Project begninnings

After thought and research, I've come to a decision on around 5 characters to start my project on.
I plan to focus my work on the elements of these characters often overlooked and I'm reading between the lines of these characters. Because Superheroes and Supervillains are exadurated characters, their psychologies and insinuated thoughts are often overlooked by the costumes or powers. With most comic book characters, because they have been evolving over around 70 years or so, there's a deep psychology and real character depth to these fictional people. Back in the late 30's when Comics where first appearing, starting with Superman back in 1938, these characters have been built up to reflect the times they are in and are still being defined to this day. By this I mean in the midst of World War II comics of the 40's were very much based on propaganda, causing the birth of Captain America. The 60's comics were often focused on nuclear testing, fears of radiation and drug use. 80's comics were very political, looking into fascism and government conspiracy's. With every era changing the characters had to change with these and now the modern world of comics we live in is very much influenced by the comic book films of late, the stories reflect a dark realistic world filled with themes of murder, drugs, torture and terrorism, whilst at the same time being exadurated as the comic book world they are set in. This gives me a large range of time to work with, as well as a sense of the characters that has been overlooked due to this time. Here are my 5 starting characters and the paths I plan to take with these.

Daredevil:

The main trait associated with Daredevil is that he's a blind superhero, this isn't something I want to overlook but it's something that's become over enforced so I want to look at dialing this back. Daredevil's origins are very much revenge based. A truck carrying radioactive materials was about to hit a blind man until Matt Murdock pushed the man aside, but as a result the radioactive waste spilled into his eyes, blinding him but also giving him a radar sense based on his other augmented senses. Matt Murdock's father was a boxer who also worked for the mafia as an enforcer and later in life his father learned his fights had been fixed. When he was told to throw a fight, refusing to lose the boxing match in front of his son he was killed that night. Since then Matt became a lawyer by day in Hell's Kitchen, New York and the vigilante Daredevil by now.


My approach to Daredevil is going to focus heavily on the boxing elements to the character. His build in the comics is usually very slender and he's very acrobatic. I plan to loose these elements in favor of a top heavy build and re-design his costume into one more sports based. To do this I plan to research fighting gear, mainly boxing based including helmets, gloves and padding.
I also want to reflect on the location of Hells Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen is an area in New York City, known as 'Clinton' or 'Midtown-West' by real estate developers, but the colloquial name of 'Hell's Kitchen' is what it's most commonly known as. After some quick research into Hell's Kitchen, I found that it's influenced heavily by 1970's New York, so I plan to research that. Hell's Kitchen was chosen as the location for the comics for the reputation the area had. The location was referred to by the New York Times as "the lowest and filthiest in the city" and it has seen its share of riots and crime. I can't exactly take photographs from New York without incredible difficulty so to fix this problem I will find the closest location like this to home. My area of residence isn't the nicest place to live, nor are the surrounding towns, so I will plan around my local area to replicate a location of grit and violence.

Wolverine:

Wolverine's Origin is a huge tale that I couldn't be able to re-inform or even begin to explain so this is a character that I'm still working on. Since the X-Men movies Wolverine in the comics has taken on more of a resemblance to Hugh Jackman which is where I plan to counter this. In his early forms, Wolverine was a short, angry man who liked to smoke cigars and drink heavy liqueur. I prefer to think of Wolverine as a brawler, bar fighting man than the kind of body building martial artist that the movies have portrayed. Like my thoughts on Daredevil I want a top heavy Wolverine with a stocky build.
My thoughts into the themes of Wolverine I'm still working on, but I'm thinking of working the ideas of the Kitchen Sink movement into them. The idea of angry men and pub drinking is something that reflects heavily on Wolverine. I'm also considering some deeper themes to him like his age (in that's he ages slower than normal people), the fact that all his past relationships have ended in tragedy or possibly reflect on his memory loss or time in the wars like how soldiers can get post traumatic stress disorder. He's still a character I'm thinking on.


Silver Surfer:

The Silver Surfer's tale is filled with woe and here's a quick summary of this. A man called Norrin Radd lived on a peace filled planet called Zenn-La and was in love with a woman named Shalla Bal, until the day a god-like entity called Galactus came upon the planet. Galactus survived by feeding on planets and planned to destroy Zenn-La to quench his hunger, all until Norrin Radd made a deal with Galactus and bargained to save his planet and his loved one. He agreed to become Galactus' herald and locate planets for Galactus to feed upon. He was transformed into the Silver Surfer, gifted with invulnerability, cosmic powers and a board that would fly him through the cosmos. Unbeknown to the Silver Surfer however was that Galactus had wiped his memory of Zenn-La and who he really was. In later stories, the Surfer learned of his past and turned on Galactus for erasing his memory, but when he went in search of his home planet, Galactus had hidden it from the Surfer's discovery. The poetic tragedy of his tale is that to save his planet and the woman he loves, he must now spend an eternity of loneliness in outer space.

For the backgrounds of my work I can improvise and look into science fiction backgrounds and experimental and abstract interpretations of space. For the Silver Surfer in general I plan to look into how the greeks depicted their gods and artists like Carravagio. For the theme of work I plan to look into loneliness and portray how the Surfer is a tortured and isolated soul.


Nightcrawler:

Nightcrawler is a mutant member of the X-Men, he resembles a blue demon and his mutant ability is that he can teleport and cling to walls. For my work however none of this matters because his main quality as a character is his religious views. Nightcrawler is a strong Catholic which is ironic next to his demonic appearance. Being a mutant, this also gives me the prejudice and racism parallels also, how he is different and is hated and feared because of this. My research into this project will take my into religious paintings, Catholic traits and the same approach to my Rogue work from last year looking into prejudice themed photojournalism.

Gambit:

Gambit is another X-man and mutant, his ability is that he can charge objects with kinetic energy which explode on impact. My thoughts on taking on Gambit is mainly time based. The deep character of Gambit is that he's a thief, self centered and secretive so I will need to think how I can portray some of these ideas into a piece of art. My main focus for what I have so far is to set the time of my painting in a pulp noir kind of environment and to do this I plan to look into the work of Fabian Perez.