AudioShocker

Project Basement wraps up v3 with:

Spider-Man by Chris Maverick

Today we have a special birthday edition of Project Basement. But even though it's Mav's b-day tomorrow... he's the one giving you a gift with this double dose of superhero sketches!

All great Project Basement sketches come from one place. Convention boredom. There are times when you're at a comic con and you're really busy, and there are other times when you're basically sitting there doing nothing. This year, at Pittsburgh Comicon I was playing with my new Cintiq sketch tablet(a digital drawing tablet from Wacom) and I decided that it'd be fun to try and do a Project Basement sketch for Nick's* Costumes and Powers theme.

The Spider-Man sketch was first. I got to thinking, what's the most iconic costume of all time? What costume is instantly recognizable as a definitive superhero costume? I came up with two: Spider-Man and Superman. Superman just seemed too obvious somehow, so I decided to go with Spidey. Frankly, I chose wrong. Not because the costume isn't iconic. Because it totally is. Every time Marvel has chosen to modify the costume over the years (the Venom suit, the Ben Reilly suit, the Civil War suit), it ultimately fails and we return to the classic. It's bright and vibrant, and it's design immediately tells you what the hero is all about. This is Spider-Man. He spins webs.

The reason it's a mistake is that it's deceptively hard to draw. There's no face. There's no cape. There's no unwieldy protrusions or weapons. He's basically just a modeling dummy in an extreme pose. Perfect for figure drawing. The devil is in the details. Whoever has to draw the webs on Spider-Man's costume should be paid $1,000,000 a page.

Next I decided to do a character with a cool looking power effect for the second half of the theme. I ended up going with a character that isn't really one of my favorites, but fit the bill of the concept well -- Psylocke. The interesting thing about Psylocke is that her most prominent offensive power is the "psychic blade" a power that really makes no sense whatsoever. The best part about being a psi-hero is the ability to attack from a distance. The ability to not need to make direct contact with your victim in order to affect them with your weapon. If you have a psi-blast, no one can hide from you anyway.

So why limit yourself to a psi blast that forces you to touch someone? Honestly, a psychic blade isn't any more valuable than a regular knife. In fact it's less valuable because all you can do is affect minds. You lose all the other useful knifey abilities that a steel weapon has. Like cutting rope, or spreading peanut butter on your sandwich.

No, Psylocke's power isn't effective, instead it is based on one thing and only. Visual presentation. Comics are as much a medium of visuals as they are of storytelling, and one of the reasons superhero comics are so popular is that visually, fighting is impressive to look at. If there were psi-blasts in real life, it'd probably be the most boring thing to watch in the whole world. A villain would attack Professor X and he'd look up from his wheel chair, and the guy would fall over, maybe with a nose bleed or something. There's nothing to see. In comics, we add an energy effect to say "hey look, his powers are working," but that wouldn't really be there, and it's understood that none of the characters can "see" it. Because that's the entire point. The psychic blade takes this concept a step farther. It gives the reader the ability to see the power as well as gives the artist a reason to put her in the thick of the battle, creating further visual intrigue. And hey if, a DD-cupped Asian, with purple hair, doing karate in a thong leotard with a glowing energy knife coming out of her fist isn't about visual presentation, then frankly, I don't know what is.

*Theme inspired by a suggestion from Wayne Wise.

NEXT: The fourth volume of Project Basement begins with Nils-Petter Norlin and the Mental Organism Designed Only for Kittens!!!