When Ken and I started our comic company, Evolution Comics, we wanted to do comics that won’t insult your intelligence, or women. The women in our comics always got equal billing, were involved in every adventure, and never sent off to make coffee. When I interviewed artists about working for us I wanted to see if they could draw women. Not over-endowed Barbie dolls, but women, not Superman with cleavage, but people you might know or meet in your daily life. When women build up muscle, they look different than the way guys pump up. If the artist couldn’t draw women, I couldn’t hire them.
Since women are fifty percent of the population, they should be equally represented in comics, and as I always read the comics with more female characters, so I want to promote that in my comics. Maybe not as many women read comics as guys, but if there were more comics for them to read, they might be more interested in the art form. I personally know several women who got interested in comics through the Legion or X-Men or the Teen Titans because there are more female characters there. In action, doing stuff and participating in the Super-hero thang.
When I inked the cover of New Frontiers over Curt Swan’s pencils I was very nervous. Curt Swan is a respected artist in comics, having done Superman for years and I grew up loving his art on World’s Finest comics and the Legion of Super-Heroes, so it was a thrill to ink his pencils, but also a very scary thing. I finally did get it finished, and I like the way it came out, with all the escaping birds and Green Ghost confronted by Lady Lucifer as Lotus leaps through the dimensional doorway to help out.
Lady Lucifer has been on some 'Nuff Said! flyers, or you may have met her in Green Ghost and Lotus from Evolution Comics or Miranda the Tease from Forbidden Fruit Comics. Or you may even have seen her in Puritan magazine doing rude things with Miranda on the Boston Customs House clock tower. To me she embodies the party-animal side of us all, with her hot rubber clothes and zee French maid. She should get together with Cobweb and her panting chaufferesse, those naughty Alan Moore demoiselles. It's a grand tradition in comics. Catwoman, Vampirella, All the Will Eisner Women!
Lady Lucifer was created by Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and I knew immediately
what she looked like and fired off an illo to T&M that they agreed was
herself, Lady Lu! This does not often happen. We went thru several illoes
of Green Ghost and Lotus before we finalized their looks. And they got
refined a few more times in our united creativity.
Lady Lucifer popped
right out.
To read New Frontiers #1, send $3. for a sample issue ($6.00 for first
printing) to
Mercy Van Vlack, PO Box 1028, NYC, NY 10028 and find out about
our science fiction comic, Dangerous Times.