When I post on the Big Blue Mess I assume a certain level of geekery from my handful of readers and I completely forget that there are those of you who haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about. While I try to remember to include links, a few things get through the cracks and that brings me to this follow-up post.

Charla asked, “Who is Dawn?” And I’m going to have to say that I don’t actually know. Sure, I know she’s a comic book character and I happen to know that Joseph Michael Linsner is her creator. There’s usually a big display in one of the dealer rooms at Dragon*Con featuring her image, so I can say for certain that she’s buxom with an impossibly small waist and equally narrow hips. I’d imagine she’s prone to falling over… a LOT. I don’t know who publishes the series or if the series is still being written regularly. All I know is that there’s a look-alike contest and a lot of red heads (or wigged heads) come out wearing interesting outfits as they show-off their impressions of the character.

Another confession – I don’t know a lot about comics in general (well, maybe a lot more than the average person poking along down the street). I can talk to you a little about X-Men (the origins of the new team and by new, I mean Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler – not Jubilee, Marrow or Blink, but we can talk about them, too), I know the first two major story arcs of ElfQuest, the first Kabuki TPB (trade paperback), Quantum & Woody, and a little about Rising Stars (the last TPB is waiting for me). I tend to buy TPB’s (Gaiman’s The Sandman and Stardust, for example) and then I shove them away on a shelf never to be seen again. In the back of my head I still think of them as “funny pages” and associate them with Archie and Jughead, even though I actually know they’re considerably more sophisticated. I guess after about 5th grade I lost my dependency on pictures to help drive a story and there’s that defiant 5th grader saying, “I’m a big girl now. I don’t need illustrations.” I’m not slamming comics, mind you; it’s just my own personal barriers that make it hard for me to read them.

Plus, I have to confess it’s hard to get me excited about a character like Dawn (again, just judging by the art and not the story). What I see when I look at her display is a scantily clad, big bosomed gal wielding weapons – a 14 year old boy’s wet dream – and the same can be said about the artists who draw females for Marvel, Dark Horse, Top Cow and DC – so no matter how pro female they may be, they don’t speak to me. It’s the same argument surrounding strip clubs – are they about empowerment or exploitation? If it’s empowerment when it comes to comics, why is she always running around in thigh high boots and a thong while wielding a sword/gun/staff/what have you? Why does she look like she burst forth from a Boris Vallejo print? You can create a strong, powerful and still beautiful character without all the extra bimbo-iness, but the answer is obviously that their target demographic wouldn’t buy it and I am not their target demographic.

Anyway, in a nutshell since this accidentally turned into a pseudo rant, that’s all I know about Dawn and it will probably be the extent of my knowledge about that character.

Ask me about Kabuki.