So there’s a little bit of a story behind this one. Once I did the Captain Marvel pic last week, I thought, “I have to do a Mary Marvel pic to go with this.”
When I was doing the Captain Marvel pic, I decided I didn’t want to change up his costume. Captain Marvel should be the Big Red Cheese. A massively muscular, lovable, goodnatured doof. Even more of a retro boy scout than Superman. In fact, I feel like the modernization of the character into “Shazam” in the new 52 Justice League comic is wrong. I don’t want him modernized.
Mary on the other hand I feel like can be played with more. I liked what they were doing with her pre-reboot by giving her Black Adam’s powers. I decided to roll with that. Mary Batson is a sweet innocent, goody-two-shoes of a girl, but in order to be a hero, as Mary Marvel she now has (well, had… stupid reboot) a dark side. I didn’t want to just put her in the sexier Black Adam outfit, I wanted to really push that personality too. Given that I figure Mary is a dark and angsty teenage superhero, I tried to basically dress her out of Hot Topic (or their super hero division) and hence the corset and the boots. I also gave her the cuff bracers instead of gloves.
The fishnets I have to admit weren’t my idea. I had pencilled her in and was working on the costume and did a google search and came across one that was basically in the same pose as I had pencilled (I mean, you’re trying to make her sexy, and she can fly and has a tiny skirt, what else would you do?) and I was like perfect! so credit to Shawn Van Briesen for that idea. (http://shawnvanbriesen.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Mary-Marvel-2-73372316)
Finally, I took a different route on this one. One of the main reasons I’ve been drawing these is to experiment with Manga Studio 5 EX. Normally, I like to use really thick lines when I ink which gives kind of a cartoony effect. But given the little details and stuff I knew I wanted to book in the buckles on the corset and the like, I decided to go with a thinner lined digital pen. I *think* I like it, but I’m not sure.
What do people think?