Pin-Up Girls: Zenescope Comics
From the beginning, I thought that some of the covers were styled after pin-ups. I still think that, but I also think that they are amazing.
A lot of my favorite covers are done by artist Al Rio. I have one that Anna Williams as a catcher that I adore. Isn’t the flaming baseball cool?
What I know of Al Rio is that he lives in Brazil and he’s been drawing for over 30 years. He’s worked for Marvel, DC Comics, Dark Horse, Image, DC Vertigo, Chaos Comics, Avatar Comics, Wildstorm, Zenescope, Amazing Comics, Trinity Comics, Harris Comics, Crossgen, and several others. I have to admit that I haven’t even heard of most of these.
When I went to Wizard’s World Philly (WWPhilly) in June, one of the talks that I went to mentioned covers. All I remember is that it was a Zenescope talk and it was either Joe Brusha or Ralph Tedesco who said it, and the basic gist of what they said is that often they will just contact the artists with a general idea of the comic and the characters and the artst sends back the cover. If someone else was there and is reading this, I apologize if that is completely wrong, but that’s what I’m remembering.
I get teased a bit about some of the covers in my collection. Most of my favorites are a bit risque. One of the artists, David Nakayama, says “Zenescope Entertainment has a reputation for publishing some of the sexiest pinup covers in comics.”
And in an interview, the VP of Zenescope Ralph Tedesco comments “The ‘Borderline porn’ thing has been thrown at us before which makes me laugh only because in reality, if you’re willing to look at it objectively, most of our images really are no worse than what you’d see on a cover of say a magazine like GQ or even a women’s magazine like Cosmopolitan… In all honestly, I think those who go say that simply have an agenda or just want to brand us a certain way for whatever reason and are literally judging a book by its cover. But when they pick one of our issues up and actually read it, those same critics usually realize that these stories aren’t what they thought and very rarely if at all have anything to do with sex.” And I’ll admit, the covers are part of the reason that I decided to read Wonderland, Grimm Fairy Tales, and Salem’s Daughter.
I also understand that there are plenty of people out there who would say the covers are objectifying women and they are unrealistic. I used to be one of them, many years ago. However, they are no more unrealistic than Barbie. And the characters are just as fictional.
And yes, the covers are part of the marketing of the comics; it is a risk having the pin-up like covers. I’ve heard people say that they didn’t read the comics because of the covers at first. However, it was mainly women who were lingering around the Zenescope booth (I was one of them).
Also, even if the covers are provacative, the plots aren’t, particularly in Grimm Fairy Tales. “Little Red Riding Hood” is used to teach a girl that she shouldn’t submit to the pressures of the ‘wolves’ and have sex before she’s ready.
Personally, I have chosen to admire these works of art. The various artists, Al Rio, Billy Tucci, Randy Queen, David Nakayama, Eric Basaldua, J. Scott Campbell, have amazing talent and do amazing work on all the covers, be it for Zenescope’s comics or Marvel, DC Comics and Dark Horse.
And I’ll be looking forward to the next cover.
Sources:
Victoria. (2009 May 7). Exclusive: Talking all things Zenescope with Ralph Tedesco. Retrieved from http://comicnews.info.
Maltos, T. (2009). Al Rio Art. Retrieved from http://alrioart.com/index.php.
New Spin on Old Tales
Who remembers Grimm’s Fairy Tales? And I don’t mean the versions that Disney created, but the originals written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Brothers were not looking to amuse children, but to collect folklore and fairy tales. They were trying to preserve Germany’s oral tales and collected 209 tales during the course of their work. And these tales were grusome. In the original Cinderella, the Stepsisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the gold slippers (yes, that says gold, not glass). The wicked queen in Snow White was forced to wear red hot, iron shoes and danced until she died.
Not just the Brothers Grimm, but other story-tellers as well. Hans Christian Anderson’s (“The Little Mermaid,” “The Snow Queen,” “The Ugly Duckling”) didn’t have happy endings either. The Little Mermaid dies at the end; she doesn’t marry the prince.
These were not meant for children.
Now, my second favorite book in the world is Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee. These are dark, twisted fairy tales; Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother is a werewolf- not what anyone would expect. I love these tales, what I call messed-up fairy tales.
So, something about the fairy tales calls to me.
Enter: Fables and Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales.
Fables (DC Vertigo) is about the various fairy tale characters who have been chased out of their Homelands by the Adversary and now reside in Fabletown, which is somewhere in New York. We see Snow White (Deputy Mayor), Bigby (Big Bad Wolf , Sheriff), Beauty and Beast, Goldilocks, Prince Charming (has married and divorced Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella) and a whole crew of other, very familiar characters. My favorite part of this series is 1001 Nights of Snowfall, which is a spin on 1001 Abraian Nights, but I haven’t read past the fifth trade paperback, The Mean Seasons, so I don’t know how far this series has gotten or where the plot has gone. I have to catch up, eventually.
Grimm Fairy Tales is darker than Fables, mirroring the original Brothers Grimm stories more than any re-telling out there. These are dark tales; and often the fairy tale has a modern day parallel. Issues #13-14 tell the story of Beauty and the Beast, about a girl in an abusive relationship. This series follows Dr. Sela Mathers as she uses fairy tales to teach people lessons about life.
Sela
This series I have been following and I have up to Issue #36: The Ugly Duckling, Part 2. While some of the issues can be read as stand-alones, they are all tied to together by the underlying battle between Sela and Belinda, who keeps showing up in some of Zenescope’s other comic series.
Comics are not just about Superheroes saving the world.
Sources:
Fairy Tales Collection. (2002). Hans Christian Anderson. Retrieved from http://www.fairytalescollection.com.
Carnegie Mellon. (2009). Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Retrieved from http://www.cs.cmu.edu.
O’Neill, Thomas. (1999). Guardians of the Fairy Tale: The Brothers Grimm. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://www.nationalgeographic.com.
Comics, Characters, Covers, and Everything in Between
I started collecting comics in January 2009 and was hooked. In a matter of four months, I caught up on the one series I originally found, bought all the available Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight trade paperbacks and found two other series to read. Luckily, just after I started collecting, a comic book store opened up ten minut
es away from my home. I was all set.
I also went to the Wizard’s World Philly Convention in June, where I learned a bit about the process behind writing a comic and publishing a comic. That was an experience.
I’m a certified, obsessive fangirl, pretending to be a normal 21-year old college student (What is normal anyway?).
I became a fangirl thanks to Zenescope’s Return to Wonderland series, which has continued into Beyond Wonderland and Escape from Wonderland. I have branched out into Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Salem’s Daughter. All have female main characters that range from good to neutral to villainess.
While I wait for the latest comic to come out, I have branched out into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Witchblade, although I don’t know a great deal about the Marvel and DC Comics universes.
I have fallen in love with comics.
So I am setting out to learn more about them. Going back to the Golden Age and learning about their origins, how they have changed through the various Ages and how they are still popular today. Also about grading comics and how to store and preserve them. And a brief (I promise, it’ll be brief) commentary on comic book covers.
This is going to be so much fun.
