A Shadowy Flight

[dreamer_easy]

At random, re-read the earliest appearances of Phoenix c/- Classic X-Men. At first put off by the chunky, thickly-inked art, but was completely drawn in by Claremont's writing. Phoenix was a crucial discovery in my life (Phoenix II, really) - a woman defined by her power and her connection to the cosmos, rather than by her relationship with a man. My first image of the Goddess. What a shame she was killed off rather than working out how to incorporate her dark side. Inanna managed it.

One annoyance, though, and a perpetual problem with comics which will probably prevent my return to them: Cyclops is built like a football player, Colossus is built like a tank, Wolverine is short and stocky, Nightcrawler is slender, Phoenix is statuesque with big breasts, Polaris is statuesque with big breasts, Lilandra is statuesque with big breasts, etc etc.

WTF is this pr0n manga Phoenix I keep seeing covers for on Ebay?!

In other nostalgia news, bought The Best of Knight Rider and watched Knightmares, the amnesia episode. I was surprised by how competent and enjoyable it was, if dated - they'd thought through their story quite well, the jokes worked, and Hasslehoff's performance is quite adequate. Also on the DVD is the first KARR story and the one with Ann Turkel and the music that saps your strength. Yay!

Comments

[gregmce.livejournal.com]

Byrne drew Kitty's introduction issues (#129-131) and her first few as a regular castmember (#138-143) but then left the book. So she didn't have as much an influence from Byrne as some of the other characters did.

(Why the hell can I still remember that sort of thing? *sigh*)

[michaellee.livejournal.com]

Er, that seems a bit strange -- he drew Kitty's first appearance -- but had less influence on her appearance than characters he didn't create? (Pretty much all of the rest of the X-Men mentioned?)

I think later artists were far worse as far as such things go.

[gregmce.livejournal.com]

It sounds strange but I think the difference is that Byrne drew almost 40 issues of the other X-Men characters, and most artists since him seemed to be looking back on Byrne's character designs for them.

With Kitty, she'd only just been created and there wasn't as much of a backlog of material that he'd drawn her in, especially since her only "costume" at that point was the yellow-and-black training outfit. So when future artists worked on the book, they only had a tiny bit of Kitty material to look at. The other artists's interpretations of the character became just as much an influence.