Day of Remembrance

shastab24 on Nov. 20, 2012

Today there is no story page. It's November 20th, the day to commemorate the fallen trans people, and I wanted to do my part. Still, when I drew the first image for it, Eiderdown, I realized I drew her triumphant. That informed the rest of the picture. This would be an optimistic one, one that would recognize the need for positive portrayals. But go visit the TDOR Archive to see other Day of Remembrance comics, much of which are likely to be a bit more somber. There are some great webcomics who have been involved.

But you do get a very much better indication of characters' size in relation to each other here. I can't draw scale so easily, but this was easier. In the full-size image (because even this is going into the print issue), I scaled each character by having a half an inch equal 1 foot. For instance, six-foot-tall Split was scaled to 3 inches. It was difficult with some. I know I didn't get Sparkle right, for instance, since she's supposed to be seven feet tall, but I didn't want to factor her bow into it, so the image was scaled to 3.5 inches, despite the fact that it makes her actually a tad shorter than she should be (she still towers over everyone else, though). And yes, the Runner is short. He's only 4'7“. The next shortest is Eiderdown, at 5'5”. Also, you'll notice that Fractal is just an uncolored costume. This is because I always want to reuse the individual images later, and this indicates Fractal without giving preference to any form the character might take–it's a good reference image for people drawing the character (though not here, considering the costume is obscured), and all of them really are, except Eiderdown and the Runner don't show important details you can get from seeing them in profile (a ponytail and a dorsal fin, respectively).

Also, the page mentions other trans superheroes. They definitely do exist. The first ever was a character named Cat Man who, like Madame Fatal, was a man that dressed as an old lady. Then came Madame Fatal, and then Red Tornado (the Ma Hunkel version). Other heroes include Coagula (from DC's Doom Patrol), Mantra (from Malibu's Ultraverse line), Xavin (from Marvel's Runaways), and more. But, just like it's idiotic to say “We have Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batwoman, Batgirl, Ms. Marvel, etc., so why would you create another female superhero?”, it's the same to me about creating more trans heroes. And we need more good ones. All the ones mentioned above? Dead, imprisoned indefinitely or rebooted out of existance. Thank goodness Cat Man and Madame Fatal are in the public domain.