In the new Wonder Woman series, the creators have made a most interesting change to their version of the Greek Pantheon. All of the Gods have gotten redesigns. Hades is now a young boy with wax candles melting over his face, and Posiden is now a giant sea monster. But the redesign that really got my attention was Hera. Instead of the classical togas and fine jewels befitting a Queen, we have her naked except for her Peacock feather cloak.  

Though honestly, it is kind of odd for Hera to go nude. Classical images of Hera always pictured her in finery of a high noblewoman, befitting the Queen of the Gods. The only reference to her ever being nude was in the story of the Judgement of Paris, when she, Aphrodite, and Athena all stripped to get oggled by the Trojan prince. So she's not exactly know for running about in her birthday suit,  and earlier in the series she was in fact shown dressed up in clothing more typical for the character. 

Still, i can't fathom any particular reason for Hera's nudity in the series (though I'm guessing some editorial madates)  Though I must admit I'm not complaining :)

Life's been pretty busy for me this week. Between starting up the Jackson Hewitt tax prep course, and getting the final preparations for Fencon done (I run the video room) I've just not had any time for the comic this last week. With the addition of this course  I'm taking, my free time may be in short supply in the near future.

After I did the big splash pages featuring Kaza and Gwenna with the other heroes of this world, I got to thinking about some of the other heroines (and villainesses) who got their kit off while fighting the fight.

Obviously, they exist as attention getters. In a team of what might  be a rather generic looking bunch you have one character that does stand out and draws the readers eyes, especially since they are almost always female (the only exception I can think of is Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen). There's also a greater tendency for a team of villains to have a nudist with them than heroes.  I guess the idea that only a villain would be decadent enough to flagarantly go against modern society's taboos on nudity. There also seems to be a tendency for the nudist to have no discernable powers, only two of the four characters I list here have any special abilities.

Here's all the examples I could find of the Nudist on the Super Team:

GODIVA (The Axis of Evil)

Superman/Batman #20 (DC Comics)

This is supposed to be the DC analogue of Marvel's Avengers. The Axis of Evil being a stand-in for the Masters of Evil. Godiva is the equivalent of the Enchantress, and has the magical power to bend people to her will.  It could be that being skyclad helps empower her magic.  This was her one and only appearance, and it's highly doubtful anything of this particular world will ever come up again.

MOTHER EVE (Hayes' gang of villains)

Incorruptible #18 - 21 (BOOM! Studios)

In the aftermath of a global disaster created by this universe's version of Superman, a bunch of villains are gathered by a billionaire named Hayes to wrest control of one of the last surviving cities. Mother Eve is one of them, though it's uncertain exactly what her powers are. She does have a snake that stays coiled around her body, but she doesn't seem to exhibit any powers that would make her a real threat.  We arne't likely to see much more of her, since in issue #21 Safeword (the woman at the other end of the picture) used her powers to kill her.

DRAMA QUEEN (The Queens)

Bomb Queen II: Queen of Hearts #2 (Image Comics)

Drama Queen does have the best excuse for her nudity, she grows to giant proportions and she looses her clothes in the process. She and her other partners in the Queens ended up betraying their fellow memeber Bomb Queen to the government. In retaliation Bomb Queen killed them, and Drama Queen died when she fell into an electricity transformer.

BIRTHDAY GIRL(Heroes of Britain)

Knight and Squire #6 (DC Comcis)

Birthday Girl is one of  my personal favorites and one of the few heroes I've found. Her powers seem to be controlling balloons, she always has a few floating around her for strategic placement.  The Joker had come to England and was killing off a bunch of heroes, and participated in the big con-fab to figure out how to stop him.

Just to let you know, I've found some time to work on the comic and I have two pages in the works at the moment. The first one has been scanned and is getting colored, and the pencils for the second one are done and the next step is inking.The second pages is lots of fun since I drew it as a horizontal splash page. I should  at least have the first one finished and queued up for next Wednesday.

The other day I sat down and wrote an outline of  the remaining plot points i needed to cover to finish my current story in Kaza's Mate Gwenna. I lined it out as a series of numbered bullet points, and all together there are fourteen more story elements I need to get through to finish it. This doesn't necessarily mean 14 more pages, in fact I expect it will mean more pages, especially the fight scenes that will be coming up. 

Mostly this was the first time I really tried any kind of outlinign for a story. Most of the time I tend create pages on the fly, with no real plan. Too often this means a good start, but I taper off and loose interest before I really get anything finished. That was the story with a lot of my previous projects, and I really need to get out of that habit and develop a more disciplined method of writing.

Also, once I do finsih this story, I'll probably be taking a break from this comic for a while. I have another comic idea brewing that I may start on, I have a few plot points written out for it as well. I don't want to talk about it, but I will say it should be quite a departure from my work so far.