Saturday, October 14, 2006

The Well-Dressed Villainess

Gail Simone's inaugural issue of Gen13 was a nice set-up issue for the team, and introduced readers to Megan, the evil Dr. Cross's able assistant.

Megan wore an interesting outfit in her debut:


While I won't comment upon her problematic decision to wear briefs which don't match the style or color of her top, I did have a question about her shirt.

Is it now essential for a villain's assistant to wear one of these Blackhawk inspired numbers? (Two non-villains, Zinda Blake [the Lady Blackhawk] and Action Girl sport them, too.)

Lex Luthor's right hand woman in 52 was wearing something similar in several issues.


Can anyone actually name this style of jacket/shirt?

As a visual reference, here's the Silver Age Zinda Blake's uniform (from Blackhawk #133, 1959):

Why might a woman with villainy on her mind decide to put one of these on?

Comments:
My gut is to say that the outfit shows that they're unavailable to the hero/reader - 'all buttoned up', as it were - and that helps to quietly underline their status as 'villainous'.

But, hey, there might be some hope for Luthor's assistant - at least SHE's sharing skirts with Arisia!
 
Oops. I didn't sign my comment above. Sorry about that.
 
I think it's a variant on the Imperial Japanese Army Uniform jacket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JapaneseArmy1900.JPG ), which was in itself a variant of a common type of Imperial German Army jacket.

Which begs the question - if The Blackhawk Squadron were wearing those jackets during WWII, were we sure they were on our side...? ;)

Best,
Tim Liebe
Dreaded Spouse-Creature of Tamora Pierce - and co-author of Marvel's upcoming WHITE TIGER comic!
 
Anon: Yeah, that's definitely not a top one could get out of in a hurry.

Timothy: The look definitely seems to be army-inspired.

So I guess the shirt is a reflection of what an arch villain might want in a female second-in-command: attention to detail and military efficiency.
 
It looks like a cross between a Civil War bib-front shirt and the Rocketeer's flight jacket to me.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?