Marvel.com: Chris Claremont teams with Italian artist Milo Manara for an overseas adventure with the mutant ladies of the Marvel Universe
"You'll be seeing a really fun story; 46 pages by Milo Manara doing his first work for an American audience and certainly the first he's done using classic American super hero characters," teases Claremont. "It's a presentation of this clutch of x-characters the likes of which have never been seen before. And it's brilliant art by one of the finest artists in the European market, if not the world."
On hand for the story will be the titular X-Women including Rogue, Storm, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers. "In a primal sense, Kitty ends up being the viewpoint character because she very often is when I'm telling a story," Claremont explained. "The story starts with Rogue having a party at a Greek island mansion she inherited from Irene Adler, from Destiny. And things from there get very, very complicated. They get hijacked out to Genosha where we discover some things about Genosha that we've never discovered before. And much interesting and exciting adventures are had by all. A dastardly villain is revealed, a dastardly plot established. The characters are for the bulk of the story stripped of their super powers so they have to function as normal people and prove once again that the X-Men are just as dangerous without their powers as they are with them. And we thunder our way hopefully to a happy and satisfying ending. Oh...and along the way there's romance, pirates, severed heads galore, action-adventure and a magnificent sequence where Rogue discovers a skill for being a den mother/babysitter and doing lots of ironing. And Betsy discovers that she has a knack for feeding pigs."
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
16 comments:
This again? Seriously?
I was hoping everyone understood the joke it is the first time around.
Like how can this guy who does porno pencils like Land be considered one of the finest artists??
Actually, Milo Manara is considered to be one of the best modern Italian Illustrators!
Claremont on the other hand...
There really no way on earth you can compare Milo Manara's work with Land's. You may like it or not, that's up to you, but Milo Manara doesn't trace, doesn't reuse the same drawings time and again. So comparing him with Land is not only unfair, but also shows how little artistic criteria you have. With no disrespect at all, really.
As the spanish proverb goes, "there's a lot written about personal tastes, you just have to read it"
Sooo... I remembered there was a previous post about this Gals On the Run thing, and I thought there was something odd about the pictures.
The latest version:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vmizTggXAos/S71tBqRearI/AAAAAAAACAY/KsXuD64MSz8/s1600/X-WomenFirstLook-01.png
and the one on the previous post:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vmizTggXAos/SvT2M081XCI/AAAAAAAABRg/blRe9nACwH8/s1600-h/X-MenGalsOnTheRun-01.png
So, Rogue's 'ray beam' power in the latest version is from whose? :D
Wow. Total FAIL on the coloring/inking department.
The art looks nice. Is the US version of "Ragazze in Fuga" totally colored or just the first pages and the last ones, like in the Italian version?
And yes, Rogue's powers are colored wrong (unless she absorbed Betsy's telekinesis prior to the fight). It's actually awkward to see her projecting energy from her hands and Betsy being super strong...
But it's not necessarily wrong, Psylocke could be using her telekinesis to enhance her strength (she already did it once to punch R'Chell in the Savage Land), while Rogue could be most likely using Solaris's powers that she absorbed semi-permanently prior to Betsy's ressurrection.
Hey 2 Rombos, I've also heard rumors that Land traces, but it's not a proven fact. It looks like Land's using photoshop for sure, but that's an artistic choice. I see no reason why they can't be compared.
And on an unrelated note, can you believe the number of butts on the second page? I've never seen so many butts in my life!
Betsy fighting a tank is just plain silliness
Hate Milo Manara´s extremely sexist / erotic ¨art¨.
I might pick this up for the art and the story.
@2 Rombos
The comparison to Land had nothing to do with the tracing aspect of his many flaws, it had to do with the very obvious objectification of women in his work.
And sexism is sexism is sexism. It doesn't matter if you've got everyone saying you're awesome, these pencils are VERY obviously objectifying women.
So artistic criteria my ass, from stick figures to literal copy and pastes from porn, I'm not going to act like sexist depictions of women is all right. Ever.
@Mr. Hellfire:
C'mon, sexism has NOTHING to do with naked ladies, it goes far beyond that. It's about context. What we've got here the story of five POWERFUL women, yes, powerful women in bikinis, because (hold to your seats) WOMEN WEAR BIKINIS!.
My point is, sexism in comics is as old as the medium itself, it's not right, but it's there, and this fact can be pointed in the works of Milo Manara, Greg Land, Terry odson, Arthur Adams, Michel Golden and so on until we get to Will Eisner. So I find really weird that someone bashes Manara's art because of this, Manara's been drawing erotic comics almost all of his career (and that's a huge amount of time), but always with a constant, he has quite a lot of respect for the formal aspects of drawing, perspective, proportions, storytelling,... he simply doesn't do cheap T&A porn, and saying that is disrespectful to his career and fans (like I am).
Now, back on the sexism topic, I think that you're confusing erotism with sexism, I invite you to read the book and find the Manara's males characters are as endearing as his females, as well proportioned and sexually atractive. He's as open minded as it gets (the book features even a gay couple in bed!), but if you read in it anything you may find offensive, remember that he didn't wrote it, Claremont did. Now we all know Claremont plays to the strenghs of his pencillers, but in an abroad collaboration I can't see Manara getting any input at all.
@Adam
Land traces, really, it's not a rumour, it's a fact. The net's full of examples, google a bit and you'll find some (I can recall a Wizard tutorial on how he did it back when he was pencilling Sojourn).
Not, onto the Betsy/Rogue swap. It's not mistake from the inker or the colorist, in the original version you can see how they are where they should. So the only explanation I can find is that Manara had to re draw that page and got them confused (or wanted to mix them, your guess is as good as mine). The original pencil are posted in this very blog, look here for them:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vmizTggXAos/SvT2M081XCI/AAAAAAAABRg/blRe9nACwH8/s1600-h/X-MenGalsOnTheRun-01.png
@2 Rombos - Thanks for the scans! But geez, does that mean that Manara redrew the scene switching Rogue and Psylocke? Why would he do that?
Since the book will only be published in August, I hope he, the inker and the colorist are able to fix that scene in time...
And since we are speaking of powerful ladies, have you people noticed that Polaris, who was also in the team back in the Reload days (remembering that Sage was in the first months, but left before Betsy was revived), is the only X-Woman left out of this book? I wonder if Claremont forgot she was with the team or if Rogue decided not to invite her to the trip because of Lorna's psychotic deranged personality...
@2 Rombos
I've no problem with five powerful X-Women having a fun one-shot. Except this is what happens when they get attention. They're not taken seriously. All the major players in Second Coming besides Hope? Emma's role is a joke. And I doubt any roles they will be given will come near as great as the male roles. If the men got a one-shot, just friggin' one, where they were just having a good time and they were sexualized, there'd be an internet-wide WTF. Seriously, sexism may be a part of comic books and always have been, but doesn't make it fine. And when certain moves are made to make it worse, to take women characters who are already in need of some respect, getting tossed back by some sort of straight male titillation story? Come on. And they wonder why a lot of women who would typically be inclined to comics resist reading?
Yes, most artists objectify the women, but there are some worse than others. They wouldn't take this guy out for a serious project. This is the sort of thing they do for the women. Like taking out soft Mike Mayhew for Women of Marvel projects.
Now if he treats men fairly with all the same sort of "Yeah, I want it" with the ass out in that oh so suggestive way, then hey, I give the man that.
Manara is talented, I'm not oblivious to that, but I do have a problem with portrayal of women in this erotic way in a culture so over-saturated with women being made objects. Now, let's put him in a universe where when anything serious happens, the major players are OVERWHELMINGLY men. He just is not helping things by being involved in a women-centered story (which I'm sure is bad enough on it's own).
This story is a fail as for empowering Marvel women and they´re supposedly relaunching that one-shot now here in America because of the Women of Marvel campaign but to me it´s the worst decision they could have maid to expose those heroines like Manara´s ¨sexual muses¨...FAIL!
And @2 Rombos - Yes comics are sexist but this is extremely sexism wer´re talking here. With lot´s of fetishism and sexual inuendos all around I just can´t help myself but to think that Claremont was high or something when working with this guy Manara and probably he as yourself is another fan of his work and that´s fine but I don´t like it at all ,it´s not right to mix extremely sexual explicit themes in family friendly merchandise characters. And it´s a bad example to kids also to sexualize women like that. I just hope they don´t sell this to kids .
Excuse my english I meant *Worst decision they could have made.
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