Buffy!

Last Friday I went to Mari Naomi's marvelous reading at The Escapist--I just finished Mari's book "Kiss & Tell" on my way to work today and definitely recommend it.  But this post is about nerd things.

Escapist has a luxurious display of Buffy comic books (Sophie tells me it's a bestseller).

I watched the whole dang show (which I had never seen previously) on Netflix while working on my comic, so I was inexorably drawn over, but then, as always, put off by the tacky faux-superhero art style.  I'm sure whoever's drawing the Buffy comic can outdraw me in a dozen ways, but the combination of deadened caricatures and overwhelming crosshatching just so completely fails to capture the cuteness of the show.

The talented Tessa Brunton had a similar experience, so I decided to draw what my version of the Buffy crew would look like. 

I don't expect Dark Horse to be giving me a call anytime soon, but I wish the companies putting out these licensed comics would make more of an effort to diversify their art.  The show Buffy was doofy as hell, but it was stylistically fluid, going from Broadway musical style one week (Once More With Feeling) to psuedo-verite the next (The Body). 

Why do mainstream publishers think everything should look like a Witchblade comic from 1997?