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DIRTY PAIR: FATAL BUT NOT SERIOUS design sketches, pt.1
🕑 Added 2020-10-06 13:01:00 +0000 UTCBehold, some design sketches for issue #1 of my 1995 miniseries Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious. (For the record, the title comes from a line in a P.J. O'Rourke piece, which went something like this: "What ails Poland is, as the Poles say, fatal but not serious.")
The opening issue was split between scenes of a 2141 talk show discussing the DP's cultural impact and a hardware-intensive action scene; alas, I seem to have more designs from the former sequence than the latter.
A few words:
Cory Emerson was, of course, the reporter from two miniseries back, Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels, having moved on to a new job as a talk show host. (25 years later, I can't recall much about "the Jane Whitney experience" mentioned in the notes.)
This character was a Lucien-program genetic upgrade like Kei and Y**i, but annoyed by the superficial stereotypes of engineered hawtness that the Dp represent.
Expressing a complex pro-DP opinion was the "paracultural pundit" above, whose verbose and obnoxiously learned patter was fairly straightforwardly based on real-life author and then-frequent talk show guest Camille Paglia. In fact, I think I based part of Rachel's pro-DP rant—comparing Kei and Y**i to heroines from Spenser's The Faerie Queen—on riffs from Paglia's book Sexual Personae.
The "reversing part" bit is a cheap stunt from manga and anime, in that her hairstyle's asymmetrical bangs (if that's the term) magically flop from one side to another depending on the shot. Amusing, if goofy.
IIRC, only one character from this incomplete design sheet, the censored "edible Messiah" dude, actually made it into the issue. Pity, as the mecha cosplaying Y**i would've been fun, not to mention the AD 2141 iteration of Trent Reznor. (I was listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails in the 90s, to put it mildly.)
Alas, the image below is the only hardware design I could find from Fatal But Not Serious issue #1:
Note that Kei's sidearm was originally a "mollywire" projector, rather than the plasma-blasting weapon of mayhem that it became later.
Dammit, I know that a design sheet for the armor worn by the DP has been spotted in my studio files somewhere in the last decade or two , but I haven't yet been able to dig it up. Will I be able to find that piece before this piece posts on Tuesday morning? Let's find out together, folks!
Next Tuesday, we'll see a whole bunch of hardware designs from Fatal But Not Serious issue #2. Yay!
TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON: As usual on a Wednesday, time for yet more "damsel-in-distress" content of some sort for the $5+ tiers!
Comments
Adam Warren
I know that a design sheet for that armor exists, but haven’t been able to recover it as yet. Will keep looking!
Strypgia
You weren't the only one listening to a lot of NIN in those days. And I loved seeing poor Cory pop back up. She was a fun highlight of Plague Of Angels. Any design sheets for the slick blue combat armor the Angels were wearing in the opening action bit? Even this many years later, those armor sets remain striking.
A Patreon of the Ahts
I'm like that with Livewires. I keep hoping for a sequel.
Brandon Graham
love seeing these designs
TF Commando
Safari on desktop. Working on Safari on IPad though,
James
this was the first thing of yours that i read and it BLEW MY FREAKIN' TEENAGE MIND. your art was so amazing that it actually took me a while before i read the story; i just kept leafing through, looking at the awesome tech, bodacious babes and wall-to-wall worldbuilding. but when i did, DAMN, what a story. i was hooked!
Adam Warren
What browser are you using (if not the Patreon app, that is)? The images are working in Firefox, but I haven't yet checked in Safari or Chrome or MS Edge.
TF Commando
Always love the Dirty Pair art references. There are broken images in the text though.
Burninator
On Paracultural Punditry- Somebody actually went and wrote a book-length analysis of the Lovely Angels a couple years ago, although it’s markedly less academically opaque, and it only covers your version tangentially. The author concluded that Kei and Yuri are goddesses in human shape, argued that all their associated destruction is “cleansing fire” purifying human society from its ills by burning them away and thus both morally right and necessary, and talked a lot about the Glorified Body and magick. I think he prays to Kei and Yuri now. On Cory Emerson- I went and looked up Jane Whitney. She had a reasonably sleazy talk show between ’92 and ’94 that presumably inspired the note(Appears to have gone by The Jane Whitney Show and Night Talk at different times)- best known for hosting GG Alin’s last interview- she always hosted the show barefoot or in socks, hence the note. She spent three years covering the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua immediately before landing the talk show- I suspect the abrupt switch inspired Cory’s.(Aside: I read a fanfic once where the author was a ride-or-die Cory fanboy who was so furious at Cory’s career switch in Fatal that he actually made a point in his story of making Talk Show Cory an evil clone designed to discredit the “real” Cory) The show appears to have had consistently lousy ratings and thus died young. Jane appears to have gone back to “legitimate journalism”- she was quoted by Maureen Dowd in a column shortly after her show died as a “recovering talk show host” condemning the same sort of stuff she was selling, she wrote a bunch of newspaper columns, and she now hosts a podcast called Conversations on the Green that covers Serious Political Issues in a town hall format. Final Bit of Arcane Info- The PJ O’Rourke quote comes from a May 1986 column called “What Do They Do For Fun in Warsaw”, FYI.
The D-Wrek
That reversing part bit amuses me to no end. As someone with characters with parts I've always tried to keep the part "where it should be" cause there's always that one person in the comments who points that out, like "hey, dude... it's on the wrong side" in the moments where I've slipped. lol. Mind you these people that pointed it out to me were also content creators so their "art eyes" picked up on it ? I hope the majority of readers don't notice my bang faux pas. X'D I really love seeing these design sketches - especially when it's stuff I've never seen at all. :D
Ross Fisher-Davis
As I've said before, FBNS is one of my all time favorites graphic novels. Fantastic to see these!
Matthew Rogers
Always loved your weapon designs.
Otaku Twenty-Four Seven
I totally love your character designs from this period of your artwork NGL - it's great to keep seeing more of it.
Tekkaman-James
Great stuff! I love all these concept drawings. Too bad the Mech Suit Yuri never got used, but so hyped to be able to see it here. Thx!
