Artist Puts a New Spin on Comics Super Women Wardrobe
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| Wonder Woman |
At Spartantown, we've been known to feature beautiful artwork and cosplay of female super-heroines in what could be deemed sexy or revealing attire. Yet we have attempted to be tasteful about it and we have never pretended that Power Girl's "boob-window" ever made sense or that Wonder Woman in essentially what constitutes a one-piece bathing suit was proper crime-fighting gear. These and other sometimes preposterous outfits have been canon for decades so they live on in comic books, blogs, fan art sites, and in the cosplay community. However, artist Michael Lee Lunsford has re-imagined some of the most popular heroines in fully clothed costumes.
The result is a more realistic version of costumes with some influence of their original outfits. WonderWoman now sports pants and long sleeves while retaining her chest armor. Black Canary and Zantanna ditch their fishnets for pants and Supergirl covers her mid-driff and opts for pants as well. Psylocke and Elektra add sleeves to their costumes. Vampirella is nearly unrecognizable without her skimpy bikini and Supergirl is sans said window. Lunsford doesn't claim to have an agenda and simply states he wanted to play with the character design using costumes that covered their entire body while paying homage to their original look.
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| Black Canary |
"An exercise in character design, attempting to clothe the heroines nearly all the way and not making them painted-on, while still keeping the look of their original costumes in some way. Hopefully keeping them looking as iconic as the originally were. Just showing what can be done with a costume breaking outside the barrier of the norm."
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| Power Girl |
I appreciate the creative re-imagining that Lunsford takes even if they don't always work. Zantanna's outfit looks to be a couple sizes too big and Black Canary also appears to be sporting baggy pants. Power Girl's and Supergirl's tunics seem ill-fitting and the jury is still out on Wonder Woman's khakis and whatever that is that's covering them. Vampirella's equestrian set is classy and both Psylocke and Elektra benefit from minor alterations to their costumes.
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| Elektra |
Overall, the new looks make way more sense and leave more to the imagination. We would never demand more skin to be shown of the male heroes so neither should be demanded of the female ones. Yet Catwoman still bares major cleavage and we remember the uproar that the addition of pants to Wonder Woman's costume caused. Why she would be in her traditional suit in the Arctic for example is beyond me. Even Batman has altered his look a bit over the years. It would be nice if the creators at the male-driven publishing houses would take chances and add a little, a smidge, a tiny bit of reality in their costume design from time to time. This leads to bigger conversations of the treatment of female characters altogether and the reality is it's easier to make a u-turn in a big rig on a mountain road than change views in the boy's club of comic book publishing. For now we can enjoy great fan art like Mike Lunsford's.
- spartantown
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| Psylocke |
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| Supergirl |
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| Vampirella |
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| Zantanna |
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