NYCC: Simone, Scott revamp Red Sonja, Vampirella & Dejah Thoris for Dynamite

NYCC: Simone, Scott revamp Red Sonja, Vampirella & Dejah Thoris for Dynamite:

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

I feel that the most critical step to really re-inventing those characters would be to get them away from Dynamite Entertainment. 

I enjoy Gail Simone’s re-invention of Red Sonja and understand there’s a balancing act with the branding and appearance.  But an ongoing thing with Dynamite Entertainment is that they stockpile old characters to use them in spinoffs, mash-ups, etc.

So far, at Dynamite, we’ve had:

Steampunk Red Sonja in a skimpy scalemail bikini

Red Sonja being stripped against her will covers
Steampunk Red Sonja now with covers by sexy pinup artists
The Black Tower - which is actually worse than it looks
Swords of Sorrow - where every female lead was in bikini armor

I mean - these are the most recent spinoffs (one working with Dark Horse):

Furthermore, while these designs might be bold for Dynamite, they’re not really that bold when you step back and look.

Red Sonja is basically back to a sexier version of the outfit she in her very first appearance, Vampirella appeared in a space suit in March (and I remember seeing concept ideas to re-invent her wearing full body gear in the 90s) - and okay, the movie bombed but nobody thinks it’s because of what Lynn Carter wore as Dejah Thoris.

What would really be bold - is actually re-inventing these characters without anchoring them to bad branding and design decision made in 70s (or earlier). Red Sonja has changed far more than her costume has, and not updating her appearance to reflect that hampers the comic.

At the end of the day - the reason these properties got sold to Dynamite Entertainment and the reason this is the second time Red Sonja’s been re-invented since then is because the old branding isn’t speaking to audiences today.

- wincenworks

I appreciate your message and agree with some of it (there are some factual errors, Dynamite wasn’t ‘sold’ Dejah or Sonja, they are licensed).

And it’s patently not even remotely correct that ‘every female lead wears bikini armor’ in Swords of Sorrow. That’s just weird and wrong on many levels.  Most of the characters are in fact fully dressed–Kato, Irene Adler, Miss Fury, Black Sparrow, Jane Porter, Lady Zorro, on and on, and few of the ones remaining wear ‘armor’ at all, although I take the message I think you intend, that they are wearing something revealing. 

However.

How much sense does it make to complain about the leads wearing bikini armor when the series is set up to  replace the bikini armor? I can’t quite follow that logic. 

Sonja’s new outfit is deliberately evocative of her first outfit in comics (pre-bikini). That’s intentional. The design isn’t particularly sexed-up.  I do agree some recent Red Sonja stories have not matched the newer version of the character. Ours outsold those by a considerable margin, hopefully that message will get through. I do believe Dynamite is making a huge change and they do need it. When I first saw their titles, I just assumed it was a company specializing in cheesecake. Which is fine, but nothing I’d be interested in writing.

But they also are hiring more female writers and artists than some of the big companies and they are doing it with a fraction of the output. They did the first major all female-character company crossover. They did TWO all-female-writers events. They put all female artists on the Sonja covers. The new Sonja book is a female writer and a female artist (and the writer is just RIDICULOUSLY talented). 

So while I agree that some of the IP comes from another era, I think it’s weird to say Dynamite is some kind of toxic sludge pit, when they were WAY more open to actual change than most of the decision makers at other companies. There are growing pains, and there’s still some stuff that makes me shake my head, but I see that at almost every publisher (dangit).  A lot of change at the big two is very grudgingly granted and came at tremendous cost…Dynamite actually went out and recruited good people to help them modernize. 

And finally, how do you know we aren’t changing the branding? Vampirella in particular has a completely different look, and is being written by indie sensation Kate Leth, all three of the Monster Makeover titles have completely new directions (that I came up with and their writers will embellish). 

Our whole goal was to update these characters into this century while keeping what made them kickass in the first place. I’m excited to see what these creative teams come up with!