Bad girl art: Difference between revisions

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The following are examples of bad girls on the market.
The following are examples of bad girls on the market.
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Latest revision as of 18:48, 25 February 2022

DarkChylde

Bad girl art is a superheroines artform genre coined after the analogy of good girl art which also includes strong female characters in comic books. Bad girls are typically tough and violent superheroines.

The two terms, bad girl art and good girl art, while similarly constructed, are not accurately oppositional: while "good girl art" originally was "girl art" that was "good", "bad girl art" is art of "bad girls": the "bad" refers to the personalities of the anti-heroine characters, often portrayed as cruel, mercenary, or demonic, although it may also be intended to reflect on the crude mannerisms and exaggerated anatomy of the drawing style associated with those characters.

While the Good Girls were common in the 1940s and 1950s, Bad Girl Art was common in the comic book market of the 1980s and 1990s. During the heyday of the style, some fifty titles within the subgenre were being published, with Lady Death as the best selling title.

The bad girl characters are female embodiment's of the "grim and gritty" mood of comic books in from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Bad girl art uses the flamboyant and anatomically exaggerated style of art associated with Chaos! Comics and Image Comics during the same period to draw those grim and gritty female characters.

Bad Girl characters

Bad Girl comic characters differ obviously from Good Girls in their characterization. It is possible that the original comic Bad Girl - before the term was coined - was Vampirella, whose comics started in the 1970s. When Frank Miller created Elektra, and gave her a complex relationship with the title hero Daredevil that went beyond the realm of mere villainy, he also influenced the comic bad girl stereotype. The often accepted[who?] beginning of the Bad Girl trend was Brian Pulido's Lady Death and his Chaos! line of comics. These books featured all typical characteristics including full figured women, mystical backgrounds and exuberant art.

Bad Girls, unlike Good Girls, were seldom found in the role of a damsel in distress. Indeed, the Bad Girls are "typically as powerful, violent, skilled, smart, and self-assured" as any male superhero. Instead, Bad Girls were typically motivated by background stories in which they had been the victims of abuse or domestic violence; others had their loved ones murdered by the villains. Their basic motive was revenge against their abuser and against those who had abused others in a similar way. These themes of revenge made the character's moral code ambiguous, and often made it hard to characterize the character as either a heroine or a villainess leading "Bad Girl" to become the female equivalent of "anti-hero".

Magic, mythology and occult themes were also frequently found in their background stories. Popular backstories for Bad Girls, were that they were demon hunters, fallen/rogue angels, vampires or wielders of a supernaturally bestowed weapon or power. Often, much effort went into creating the character's "cool" mystical/mythological backstory creating an actual well thought out background, which later with little effort going towards making future stories of that caliber.

In essence, what these characters shared above all was being cast in the role of dominatrix. Their weapons and demeanor marked them as threatening, even as the style of their drawing marked them as emphatically female. Their allure and their dangerousness go hand in hand, both being essential parts of the sexual fantasy these characters are meant to embody.

Revitalization

In recent years, bad girl and T&A (an abbreviation for "Tits and Ass"; a slang term for erotica) titles have been revitalized. The revitalization began when Top Cow, a studio notorious for its T&A stylings, attached Ron Marz and non-T&A artists Mike Choi to its main bad girl book Witchblade. The book began getting acclaim and wonderful reviews, and other companies took notice.

Many former Bad Girl characters were now being written in a new character driven style. Dynamite Entertainment began to publish Red Sonja focusing on character and using T&A poses only in joke. Tales of Wonder, which now owns the majority of the Chaos! Comics's characters, put out new Purgatori comics via Devil's Due Publishing following this new trend. Meanwhile, Bad Girl-queen Lady Death, while remaining true to her roots, has an alternate all-ages version coming out as Medieval Lady Death and even in the classic version it has been toned down a bit. Also notable is the original Bad Girl, Vampirella. While she still keeps the costume, writer Mike Carey and artist Mike Lily put little to no focus on it as they attempt to rework her into an introspective character.

Finally, famed T&A artist Michael Turner launched his company Aspen MLT and, much to everyone's surprise, chose to go with substance over style in his relaunch of Fathom and the rest of his line.


The following are examples of bad girls on the market.

  • Danger Girl
  • Angela
  • Avengelyne
  • Barb Wire
  • BloodRayne
  • Darkchylde
  • Dogwitch
  • Elektra
  • Fathom
  • Glory
  • Lady Death
  • Lady Rawhide
  • The Magdalena
  • Pandora
  • Purgatori
  • Ramba
  • Red Monika (for Battle Chasers)
  • Shi
  • Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose
  • Vampirella
  • Warrior Nun Areala
  • Witchblade


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