DISTRESSED DAMSELS: Rose vs. KILL BILL's Go-Go (?), recycled for EMPOWERED (Patreon)
Content
Behold, the first few pages of roughs for an abortive commissioned DiD comic from the early 2000s that would've pitted Dirty Pair's Kei--nay, Rose against the spiky-ball-on-a-chain-wielding character "Go-Go" from Quentin Tarantino's fine flick Kill Bill pt. 1. (Note that I was briefly involved in a Kill Bill comic pitch recounted here years ago, but have neither time nor interest in bothering to look up the post.)
Cheesecakery ahoy as Go-Go was rocking a conspicuously scantier schoolgirl uni than in the actual movie; also, this was a time of pouty lips and wonky waists, as the dreaded "Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch" was in full effect here. I'm honestly not sure if the wonkiness was due to me assuming that these pages would never be published, and hence not giving a crap if the figure poses were just tossed-off, deeply flawed scribbles; I'm pretty sure this wasn't a deliberate aesthetic choice on my part, though. I was just wingin' it, folks!
For reasons now lost to me, the commissioned comic was never completed, but the roughs did eventually serve a useful purpose years later when I reused poses from the sequence's 2nd & 3rd pages in the Empowered vol. 1 story that introduced Ninjette, as seen in the jpegs that follow. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" indeed!
However, note also that these roughs influenced a key Empowered costume design riff, in that Ninjette's low-riding shorts were directly inspired by the chrome "hip-huggers" that Kei-- nay, Rose sported in Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's illustrations for the original Dirty Pair novels by SF author Haruka Takachiho, as seen in the final jpeg above. (The "Ninjette" logo on the backside was inspired by real life, after that eyecatching fashion concept briefly became a thing in my remote neck of the woods.)
I'm fairly sure that more roughs from this failed commission exist, but I've not been able to dig them up as yet. If I find 'em, I'll post 'em here when I get a chance.
UPDATE: Aaaaaaaaand I just spent a g-d hour outta my g-d morning shift setting up this post, which bodes very ill indeed for substantive progress on today's Empowered vol. 12 page. Ouch!
NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Who knows what might go up next? At the moment, not even me, thanks to the semi-randomized "M/W/F+" posting schedule! Golly!