The Many Looks of Black Alice (or, most of them, anyway)

[kamino_neko]

In response to a request made in the comments to this post... Mostly random panels, but a couple full pages, because they're too awesome to cut to a panel.

For those that don't know - Black Alice, real name Lori Zechlin, is a character created by Gail Simone in Birds of Prey. She's a teenage girl with the power to steal magically-based abilities (including spellcasting) from those that have them for a short length of time.

But that's not the real interesting thing about her powers - the most interesting thing is that when she does that - her appearance changes. Well, her clothes, anyway - she keeps the same face, body, and hair, but what she's wearing changes into her power-donor's costume...as filtered through Lori's own style, and occasionally incorporating what she's already wearing.

I'll be presenting these in more or less alphabetical order, just because that's how I named the files. >_>

Without further ado, the costumes:

For reference, this is what she typically looks like when not channelling someone's power:



Not only alphabetically first, but also the most boring. From Sean McKeever's second arc on Birds of Prey, Alice steals the powers of a magician working for the Silicon Syndicate, a fellow named Arthur.



Not very interesting, and pretty much exactly what Arthur wears (save for Lori's jewelry...and her skirt, not shown in this image) - it doesn't even change colour! - but I really like that she's got the dude's bigass glasses. They're actually kind of cute on her.

Next, from her first appearance, channelling Dr Fate:



Now, that's more like it. The half-helmet is my favourite touch. It's very spikey, to be sure, but, eh, I think it works.

Oh! And Alice can swipe powers from more than one person!

From her last appearance under Gail's pen until her Secret Six guest shot...Felix Faust, and Cheetah.



This one is kind of interesting, although I actually cut off the interesting bit to make sure Lori could be seen properly without making the image too big - when she takes their powers, Cheetah remains in her furry form, suggesting she's still got her powers...but Lori explicitly takes the powers away from whoever she's channelling. I don't know if this was a mistake, if Cheetah maintains that look even without her powers, or if Lori's powers have changed since Day of Vengeance... Oh, well... Onward and upward...very upward.

Upward to...Giganta (who I actually hadn't realized has magically based powers).



Kind of disappointing, but at least it has more Black Alice in it than the Arthur-swiped look. And she's still a giant woman, so that's autoawesome.


And...now we return to her first appearance, and the most familiar outfit...channelling the power of Shazam:



There's some debate of exactly who she's channelling here - apparently Wikipedia claims Black Adam, but, IMO, the evidence leans to channelling directly from Shazam, and the costume being based on Billy or Freddy.

Later on, back in McKeever's BoP, she has a fight with Misfit (another awesome, and visually neat, Simone creation), and swipes her powers...which neither Misfit nor Oracle had known were magical until this point.



Yeah, not much different from Misfit's usual look, really - just lost the leggings and changed the colours a bit - but unlike the Arthur or Giganta costumes, I'm actually amused by that - with the shirt that doesn't really cover her belly, and the frayed skirt, it's not entirely unlike what Lori'd wear anyway.

And another Misfit pic:



Note the addition of the fishnet gloves - she'd been wearing those when she swiped the powers this time.

And here she is channelling Nightshade just before the Arthur and Misfit swipes:



It's too bad, really, that this costume is only seen when it's washed out with the green glow from Oracle's screens. Alice and Nightshade have the same general colour scheme, so I think this would really work well in its natural colours.

And we're coming into the home stretch with...the Spectre in Day of Vengeance:



She's swiping his powers so he can't use them, more than so she can...which works, though it kind of backfires by making him untouchable, as he lacks a host at this point, so without his powers, he's pretty much nothing. Oops.

And back to Simone's BoP, Wonder Woman:



From the powers she uses - specifically the lasso of truth - she's obviously channelling Diana, but I doubt I'm alone in thinking the costume seems to be based more on Cassie's...except for the tiara which really is a clear reference to Diana's outfit.

And the last of the random panels...Lori channelling Zatanna, in her first appearance:



That's Black Canary narrating in the caption boxes...seeing that she's about to get pwn'd.

And Lori flying later on, still with Zatanna's powers, mostly because it shows the fishnets and boots better than the above:



I'm not sure what happened to the gloves in between...

And now to the full pages, starting with a page from Helmet of Fate, where she channels Raven...



I'm actually marginally surprised it changed anything, since Ra and Lori both have the gothic thing going on, and so little was changed in Giganta's. But there's the frayed edges.

Now don't get the wrong idea...Lori's not always very nice... back in BoP, while being taunted by a cheerleader, she drifts off into a daydream...



And, one final page (well, 2-page spread) from Helmet of Fate, giving a different idea of a Lori-ized Fate look, this one if she actually took the helmet...



... The helmet doesn't want her as a host, and has an interesting defence mechanism. I'm amused that she's still got the same look in the 'absence of identity' teases.

Edit - added one more half page, from Villains United.




The original Black Lantern!

Not her best look, and I don't think Eaglesham was really trying when he designed it.

So, yeah. I love Lori's powers just for the visual possibilities - well, and the rest, too, but the visuals are just truly awesome.

From various issues of Birds of Prey, one of Day of Vengeance, and Helmet of Fate: Black Alice. Most from any issue is 3 and a bit pages from Helmet of Fate.

Comments

[majingojira]

IIRC, the "Steal" aspect did not appear until post-gail BOP and "Reign in Hell"

And Given Lori's treatment in both, I'm inclinded to ignore it when I can.

[kamino_neko]

It was first made explicit in Day of Vengeance - her second appearance - but it's not contradicted by anything in BoP 76, or any other appearance save for the fact that Cheetah still has her cheetah form in BoP 97 (although in the next few pages Faust says that she stole their powers, and Cheetah's human, so that seems to be a momentary art-glitch). She also explicitly calls her powers 'stealing' in this week's Secret Six.