Episode 565 - Lady Barbarian
Jan 10, 2022
“The Girl Boss in the sausagefest” Pitface and Tantz chat are here to chat with me about the subject or lady Barbarians: What they look like, where they originated, why they originated, what they mean, and the logic behind them. They're often overshadowed by their male counterparts (e.g. Conan), and often dismissed as simply an erotic male fantasy, but they've been around just as long and they've also had just as much of a role to play in the traditional “barbarian” mythos as the male versions. Sure, the sexy versions are abundant, iconic, and visually striking, but they're not the be all and end all!
Topics and Show Notes
This Quackcast was inspired by the topic of my 8th Fashion Spotlight and its focus on the barbarian woman Rose Red, I go into a lot of detail there and it's linked bellow if you're interested. for a little bit of a recap: lady barbarians go back at least as far as the Roman empire, even older possibly. In Rome they took the form of “gladiatrixes” (female gladiators), who were dressed as and promoted as barbarian fighters from exotic, uncivilised lands (Africa, all over Europe etc), as a way to excite the interest of the paying public to pay to see the fights, the same as we'd do today with wrestling and MMA. Many influences were behind this: the myth of the Amazons, the myth of Atalanta, red haired Celtic queen Boadicea, even early ideas for what was behind the myth of Medusa - she was thought to be based on the queen of a barbarian tribe rather than Ovid's much later idea that she was a virgin temple priestess.
But of course most of us know female barbarians because of their modern incarnations. They've always been around in the history of art but they had a spike in popularity with the Italian “Sword and Sandal” movies of the 1960s, then the art of fantasy art master Frank Frazetta in the 1970s. They found their way into things like Dungeons and Dragons and with the success of Conan the Barbarian and the Robert E Howard inspired Valeria in that film a whole host of lady barbarians got their own films, often exploitative and sexy. The most famous lady barbarian of the time was Red Sonja, loosely based on another Robert E Howard character called Red Sonya, but turned from an armoured fighter against the Ottoman Turks into a scale-mail bikini wearing comic book barbarian woman from prehistory.
The most famous lady barbarian to come after her was Xena, the warrior princess, played by statuesque New Zealand sketch comedian Lucy Lawless. Xena was simply a female spinoff from Hercules The Legendary journeys. The really cool thing about her is that not only did she achieve extreme popularity and her show totally eclipsed its originator, she was also an original character AND she got that popularity without leveraging the sexiness of the premise or character!
Some notable lady barbarians I can think off… Virginia Hey's Warrior Woman, Tina Turner's character, and Furiosa from the Mad Max 2, 3, and 4 respectively; Lady Death; Red Sonja; Grace Jone's character from Conan the Destroyer; Valeria (Sandal Bergman) from Conan the Barbarian; Queen Boadicea; Xena; Betty Paige's Cheetah woman (her look was probably an inspiration for Xena in some ways); Ygritte from Game of Thrones; Atalanta; Princess Merida of Brave; I even created my own version in a Barbarian Pinky TA!
Who are your faves from the this genre?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Creeping through the desert ruins, not wearing overly much, heat hits like a wall, golden sun dazels and mystifies. From plucked strings to creepy atmospherics, the sound bursts in a bombastic wave of high energy multilayered noise and exotic sounds, with pounding percussion.
Topics and shownotes
Links
DD Fashion Spotlight 8: Rose Red - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/05/friday-fashion-spotlight-8-rose-red/
Featured comic:
Latitude Zero - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/04/featured-comic-latitude-zero/
Featured music:
Hentai Action Theater - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hentai_Action_Theater - by Bedlam Boy, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
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Episode 262 - DUCK Radio 3
Mar 14, 2016
WELCOME to the final part of the Radio D.U.C.K. trilogy! This is where we put all the rest of Gunwallace's amazing songs AND a special treat for you as well listeners: Jimmy's Folly. Our radio DJs have gone just a little crazy this time… the brutish, hard rocking Jimmy Storm, demonic Anastasia Ravendale, and dried up old Rhet Blanket battle it out over the on air turf in the strangest way possible… BRINGING THE THUNDER! Gunwallace's amazing comic themes meanwhile are just as juicy as ever.
Episode 255 - Drunk Duck Improvement Drive
Jan 25, 2016
We're trying to fix up Drunk Duck, adding the the comic statistics back in, fixing forums, adding notifications to PQs and MORE, but we need money to do it. In this Quackcast, Ozoneocean, Banes, and Pitface talk about the improvements we want to have on DD, and what YOU can do to help us out. Please consider donating to our Indiegogo fund-raising drive to help us pay our programmer: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/drunk-duck-webcomics-improvement-drive/x/4410947#/ There are a LOT of cool perks you can have including your own Quackcast interview all about YOU, original art from The creator of Modest Medusa, Charby the Vampirate and others, a 126 page Modest Medusa comic for only $10 and much more! If you can't spare any change, please consider spreading the word to your readers. Remember, these fixes are for everyone, by donating to DD you're helping yourself. :D
Episode 189 - It's YOUR CHOICE...
Oct 19, 2014
It's YOUR CHOICE people, that's the name of the ongoing conic by VinMas who we interviewed on this week's Quackcast! YOUR CHOICE is an interesting comic, both in style and the way it's created; it's a real testemant to physical, hands-on arting about, drawn with pens, pencils, coloured markers, paints etc and collaged over magazine and TV screen images; story and plot are dictated by the whims of fans in its own facebook community, and numerous elements such as characters and situations are drawn from pop culture. VinoMas talks to us about this interesting webcomic project which is a cross between TV soap opera and Postmodern fine art!
Episode 172 - The QuackQuiz!
Jun 23, 2014
Come on down, it's Quiz time! For this week's Quackcast we had a quiz based on DD comics, as a friendly, fun way to try and promote them... there's even a bit of Drunk Duck history mixed up in the questions. Just a smidge. We had three contestants taking part for the honour of telling everyone else to suck it; Archaeologist Amazon Adventurer Artist Pitface, Psychologist Freedom Fighter Lawyer Comicer Tantz Aerine, and Scientist Philosopher Comic Group Leader and all around boob-fancier Abt Nihil. They all competed to the very limit of their abilities, striving for dominance against each other, employing every dirty trick in the book and even some new ones... So please listen to the first ever DD bottomless Quiz! Oh, and there's even some titbits about the totally mythical married life of Ozoneocean and Pitface.
Episode 158 - A Very Modern Modest Medusa: Part 2
Mar 17, 2014
In the second part of our interview with Jake Richmond of Modest Medusa Banes and I discuss with him topics like the use of gradients in comic art, background details, simplifying your artwork, cell shading, and the perils of covering up art with speech bubbles! This was not originally intended as a two parter but we chatted on with Jake after the Quackcast was over and he was so interesting, insightful, and on-topic that we didn't want to waste any of the chat we had with him.
Episode 157 - A very modern Modest Medusa
Mar 11, 2014
Banes returns to the Quackcast to join me on another interview with Jake Richmond of the very popular Modest Medusa! This time we get to find out more about Jake's comic making technique, his writing style, character creation, colour technique, drawing materials, programs and his whole work flow. I had wanted to get into this last time as well on Quackcast 155 but we had a great chat about the things you can do to make money from your webcomics instead. So now we get a full picture of what goes into the making of Modest Medusa! For example; did you know it's all drawn on paper and scanned? Neither did I! This is part one, part two will come out next week. Stay tuned!
Episode 155 - A Moment with Modest Medusa
Feb 24, 2014
After a terrible bathroom flooding incident Modest Medusa was born. That's sort of the beginning of the story of Modest Medusa, but also how the comic began too! In this Quackcast I interview Jake Richmond, the creator of the very successful and popular Modest Medusa: a pretty amazing webcomic success story. Starting out at Drunk Duck with his comic in 2011 he's been able to quit his main day job and work on his comic full time! He does some freelancing and teaching as well, but his comic is his main source of income. That's awesome! And this wasn't by luck either, or “being in the right place at the right time” that many have leveraged much of their success from, Jake got there though hard work and dedication to his readers. A real webcomic inspiration! This is the goal that every webcomicer should be aiming for and his success shows that it IS acheiveable! - Only IF you can put in that work though. It's not easy, no short-cuts.
