Dynamite Comics Redesigns Characters for “Functional Combat Readiness”

_{(Disclosure: This is orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Toal Fact and as an opin­ion piece, and does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views Supernerdland or its staff. You may tweet him here!)}

Bad-ass Babes Beclothed

Dynamite Entertainment owns three of the most bad ass — and sex­i­est — hero­ines in comics: Vampirella, Red Sonja, and Dejah Thoris. I’ll even pay them what I con­sid­er to be the high­est of com­pli­ments. These war­rior women are clas­sic fight­in’ fe­males in the Heavy Metal cover-girl tradition.

Recently Dynamite Entertainment an­nounced that all three char­ac­ters will sport new looks come January. Let us cut to the chase. Vampirella’s im­prob­a­ble deep‑V swim­suit — gone. Red Sonja’s chain­mail biki­ni — gone. Dejah Thoris’ skimpy chains-n-pasties out­fit — gone. All Gone.

That’s half the rea­son why peo­ple both­er with these char­ac­ters. I’ll be real about it; do you see many women give a shit about these char­ac­ters? And of the ones who are in­ter­est­ed in them, do you as­sume all of these oth­er women don’t also en­joy sexy women as well? In Dejah Thoris’ case, her ap­pear­ance is plot rel­e­vant. Pretty much every­one on Mars is scant­i­ly clad. Mars is hot as hell; can you blame them? All these looks are icon­ic, and these cos­tumes seem to be chang­ing just to pan­der to po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness fa­nat­ics who don’t even read these books.

This is my main gripe with these so­cial jus­tice ad­her­ents. They are push­ing for more mod­est cloth­ing un­der the ex­cuse of be­ing “re­al­is­tic.” But this kind of fic­tion isn’t re­al­is­tic in the first place, but we all know this is just an ex­cuse to push an agen­da in the name of “in­clu­sive­ness.” Some want to turn every­thing beau­ti­ful into a mediocre stag­nant mess; to make them­selves or the fel­low ad­her­ents of this ide­ol­o­gy more com­fort­able. When they mean to make things more wel­come to women, they mean more wel­com­ing to their kind of women; no one else. Never mind that women can find scant­i­ly clad fe­male char­ac­ters just as ap­peal­ing. No, ap­par­ent­ly it’s just ap­peal­ing to straight while males liv­ing in basements.

Artist Nicola Scott said in the press re­lease, “[She] de­signed the new look for these icon­ic char­ac­ters, blend­ing clas­sic cos­tume el­e­ments with the func­tion­al, action-ready de­signs that mod­ern and di­verse au­di­ences long to see. ‘It’s an hon­or to reimag­ine these amaz­ing, icon­ic women and be part of their on­go­ing lega­cy,’ Scott says.”

Yes ap­ing Claire Redfields de­sign is orig­i­nal, amirite?

Heavymetal.com said, “Among fans, there is al­ways re­sis­tance to change — but the re­designs of these cos­tumes seem to sig­nal a shift away from the hero­ines’ pin­up lega­cy. This, we are pret­ty sure, will not go over well with quite a few people.”

Well lad. It’s quite more than a few people.

It’s not Throwback Thursday but dagnab­bit why­for you change #Vampirella ?! pic.twitter.com/MlXzzT0SaP

— CthulhuMango (@squidmango) October 6, 2015

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3npjl0/opinion_dynamite_entertainment_and_the_sjws_has/cvqapxb

http://8ch.net/swc/res/942.html#1541

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• Dynamite Comics Redesigns Characters for “Functional Combat Readiness” — October 12, 2015