Shadowland - Daughters of the Shadow #1

[history79]

Comments

[nightauditguy]

Is that a mole or a piercing on Colleen's face?

[glprime]

Usually it's a mole.

[lieut_kettch]

Mooooooooole.

[erikred]

So hard to tell:
-- is this the sort of thing that inspired Sucker Punch?
-- is this somehow inspired by Sucker Punch?
-- did the author/artist miss the point of Sucker Punch?
-- did Zack Snyder miss the point of this?
-- are we trapped in a spiral of 'sploitation and irony where the one becomes the other over and over again and we don't learn or advance at all?

[mrstatham]

I don't really see what it has to do with Sucker Punch beyond one girl in a skirt and the plot point of exploited women. Otherwise, they're entirely different.

[erikred]

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but what I see here in the last panel is a quartet of female fighters dressed in outfits that, in 3 out of 4 instances, highlight their boobs, or, in the other, imply a Brtiney Spears school-girl outfit. The rationale will go something along the lines of "we were looking for empowered but sexy," while the end result will be sexualized female fighters in melee combat-- and that brings us back to Sucker Punch, which, whether it worked as a critique or got lost in its own omphaloskepsis, boiled down to the same.

But again, maybe I'm being overly sensitive.

[mrstatham]

I can see what you're getting at, but I don't think this is aiming for the same sort of irony that Sucker Punch tried to, but ended up screaming right past it and becoming a terrible, terrible example of the thing it was trying to lampshade.

This is just standard fanservice dressed up with some rather on-the-nose Japanese stereotypes - the schoolgirl, the mech-wearing girl, the ninja girl, the kabuki-looking one, etc. Sucker Punch, on the other hand, would have us believe that that misguidedly showing Emily Browning prancing around in a short skirt equalled a rhetoric for reclaiming sexuality and a good commentary on feminism, when all but one of the characters died in pointless and gratuitous ways.

[erikred]

Fair enough! It's sometimes hard for me to spot the difference between fanservice and gratuitous 'sploitation these days.

[icon_uk]

It was the rather obvious cultural cliche's that made me raise an eyebrow I must admit....

[punisher007]

Sucker punch is hardly the first time that we've gotten "sexily impractical" costumes for female melee characters, and they're supposed to be "empowering." Comics have been doing it for decades. See Psylocke's "classic" Jim Lee thong-kini, or Elektra's costume, or Black Canary's fishnets, or Wonder Woman's one-piece swimsuit, and so on.

These predate Sucker Punch by a LOT.

[icon_uk]

I wasn't commenting on Sucker Punch, which I've never seen, I was commenting on the costumes seen in the scans above.

[lilacsigil]

I don't think you're being overly sensitive, though it's far from the worst example. But how the hell does that kimono even stay on? They don't work like that! And they'd be terrible to fight in, even without the off-the-shoulder boob-showing idiocy.

[punisher007]

And how does she avoid tripping over it (given how long it is) or getting caught on the sleeves (given how big they are)? The "school girl" outfit looks like it'd be impractical for a fight as well. The one in the middle (with the fan) probably has the best out of the bunch, but even that's got "issues."

[lilacsigil]

Well, the schoolgirl outfit is silly, but at least she'd be able to move in it. Still, I'm not sure why she's wearing my old (field) hockey shinguards while showing all that skin...

[erikred]

Right, the skirt would work better if it where, say, a Greek battle skirt or a kilt, and, yeah, shinguards (aka greaves) and armguards (aka bracers) would work well.

[erikred]

Right! This is where the whole thing just gets ack.

[tigerkaya]

meh.

[beyondthefringe]

Even Groot is more articulate.

Unless "meh" can be interpreted through the delicate dance of electrons as they flow between the wires and ethers, and what you really meant was "I have no strong feelings about this, but Colleen Wing is a cool character and I appreciate it when people post to this community."

Or "I'm hungry." :)

[tigerkaya]

If your trying to get a annoy me, meh. But if you need an explanation, comics I don't care for I give it a "meh" it's neutral and doesn't cause pointless arguments. Comics I like I'll give a more detailed response.

[silverhammerman]

This is a discussion board, we come here to discuss things, and "meh." does not constitute discussion. It's at best a non-statement that contributes nothing, and at worst, it's kind of disrespectful to a person who's posted something that they care about. If you don't care for something either articulate why, so as to contribute to the discussion, or just don't comment.

[tigerkaya]

If you say so.

[silverhammerman]

I don't suppose it's likely to come up again, so I'll just say it here: Despite the fact that the post-Shadowland Waid/Samnee/Rivera.etc relaunch is what got me into comics and I wouldn't want to give it up, I've always found the evil Daredevil concept interesting. Had it been played straight the whole thing could have made sense as a possible endpoint for the character as he's been painted from Miller on down.

[punisher007]

Spider-Gwen is doing the "evil Matt Murdock" thing pretty darn well imo. In fact, that book made me realize just how freaking terrifying an evil Matt would really be.