The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2050: Lady Death/Bad Kitty #1, September 2001

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 Well.

Here we are 12 days later, and I've found myself chest-deep in Lady Death comics from Chaos!.

(The exclamation point is part of the publisher name, hence a period after the exclamation.)

(Nerd.)

 We get here because once I'd finished the "Onslaught" crossover, I needed a break from superheroes, and decided to read comics that I consider to have some of the sexiest covers in the collection. I'll be doing a different article on those. I'm still in the process of reading them. But Lady Death: Last Rites #2, with a cover by today's artist Carlos Mota, is on the list. But I obviously couldn't read the second issue without reading the first, and by the time I was done, I'd come to understand that despite the giant, giant boobs on display on every single female character in the publisher's wheelhouse, there were some really interesting stories being told.

I've looked at Lady Death stuff before, mainly in connection with the character's original artist, the late Steven Hughes. (Though having just gone back and re-read them, I see that I contradict myself. Which I'm happy to see. I'd hate to think I was consistent.) But when I had my comic store in the early 2000s, Chaos! was entering its heyday, and I definitely wanted popular stuff on the shelves of The Magic Mirror. It didn't help much, but at least I now have a really great comic collection. The nice thing is that I have a not-quite-but-almost complete view of what Lady Death's story was like for that year or so that I was in business. Hence today's comic, following reading Last Rites #1&2 and the Lady Death/Medieval Witchblade crossover preview.

To facilitate this, I went looking for a reading order, as Chaos! was using the new storyline = new series publishing format at this point. The most exhaustive I found opens with the same thing I've said a couple of times: despite the fact that the lead characters are virtually naked all the time, there's a really interesting plot going on.

And, I suppose, in the end, in and of themselves, there's nothing wrong with huge breasts. It'd just be really great if there wasn't such a preponderance of them in mainstream comics.

More, probably, to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

London Night Studios offered the grittier side of bad girl art, though I'm not as big a fan of their story.

And then there's the swimsuit issues, that take the girl out of "bad girl" and throw a swimsuit on her...leaving just "bad," really.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1934: Lady Death II #4, June 1995

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

Back to a little bad girl action from the early 90s. I read another issue of Lady Death the last time I did a series highlighting Black creators, also illustrated by today's featured artist Steven Hughes. That wiki article is quite sparse, but here's a really lovely obituary that lays out Mr. Hughes' importance to comics in the early 90s, and highlights his position as founder of Chaos! Comics and as one of the most successful Black comics creators around. They're not really my thing, though the last time I did have some stuff to say about the page layouts (still amazing - Mr. Hughes' panel borders verge on the invisible) and the myth-building that was going on. A couple of issues later, and I'm not really sure what's happened, but this one is pretty much a 20ish page battle between first Lady Demon (Death) and Purgatori, and then Lady Death and Satan. Not really much of the myth-building, though I guess the ending, with LD taking over Hell, is pretty mythic. I will admit to a morbid curiosity as to how her story eventually plays out.

But on the other hand, though Mr. Hughes' command of it is expert, the big boobs skinny waists bad girl look is just far too distracting. I always come back to Kill la Kill, one of my favourite animes when I'm considering the overabundance of exposed female flesh in a comic. In the anime, the characters dress in costumes every bit as revealing as Lady Death's. But at some point in the series we realize that we've stopped paying attention to the sexualized bodies because the story is so engrossing. At least, that has been the experience of myself and others I know. I think the trouble is that this doesn't happen in most of the Chaos! comics I've read. The physicality of the character is just so..there that it's never not impacting the story. And I won't bother with the why question. We all know why the characters are presented that way.

But the thing is that, as I mentioned last time, there's something intriguing about the story of Lady Death. She's a badass female character, takes no shit from Satan himself, and seems to actually have a well-wrought backstory. And Mr. Hughes' art is just wonderful. His characters all look different physically (with the exception of every lead female character), they all move through their environments in different ways (I noticed in this issue the different way Satan moves through the battle as compared to Lady Death - each character has their own way of expressing physicality), and his layouts are interesting without sacrificing logic.

So I remain torn about the series itself, though it appears to have all the ingredients for something quite cool. It's just difficult to see past the boobs.

More to follow.

 Further Reading and Related Posts

There's a bit more on Chaos! Comics on the blog, including a section in my ongoing thoughts on the intersections between music and comics. 

Note: While I am focussing very heavily on only one creator, generally, in these posts, I never want to lose sight of the fact that comics are a collaborative medium. While the Black creators are taking necessary precedence right now, you'll always be able to find any other primary creators' names in the tags. In fact, in a lot of ways it's this spirit of collaboration that we ought to be taking away from comics at the moment and figuring out how we can apply it to our broken society.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 776: Lady Death II: Between Heaven and Hell #1, March 1995

I have, at last count, 22 Lady Death comics in my collection, but aside from the lingerie special I wrote about a few weeks back, I've never read any of them. Most of what I do have comes straight from the shelves of my now defunct comic shop, and, I'll admit, I've based my assessment of them purely on the covers. Big breasts, quasi-bondage costumes, lots of scowls. Today, however, marks the first time I've actually read one.

I'm quite glad I did. I was worried that I made a claim in the opening of my look at Black creators that these were great and important comics, but the first couple I read weren't actually that great and important. This isn't a huge problem. Comics, and especially mainstream comics, are a medium founded on mediocrity - to appeal to the widest range of people, you need the widest common denominators. That's why the more literary comics only appeal to a certain subset of readers. And, given my thoughts on Chaos! Comics in general, I was not holding out hope (which is a pun Lady Death readers will get!).

Today's featured creator is Steven Hughes, who passed away after succumbing to cancer in 2000. Aside from a handful of other appearances, Hughes' career has been tightly bound to Chaos! Comics. He created the looks of many of the company's signature characters, and shepherded them through their various adventures. Hughes' style is fairly standard, building off superhero art of the decades prior, but his page layout is really interesting. There are occasional moments where the panels are a bit out of sequence, or it's hard to tell which one to read next, but these are only occasional. For the most part, his page layouts are fantastic. We get a peek into Lady Death's past, both real and illusory, in this issue, and the flashback panels are drawn as curling scrolls sitting over top of the contemporary action. This mixture of temporality and dimensionality is really quite lovely, and leaves the reader in no way confused as to the time periods (and there are 3) being explored throughout the tale. Page construction is not an easy thing to master, so to see it coming so wonderfully from an artist working at the height of the car crash that was early Image Comics is great.

So let me briefly meditate on that last point. I think the reason I avoided Chaos! was that they are contemporaneous with early Image, so I just assumed they were pretty much more of that mess. But the story within these buxom covers is actually quite intriguing, and there's an element of myth here that I hadn't expected. In fact, the appearances of the characters vanish into the story in this comic, so rather than being the softcore porn that much early Image seems to have embraced, the scantily-clad ladies are actual characters that just happen to be mostly unclothed. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that this is objectification of a particular variety of the female form in order to sell comics. But that we actually have a decent story within that doesn't revolve around showcasing those forms is both surprising and gratifying. I'm actually looking forward to reading more from Chaos!, and from Hughes, as the project goes on.

To be continued.