adamwarren
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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: Rose vs. KILL BILL's Go-Go (?), recycled for EMPOWERED
🕑 Added 2021-10-22 13:18:04 +0000 UTCBehold, the first few pages of roughs for an abortive commissioned DiD comic from the early 2000s that would've pitted Dirty Pair's Kei--nay, Rose against the spiky-ball-on-a-chain-wielding character "Go-Go" from Quentin Tarantino's fine flick Kill Bill pt. 1. (Note that I was briefly involved in a Kill Bill comic pitch recounted here years ago, but have neither time nor interest in bothering to look up the post.)
Cheesecakery ahoy as Go-Go was rocking a conspicuously scantier schoolgirl uni than in the actual movie; also, this was a time of pouty lips and wonky waists, as the dreaded "Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch" was in full effect here. I'm honestly not sure if the wonkiness was due to me assuming that these pages would never be published, and hence not giving a crap if the figure poses were just tossed-off, deeply flawed scribbles; I'm pretty sure this wasn't a deliberate aesthetic choice on my part, though. I was just wingin' it, folks!
For reasons now lost to me, the commissioned comic was never completed, but the roughs did eventually serve a useful purpose years later when I reused poses from the sequence's 2nd & 3rd pages in the Empowered vol. 1 story that introduced Ninjette, as seen in the jpegs that follow. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" indeed!
However, note also that these roughs influenced a key Empowered costume design riff, in that Ninjette's low-riding shorts were directly inspired by the chrome "hip-huggers" that Kei-- nay, Rose sported in Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's illustrations for the original Dirty Pair novels by SF author Haruka Takachiho, as seen in the final jpeg above. (The "Ninjette" logo on the backside was inspired by real life, after that eyecatching fashion concept briefly became a thing in my remote neck of the woods.)
I'm fairly sure that more roughs from this failed commission exist, but I've not been able to dig them up as yet. If I find 'em, I'll post 'em here when I get a chance.
UPDATE: Aaaaaaaaand I just spent a g-d hour outta my g-d morning shift setting up this post, which bodes very ill indeed for substantive progress on today's Empowered vol. 12 page. Ouch!
NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Who knows what might go up next? At the moment, not even me, thanks to the semi-randomized "M/W/F+" posting schedule! Golly!
Comments
Adam Warren
Yeahp, like the commentary mentions, at least a few pages are missing; no scans seem to exist for 'em.
Wayne W
Page 5 is missing. Is the numbering wrong or is there really a missing page? The flow between 4 & 6 seems ok so I'm guessing a numbering issue, but just wanted to make sure.
Burninator
Wait, the fringes working for the good guys are that sweet? Dang it, here I've been spending years working for shadowy forces of darkness and I don't even have a 401K. (Seriously, I was only making 30K back when I was working for some memetic engineering people backed by Peter Thiel and the Kochs and bent on world domination. No shit, my old boss actually went on a honest-to-god maniacal rant about world conquest when he was trying to sell me on taking the job despite the lousy initial pay with promises of lucrative future rewards. I was SUPPOSED to get millions of dollars and a team of minions, but instead I got canned after like a year and my boss booked it for a company that's appeared in multiple Dirty Pair comics.) Bonus Fun Fact: Given Ninjette's male disguise abilities, she can be whatever sandwich position she'd like, provided she can talk Emp and Thugboy into going along with it. I'm sure Emp would take about two seconds to realize the potential.
Strypgia
"Rose, your job is humiliating. You keep getting trussed up by lunatics who seem to always go out of their way to show off your tits! Why don't you quit?" "Because it pays three times better than anything else I can get with my degree, and I get full-coverage, no-copay health, dental, and vision. Plus 30 vacation days a year." "....they hiring?" Nothing wrong with recycling the layouts and poses. Emp and Ninjette's first encounter is ever more hilarious in retrospect. (Especially with the growing hints 'Jette would not mind at all being the meat in a sandwich with Emp and Thugboy.) "I've got a superpower too! It's called 'the Spins'! Wheeee!" still never fails to make me laugh.
