SERRA’S clothes
Anyone who has seen the first couple of issues of TELLOS– and in particular, the DYNAMIC FORCES variant cover to the first issue– knows that the SERRA character is showing a TON of…. cleavage. In fact, she’s wearing a top that is totally unbuttoned (or unclasped) and tied at the waist. She’s barely covering herself with that look in those first couple of issues. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time– but what I was probably trying to do was to appeal to the part of the market that loves their comic book women wearing as little as possible. It was more than likely an attempt to give SERRA that ‘bad girl’ scantily-clad look that so many adolescent (and full adult, it seems) male readers like. Pandering, is what it was– pure and simple. But something happened that made me change SERRA’S ‘look’ as soon as I was able. Todd and I attended a show (I can’t remember which one it is after all this time) after the first issue or two had shipped. The book was coming out bi-monthly, and so I was just starting issue 3 when we went to that first show after TELLOS started coming out. Instead of the expected wave of young men drooling over SERRA’S frontage (although there were many of THEM), I was seeing lots of parents bringing their daughters and/or sons up to our table to tell Todd and me how much they AND their children loved TELLOS. Over and over I heard how happy they were that there was a comic out there that they could read together; something that was fun and exciting that they could enjoy as parents, but their kids could enjoy as well. I kept expecting SOMEONE to add “….But it would be even better if the SERRA character wasn’t showing so much cleavage….!” But that never came.
And yet, seeing all those smiling parents and their beaming kids, that cleavage was all I could think about. I felt personally mortified that I had clothed SERRA in so little and that there were so many kids seeing her like that. I started to feel as though I’d done the character — and all these families who were reading about her–an injustice. And so at the first opportunity– which just happened to come in that third issue I was still working on– I worked in a clothing change for SERRA. I gave her a frilly collar that went all the way up to the top of her neck, emanating from a vest that covered her up nicely. To be honest, I loved the new look immediately. And I’d like to think that if SERRA could speak to me, she’d thank me for giving her an outfit that was, frankly, more sensible for the pirate captain on the go, fighting for her life and her world.
Today’s sketch is another design for her. I’ve been, as I said in a previous post, been thinking about the characters a lot lately… and I wanted to play with SERRA’S look again.
In a sensible way, of course.
This is entry 171.
Mike