Thursday, May 7, 2009

Doom Patrol 14 page 11 Incarnations of ElastiGirl

This page stars Elasti Girl, or as Ava prefers to call herself, Elasti Lass. I found a few old pictures of her, which I will put in here below. Seth has made all the settings, as well as the characters, pretty realistic. It seems to me that psychology is the central attraction of Seth's piece of this story. In looking for the other pictures of these characters I find lots of old comic book covers, and bits of the old stories. In general the Doom Patrol seems to have been pretty campy, even from its inception. But here, the camp is played down, and the fight against the Brotherhood of Evil is merely a backdrop against which the characters' search for themselves is the central theme.

This page, where a giant Ava lifts the lid off the schoolhouse, looks much less silly than the idea sounds. The town where they first arrive certainly looks like France. The girls in the schoolhouse respond to the intrusion of a giant in reasonable ways, some of them screaming because a monster has appeared, some of them falling because the building is wiggling, and one holding her head against falling concrete from the lifting of the roof.

A couple of other Elasti Girls for comparison:


This early one has a headband, a hairstyle that we used to call a "flip", and those flashy purple boots with a kind of wing coming off the sides. Seth never gave his superheroes uncomfortable shoes. In Seth's issues he only shows Elasti Girl's feet a couple of times, but when he does he gives her calf length boots with flat soles and no wings. Maybe he thought, "Who can fight against evil in high heels?" Besides, in general he liked women to look themselves: no makeup, a minimum of bling. He got mad at me for wearing makeup one time. (I rarely do anyway.) It was occasionally an issue with his first wife April. We all have our quirks.
Here's another one in those same shoes, showing her undies to all the people in the street below her while she rather awkwardly holds back that airplane. This artist and the one above both make the buildings pretty much cardboard backdrops for the action.

1 comment:

j_ay said...

I'm with Seth; much, much prefer *natural* beauty.
But I can understand (but not relate) to the desire to 'doll up' from time to time.