Webcomic: Heroine Chic

[his_spiffynesss]

David Tischman and Audrey Mok have recently started a fun little webcomic called Heroine Chic about fashion design in a world of superheroes.




The first chapter is your typical "Girl in the Big City" setup with our main character Zoe, complete with her getting mugged. Only her



Though later the encounter leads into some fashion dissection.




Then we meet her boss, the demanding and temperamental Dyna Cuff.



Not quite No Capes, but close enough.

Comments

[drexer]

Recently spent some days binging on Girls of the Wilds on the Webtoons site, and somehow this passed me by.

It seems interesting but I'm getting really annoyed by the use of xxx for any and all swearwords, which only make them stand out more and make it more obvious how much they are being overused. That and the last chapter... well, I'l give it a little hope and wait and see what it turns into.

[alicemacher]

I agree on the swearwords bit. Now in general I think swearing in written works should be used sparingly unless it's appropriate to the characters and their situation. (I.e., if your work is about thugs pulling a heist, or a SWAT team closing in on a campus shooter, then have them swear away; if it's about a pope discussing with a trusted cardinal whether he should abdicate, then maybe hold back on the cussing.)

But when characters do swear, then unless the work is for kids or a devoutly religious readership, by all means writers and their editors should have them say "fucking shit," not "f***ing s***"; they're not fooling anyone with the latter option.

[his_spiffynesss]

I always prefer symbols instead of words when they are trying to hide swearing. Nextwave being the best example of it recently.

[icon_uk]

As well as the commonly used hash, dollar and percent sings, according to cartoonist Mort Walker, the various characers using in symbolic swearing are known as;

Nittles - Star shapes
Jarns - The little spiral shapes
Quimps - Planet like shapes
Grawlixes - LIttle scribbles

Asterix is the definitive version of that for me. They even adapt the technique when people swear in foreign languages like Egyptian they use hieroglphic like characters, or in the case of the Goths...

[leoboiko]

> if it's about a pope discussing with a trusted cardinal whether he should abdicate, then maybe hold back on the cussing.

The name "Garth Ennis" just popped in my mind for some reason…

[leoboiko]

not "f***ing s***

I agree, with one exception.

[minervasolo]

I keep trying to mentally pronounce them. Axxhole isn't so bad, but sxxx isn't the word it's meant to be, and fxxxing sounds like bad static.

[minervasolo]

And (vague spoilers) if you're going to reveal a character's gender, using cxxx to describe the person's genitals isn't helpful.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, cxxx for girls, or cxxx for boys, though I think the latter is used as an expletive more in the UK than the US.

[quatoria]

Um. And some of us girls have the same cxxx you're implying belongs to boys, there. :/

[icon_uk]

Thank you for the catch. You are of course, entirely correct, and my apologies to all for implying otherwise.

[quatoria]

Apology happily accepted, Icon. <3 Thank you.

[owlbrigade1]

Except on really cartoonish works, like Asterix, I always think that it is better to either swear honestly or not swear at all. Symbol swearing, blanking out letters with a dash, substituting gibberish, or X's, all just really irk me. If you need a swear word, write a swear word and stand by it, if you don't feel comfortable writing a real swearword then just don't try and pretend there is one. Mostly you can lose the swear without affecting the impact if you rewrite carefully.

[alicemacher]

And even when you are writing or editing for an audience where profanity would be inappropriate, there are subtler, less distracting ways than asterisks, x's or censor bars to imply that a character has just said a naughty word. Granted, that's easier to do in prose ("Wanda swore as she saw her wand run out of magical energy") than in comics, but there are ways, such as having another character cut the swearing character off when juuust enough of the swear has popped out.

[icon_uk]

Cursing issues to one side, this looks fun.

On the other hand, there's nothing that dates so quickly as fashion. Heroes and villains don't tend to dress fashionably, they make statements, so not quite sure I'm entirely down with the intent.

(I am also so sick of the "No capes" bit. I disagreed with Edna Mode then, I still do now. We KNOW they're impractical, but they look cool and in a world where clothing is style over substance, why not?)

[beyondthefringe]

Capes just need the same sort of safety catches we put on pet collars, that's all...

[owlbrigade1]

If I never hear the "no capes" quoteagain from another snobby ass who is putting down traditional superheroes... Honestly, the frequency that those two words are brandished around has genuinely made me come to loathe the movie. It is a crying shame, and I know that two words -used by people who are not really buying into the movie's spirit and are just being mean- ought not to make me feel bad about the rest of it, but it does. It is off-putting.

Personally I love capes, and I wish they would come back into real life mainstream fashion. Hey, any fashion designers reading? Feel free to include a full line up of cloaks and capes in your new year's line up, 'k.

[bradygirl_12]

I have never agreed with Edna Mode on capes! They are dramatic and fun and graceful. Only snobby fashion designers would say something like that.

I know Dick seems not to prefer capes, and we get to see his assets without one, but he rocked a cape so much as Robin! :)

Of course, someone like Batman needs a cape to get the full effect!

[q99]

Capes can work. They don't *always* work, but there's a place for them!

[q99]

Ok, read this, and got to chapter three, aaaaand we're in problem territory.

C'mon, you find out something confidential so you immediately *tell your friend*? In public? Plus the handling of pronouns....

[beyondthefringe]

Yeah, I'm really not comfortable with how that was handled.
I -love- the idea of the character in question, but I hate how the protagonist reacted and what she did next. Because if this isn't something that's widely-known and she just blurted out a secret in public to a friend, it could prove ruinous...

[q99]

Even if it doesn't get out, we're on comic *three* and she's breaking confidentiality in an incredibly serious way on a client's very personal information. And, just the pronoun usage....

I am now very cautious of this comic.