetic and caring.
Panel 4: Selina and Harley are sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting to see a psychiatrist.
Obviously not what they’re looking for or even the slightest within continuity, but that isn’t really my point.
Ducky I would LOVE to see panels of that.
That would be eff-ing brilliant! No, seriously, this is a much better script! I mean, the next comic would make it so she recovered only to her previous level of nuts (And in record time, because who cares about how people actually recover, or personal struggles that involve no punching), so status quo would be restored, but its a beautiful idea, it gives some good character interplay and development, and is a touching sort of slice of life, as opposed to an exploitative bit of snuff porn.
Okay, yeah – continuity is seven forms of off, but so is the suicide, frankly, so if they are going with that, bugger continuity, we’re doing something mature, not “adult” or pandering. DC can take a long walk off a short pier – Aquaman will know what to do with garbage that toxic…
Wouldn’t it be Pamela Isley, not Selina Kyle? Catwoman has no reason to like or care about Harley, whereas She and Ivy are really close friends
I would have said Pamela, too, but I don’t know if that friendship is still canon, let alone with this Harley. If there are multiple Halreys. Dang it DC, this is a terrible mess of a history. The heck weren’t you thinking…!
Selina seems the sort to respond well to strays still (thankfully), and a suicidal Harley probably is close enough to count. Especially if she’s not in full costume (like, the rain is smearing/dripping her make up off, or something…so it’s not the persona, just a scared and sorrowful woman who’s a mess and uncertain and needs help)
Of course, Bats would do this to – he’s canonically pretty sympathetic if you aren’t actively working a crime, and look ready to honestly try reforming – but I doubt Harley would be comfortable with that, unless she was Really desperate for any kind hand to reach for.
My knowledge of character relationships is based on a quick skim of Harley’s Wikipedia page. I think I will actually do this, so which would be better? Pamela or Selina?
Definitely Pamela. If they don’t consider that friendship canon anymore, all the more reason to push it in their faces. It was a good friendship.
Pam and Harley are pretty close, or at least were in the old canon, but Selina might be more likely to be hanging around on rooftops and as such to find Harley. Either one works, I guess. And if you do draw this, please post it somewhere for all to see, it sounds so brilliant and I know I’ll want to share it.
Actually, there was one episode of TAS where it looks like Batman really gets through to her (not that it lasted beyond that episode, of course). She gets paroled or something, misunderstanding, she panics, goes on the run, blah-blah-blah, winds up back in Arkham. But at the end there, Batman visits her and she really seems moved by it. Even enough to make you wonder how she might have done if they’d been able to keep her away from the Joker after that.
Uhhh… you may want to read a few more comics. Harley and Selina were together in Gotham City Sirens and are considered friends. In lots of media (games, comics, whatever) they are STILL referencing friendship between them EX; Injustice: Gods Among Us when a Wager between Harley and Selina you get the quote “Still friends!”
… I hope to God this is something you plan on submitting in that contest. Only downside is a job offer with DC.
I want to hug you and bake you double fudge brownies for this strip.
That’s some beautiful ink! I’d love to see a picture when it’s complete.
I’m also enjoying Lobo month. He’s a new character to me and this is making me want to find his old comics and check them out.
Totally worth finding them, if you can find them. I usually dig around in the depths of an antique store for Lobo comics (or Shade the Changing Man). Them old folks don’t know what they’ve got, hahahaa!
Is he going to french kiss the toaster, conducting the current from his mouth through his arm into No-bo’s face? That’s the most Lobo way to commit a murder-suicide I’ve ever seen.
Not you too? Did you just read tumblr outrage instead of actual contest rules? Did you not notice there was supposed to be a ridiculous number of electric appliances hanging above the bath? Or the part about the chicken suit in a previous panel?
It was supposed to be morbid humor. Something like you’re doing with Lobo right now.
Of course if it was Deadpool everyone would probably laugh. But if it’s a female character, oh noes! Nevermind that being a crazy self-destructive bombshell pretty much is Harley’s whole character, just lapsing between being shown as tragic or silly.
Also, this guy http://fav.me/d6lv7xv did the bath thing without even showing the nudeness, while it’s still implied.
That hardly matters, and does in any way change the validity of what she said at all. For one thing, this is not just some panel in some comic, this is what they expect people to draw for a contest framed as a talent search. So, basically they are saying that is you want to do comic art be prepared to draw a whole bunch of distasteful bs! Secondly, DC has already made a good job of fucking Harley’s character to hell and back, shit tons of fans are pissed off by the change of costume for new52, among other things, and even more fans have been irritated by her overall portrayal in the comics vs in the cartoon for years. In the cartoon she has something to offer aside from having lady parts, but in the comics she has basically become another set of tits. Thirdly, DCs portrayal of basically every other woman has been utter shit and they continue to insult us by pretending they are making changes to broaden their appeal when in fact they have been doing exactly the opposite (changing popular characters to earlier versions that are more often than not straight white dudes, cancelling titles with black protagonists, sexying up Amanda Waller, etc). This contest could not have been better crafted to isolate people outside of DC’s 35-year-old straight white wannabe frat boy audience if they had deliberately engineered it to be so.
And yeah, the fact she is a female character does fucking matter, moron. I am not sure I even have the energy to explain why since if you were capable of understanding you probably would have figured it out by now. Here is a clue though: sexualizing violence against women has a long, proud tradition in all media, while doing the same with men does not. Such a thing would be funny if it were Deadpool because it would be unexpected (and not just cause he is a dude but also because he is hella ugly, in case you forgot that part, and also he cannot actually dies, in case you also forgot THAT part), while with Harley it is just an unfortunate reflection of reality; that for some reason writers struggle to come up with a joke for her that does not involve T and A.
Don’t insult people just because they don’t tunnel-vision on the same things as you. Some people (and out of general optimism I assume DC is in this group) see the preposterous amount of appliances as the main focus of the scenario, which actually would fit Harley’s insane character (kind of like Deadpool, actually), while others seem to think the nudity is the most important part. I guess I could see how it might be a bit skeevy, but then being clothed in the bathtub would also be odd.
Besides, this is the woman who did a sexy-dance out of a cream pie, asked the Joker if he wanted to “rev up his Harley”, and was in a relationship with Poison Ivy, femme fatale incarnate. The “T&A” has been there from the start, as has her suffering through abuse, so this outrage seems a bit incongruous.
The point of contention is more that it’s this, a touchy subject matter on all accounts, that they active and consciously chose instead of countless things they could have potentially asked for. If your company is already known for dropping the ball on a variety of social issues, you have to understand that doing things in poor taste like this is only going to compound the problem.
While agree that suicide is a controversial topic, there is a difference between controversial and taboo. Given Harley’s history of skirting the line between slapstick and tragic abuse, I think they could get away with this scenario, depending on how it’s pulled off (like the picture linked in the root comment).
Look, I’m not saying DC doesn’t have issues, or that they’re not going to pick the worst possible depiction of their scenario as the winner. All I’m saying is that the scenario itself isn’t necessarily deserving of the outrage. If people are going to start beating the war drums at everything that could be viewed as offensive, then it’s going to have that much less impact when something truly deserving of a good shouting-at pops up.
Mind you, I still think your satire was both clever and funny.
This. The contest was not created in a vacuum, if DC had even the least bit of awareness of the world around them they would have known this was a bad idea.
Are we ignoring that the four panels are clearly intended to be an homage to classic Looney Tunes shorts or Mickey Mouse comics in which a depressed Daffy or Donald keeps trying to kill himself in increasingly over-the-top ways and failing every time?
Nope, don’t remember those at all (Daffy maayyybe, if you stretch things, a lot, but Donald? No chance, not in an official capacity)
No, but what we’re NOT ignoring is that this single page does not exist in a vacuum and DC is a company with an awful track record regarding not only the way they handle writing their female characters, but the treatment of their female staff members. I’ve personally seen at least one very important person at DC catcall an underage girl at a convention. Jim Lee had a whole condescending rant about how fans weren’t putting the page in context (that wasn’t provided anyway), well, maybe DC should take some of his advice and put their actions in context with all of the other horrible decisions they’ve made to understand why this sort of thing would come across in bad taste.
The difference is when Lobo or Deadpool take mortal wounds it’s funny because they never die, much like Tom & Jerry. Contextually, Harley is mortal (as far as a comic character can be), and they’re also sexualizing her suicide. That’s pretty sick.
How is wearing a chicken suit sexualizing? Just because she’s naked in the bath scene doesn’t mean it’s sexual. You’re adding your own interpretations.
And Harley was created as much as a cartoon character as Tom & Jerry, often taking slapstick in her face, the difference is that comedy in her case is underlined with drama of a severe mental illness (which also appears in Deadpool when he’s done right, unless you only know him as the random funny character as in MvC3). Being a character related to the Joker it’s kinda expected of her to participate in silly-yet-deadly antics. Cartoonish futile attempts at suicide reinforce that broken down clown thing IMO.
Where has it ever been portrayed that Harley was suicidal?
wooooow, I’m just so amazed at how stupid your comments can get, lol!
Let’s see… a character that really explored abusive relationships and a destroyed mind being brainwashed into thinking someone was her real friend then treating her like shit and how over the years it basically made her insane to be around this guy– totally the same as a cartoon cat and mouse slapstick show!
I really think you should read up on Harley’s evolution (more like devolution) over the years or maybe, ya know, WATCH OR READ SOMETHING WITH CLASSIC HARLEY to get the feel for her character. This new character really isn’t Harley at all, it’s some stupid slutty psycho-bimbo, and don’t throw some bullshit at me like “omg u must b sexist against men since ur defending a woman” because I think just the same thing about Lobo. He’s BAMF big muscly alien bounty hunter and I think the New 52 just made him into every girl’s eye candy fantasy pretty sensitive boy and that’s utter bullshit. Go ahead, defend what they did to Lobo.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind B&W Lobo Month being extended to top off the year. Then, Lobo would be home in time for Christmas!
Never liked the look of the Hooker-Harley, just felt it was too far of a departure fromt he happy-go-lucky/Cooky-Quinn (even after reading the pregression from the Cooky-Quinn to the Hooker-Harley), just hope they scrap the entire New52 and go back to the way things were
That tattoo most have felt wonderful. When are you getting it finished? Those are some really clean lines & good colors.
I am 100% okay with more Lobo.
That tattoo has got to be one of the sweetest I’ve ever seen. It is seriously rad!
Does it represent anything or did you see a piece you liked and thought you’d like something similar?
I’m sorry if it’s rude of me to ask.
I gotta say this…There was more the one option for her to try and commit suicide on. People just focus on the bathtub because it’s the most “Shocking”
It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put it in some sort of weird death fetish porn.
Also the new Lobo. It was ok I guess. Not the worst story in the universe, and he still managed to be the jerk he usually is but it was a bit too subtle for Lobo. Though there was this part in it that made me laugh a bit.
What are you talking about? The assignment is to draw a page with four panels of weird death fetish porn. There’s no option for the artist to not draw the disturbing “naked and about to die” scene.
Huh, wha’dya know. Misread it I guess.
Still you can do it in a more tasteful style.
lol, drawing a chick naked about to kill herself can be tasteful. Have you seen what DC is doing to their female characters? They don’t WANT tasteful.
Yeah, it could be tastefully done, not at all exploitative of a woman’s body or a suicidal person’s pain and terror for a cheap “edgy” gag where the punchline is that Harley is hot and crazy. If I had the skill I’d want to draw it like that. But the trouble is DC very obviously want the exploitation, in keeping with their usual anti-creative, extraordinarily shortsighted business practices.
The first 3 panels are classic Harley, but the 4th one is seriously wrong on every level, if you can’t see that, then you would fit in well with the current DC Dickitors (that’s dick+editors for those playing at home)
…dude I read the prompt before I saw the ‘tumblr outrage’, and I am a guy, and I enjoy naked women as much as the next dude, and you know what I thought when I saw that script? I thought, “Shit. Literally every woman I know would line up to beat the CRAP out of me if I did this.” And turning suicide into slapstick is just a dick move even if it’s sodding Daffy Duck.
You have a talented tattoo artist, Coelasquid. Who is he/she, if you don’t mind me asking?
Wow. So I read the details for the Harley Quinn contest, and that’s sick! Like, dolcett humor sick :-( Why would anyone do this or think it’s a good idea??
I had something else to say, but the visual here has really blocked out everything else. The other suicide panels are also horrible :-P
According to Jimmy Palmotti, the guy who ran the contest, it was intended as an absurdist dream sequence, and he didn’t think people would think that he was intending to have it in the comic.
Link to the post: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/09/jimmy-palmiotti-clarifies-controversial-harley-quinn-tryout-script/
Backpedalling doesn’t really matter after the powers that be chose to present that page, out of context, knowing their track record for this sort of thing. It’s a pretty shitty move on DC’s part to say “It’s your fault for not getting the context we consciously chose not to provide initially!” They could ask people to draw literally anything. They chose that. It was a tacky move on their part.
1. You win the contest!
2. Great tattoo!
3. I don’t block advertisements, just Flash/Silverlight/plugin-based everything.
Badass tattoo is BADASS.
& let’s wait until it’s finished :D
3 lobo pages back to back? Your spoiling me. It’s not even christmas.
Nearly Halloween, however :P
One and half man. One and a half.
Oh, and THIS LOBO IS AWESOME!!!
Seriously?
DC Comics is soliciting unpaid work for publication? Under the guise of a “new talent search?” Bah! Bad enough they’re completely culturally deaf to women’s issues, they’re also insulting artists who make a living doing this stuff.
I haven’t read DC comics for a long while, but nothing they have done since killing off Big Barda and Sue Dibny has encouraged me to start reading them again.
So when do we get to see Lobo rounding up all the original girls and ladies for a little tea party an DC HQ?
Think about it, a busload of really irate ladies of the pre 52 variety and LoBo as the driver going in to pick up his own “special person” for tea and crumpets. [grin]
These guys put it fairly succinctly:
http://hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com/
They’re also surprisingly non-biased, trying to present just the facts of each piece of stupid DC keeps putting across.
BOSS tattoo!
I’m tempted to enter this contest just to see what happens, but I really wish I knew the context for making Harley perform crazy suicides. Also I don’t draw very “comic book-y” anyway. XD
Why not have her explain a Joke to Mr. J? Thats practically suicide
Oh god, Edward Lobo.
I haven’t really paid any attention to DC since they rebooted a bunch of characters more than a decade ago…I still prefer the Silver Age comics over anything they’ve re-booted since then.
…And don’t even get me started on how the “new” Lobo has been “Twilighted.” Gah! The Twighlight version of vampires is just so wrong on so many levels anyway.
For one, vampires were originally true beasts that merely resembled a human–They looked nearly human but had the mentality of any animal. They would follow after military battles & eat the flesh & blood of the fallen soldiers. It wasn’t until writers in the Victorian Era of England that vampires became more “civilized” & “cultured.” They were “romanticized” primarily due to the sexual repression during that time frame. even so, the male vampires looked like real men & female vampires looked like real women.
From Twilight, the male vampire has been made effeminate. More like a Japanese animae version of a man than anything else. Also, this version of vampires tries to reduce or eliminate some of a vampire’s weaknesses that defined a vampire for what it is…For one thing, vampires don’t sparkle in the sunlight, they BURN!
Although I have to admit that I still enjoy the way Coelasquid is making a laughing stock out of this “reboot” in particular…
Dracula never burned in sunlight, he just couldn’t use all his powers. And anyway, Twilight is hardly the first story to make vampires dainty. Interview with the Vampire springs to mind.
There is a difference between being ‘in sunlight’ and being ‘out during the day’. Dracula was never in sunlight if he could help it because, yes, he would burn if the rays of then sun hit his flesh
Oh, and the vampires from the ‘Interview’ universe/world did burn, or did you forget that courtyard scene with the ‘kid’ (forgot the name of the kid, but the one Lestat turned before she hit puberty because he wanted a daughter) vampire and the girl? The kid disintergrated and the girl burned
As much as I dislike Twilight, vampires do not exist and can be portrayed any way creators please. Even sparkly.
The key concept of my general agreement with Your statement is “creators”.
Creators surely are free to imagine and portray characters any way they pleased.
But meyers are not.
And if they don’t burn, they should at least be meaningfully disadvantaged by it. Trying to pass off sparkling as such a disadvantage is Mary Sue talk, like trying to claim you’re so beautiful it’s a curse.
Oh, balls, that fucking contest. I’m not even that big on print comics or DC, but when I read about that…… sooooooooooo stupid.
I’m guessing Rob Liefield has already contributed?
Actually Liefield – last I heard was one of the creators that left. A year or so ago he left DC, abandoning the three series he’d been working on, complaining about editor interference. He mentioned leaving to preserve his sanity.
DC seems to be burning through every bridge they can find with rather surprising speed.
He was one of the first to mention the downward dump DC was headed, but, seeing how he is Liefield, very few took any notice
Still, if Liefield is jumping ship, you know shit is getting crazy stupid.
So what did you think of the latest Riddick movie?
I just wanted to say I am SO glad you’re in the mood to draw Lobo.
If DC still had some brains left, they’d actually hire YOU to draw new Lobo comics.
After All this time, I have yet to see Heihachi Mishima and Vergil…
All that aside great work, keep it up! you’re amazing!
I was actually going in to looking into the Harley Quinn book because I am a fan of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner.
Both are remarkably talented individuals.
That is until villains month where I read an issue where Harley Quinn murdered children… now DC is expecting me to root and read a book about a child murderer?
One word… “priorities” figure them out DC.
I’m curious, has anyone bought that comic now that it has been released? What I’ve seen online didn’t impress me much (art-wise), but the script and the new Lobo get surprisingly good reviews.
Why don’t they kick out all their Lobo assets and hire you ?
Your Lobo is the best i’ve seen in years!
He looks like a kappa to me for some reason.
OH SNAP. I’ve been reading till this point in one sitting with Ad Block Pro on. Sorry about that.
As retribution here is a image of the most random 3D model I could find.
It looks like a heartless really.
http://nuclearpixel.com/blog/view/2010-10-11_new_model_posted-_random_drop_guy/
Yeah DC and Marvel have been making some pretty… “odd” choices with their comics