Female Imagery in Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror (Post 3): Larry Elmore Kitiara and the Death of Sturm

I begin by admitting my ignorance: I had never heard of Larry Elmore. But it appears that he has been very influential in the shaping the look of many fantasy texts, especially early editions Dungeons and Dragons handbooks and the Dragonlace series. Again, my ignorance betrays me; I've had limited experience with these texts, just some fleeting perusals through my husband's extensive collection of them.

Further ignorance: I know nothing of the Dragonlace series. I only know what I gleaned from the Wikipedia entry about the novels and the characters, though I understand that these are important books within the realm of popular fantasy. I also love the idea of a collaboratively-created story world, not just by Hickman and Weis, but all the other authors who wrote stories taking place in Krynn. But collaborative story telling is for another post.

Focusing now on the image of Kitiara and Sturm, I admit it draws me in immediately.

Kitiara's powerful stare burns off the surface of the image. Her gaze doesn't seem to falter, and this creates a sharp juxtaposition between the motion of her long red hair and tattered red cloak. Her gaze is very much like her spear -- straight and sharp and sure.

Yet the motion she makes with her right hand slightly softens her look. Though she has killed him, it appears as though Sturm's death weighs on her. I don't know this story; I don't know these characters. But her stern gaze paired with her hand gesture make it seem like she may be at least a little remorseful of her actions.

Her armor and battle-scarred clothing suggest she's a warrior. She's familiar with death. But that look and that hand gesture tell me that this death means something more, if not for the character Kitiara then for the larger series.

What leads me to question any possible remorse, though, is the icy, snowy background. IT suggests an internal coldness on the part of Kitiara. Like other women characters in the fantasy genre, Kitiara embodies strength and beauty. But she also seems to contain little emotion; she may be just as barren as the world that surrounds her.

All these combinations -- the stare, the hand gesture, the cold background -- lead to the creation of an interesting character type. Who is Kitiara as she appears in this image? And is her image an appropriate rendering for the type of character she is in the books? Or are we seeing a polished interpretation of this woman here?

Female Imagery in Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror (Post 2): Margaret Brundage Weird Tales Cover Art Oct 1933

Margaret Brundage was one of the most prolific cover artists for the pulp magazines; for Weird Tales specifically, she created 66 original pieces of cover art. Like many of the contemporary readers of the pulp, I was not aware that a woman created much of its cover art. Naively, I just assumed that men drew the beautiful, scantily clad women on these covers. In a similar vein as Frazetta’s Vampirella cover, these images were meant to attract the reader’s attention, to draw him in, to get him to purchase the magazine. But on further reflection, something does come across through Brundage’s work that does not (for me, anyway) happen when I view Frazetta’s paintings.

The characteristic that is most telling of Brundage’s work is its inherent movement. To look at this particular image, I am struck by its apparent natural fluidity. Like Frazetta’s work, Brundage’s females are curvy, seductive, and seem to embody great power. Unlike Frazetta’s work, though, all of Brundage’s paintings seem ready to burst forth from the page. Their power is highly charged, active.

This image of the Vampire Master (I can only assume that that was what Brundage’s was illustrating as it’s the only story title printed with the image) shows her posed unusually. The angle of her arms, the placement of her hands, give the impression that she was caught in mid-action. Perhaps she is getting ready to extend her arms outward from her body; perhaps she will extend them in front of her. She may even be in the process of dropping her arms by the sides of her body. The viewer does not know, exactly, what’s she doing, but her movement transcends the page. She actually seems to embody more power than Vampirella does because of Brundage’s ability to give her paintings such life.

What also intrigues me about Brundage’s choice of images is that she typically did not illustrate scenes from the stories. Often, she would just create images that showed what she believed to be the essence of a story, her impression. The vampire master, then, may look nothing like this; she might not even be a woman. So, while still succumbing to the commodity nature of the publication, and the fact that images of beautiful women probably sold more issues, Brundage may be inverting this trend.

By choosing to present so many images of women on the cover (and many of her covers show only women, no men) even when the female characters may not have played a major role in the stories or even had been in the stories to begin with, she was instead reserving this space for images of powerful, active women.

Female Imagery in Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror (Post 1): Frank Frazetta's Vampirella

Hello all! My name is Nicole, Jason's wife. I have really been enjoying reading Jay's blog these past few weeks, and I've decided to contribute a few sporadic posts to a series of my own here -- a visual-rhetorical analysis of selected artwork. I'm also a sci-fi/fantasy/ horror FANATIC and really love reading these genres. I hope to start writing in the genres too! To help with that, I'll be posting on some of my favorite pieces of sci-fi/fantasy/horror visual art and other images. We can learn a lot about what makes these genres so evocative, I think, by taking some time to think about the images that come to represent them. And so, for my inaugural post, I'll look at a very famous Frazetta image.

Frank Frazetta was a well-known fantasy artist who helped to create a distinct look and feel to the genre, especially its pulp and comic book figures. Known primarily for his renderings of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian character, much of Frazetta’s work presents images of hyper-masculinized and/or hyper-feminized figures. The word that I feel best describes his work is gritty, and this comes through I think particularly in his use of colors. He blends dark hues to produce dirty browns, greens, and reds, which give an impression of earth mixed with dried blood. Frazetta also employs shadows to emphasize his male figures’ muscles or female figures’ curves.

This cover of the first issue of the comic Vampirella demonstrates many of these traits. The image of the rising (or setting?) moon fills the background, and it appears extremely bright in comparison to the brownish-red sky that surrounds it. However, it is not a pure white, but a blending of cream, grey, blue, green, and redish hues; it seems reminiscent of a harvest moon. Vampirella herself stands confidently in front of this looming moon, the faintest shadow of what seems to be bat wings reflected on the moon directly behind her, a hint of her shape-shifting ability. She cocks out her right hip while her left foot rests on a human skull, which she could most likely easily crush. Like all of Frazetta’s female figures, Vampirella appears to be a strong, sexy woman. She is not thin but instead curved, perhaps what some would call voluptuous. The bright red, scanty cloth that appears strategically placed on her body accentuates her curves, as does the use of shadowing. Using shadow, Frazetta implies that Vampirella has hips and a bit of a belly. His choice to emphasize features like these seem especially interesting given that at the time of this publication (the late 1960s, early 1970s) was the beginning of the rise of the rail-thin supermodel. Vampirella is no Twiggy, however, but instead a kind of femme fatale, a true vamp.

The interplay between the text and the image is also striking as it directs the viewer precisely how to understand the image. The very top of the page, in yellow text, signals to the viewer that the contents of the comic will “bewitch and bedevil.” Vampirella’s body gestures also suggest this: her left hand placed suggestively on her left hip, while her right hand, specifically her right index finger, coyly placed by her mouth. The words “bewitch” and “bedevil” further reinforce her position as a creature, a type of other, something to be feared but also to be fascinated by. The black text placed above her head on the moon warns the viewer to “look out!” because “she’s waiting inside this first collector’s edition…for you!!” For me, it is this text that diminishes the effect of the image. By calling attention to the commodity nature of the comic, its status as a collector’s item, Vampirella becomes more like a model, a mannequin, a tool used to sell goods. Other textual elements now stand out: the large #1 at the top left of the page; the 50¢ mark on the right side of the page.

It might be easy to dismiss Frazetta and his work as being sexist. I would like to argue that instead, he was being very true to a genre in which female characters can be just as strong and commanding as their male counterparts. For me, what ruins this impression with this image is the surrounding text (obviously not incorporated by Frazetta), which focuses on the nature of the comic as a thing to be bought and collected.