#defiance comics

[defiancecomics]

Thanks to @ultrainfinitepit for the colour palette.

I've been having fun with limited palettes, and I think it's been really good for my creativity. I did start another piece after this, but my brain did the stupid "I hate it" thing about 3/4 of the way through, so too bad, so sad, no one's gonna see it lol.

There is a version with no signature and no watermark on my Patreon.

[defiancecomics]

This future, where art is generated by robots while I have to scrape a living in an underpaid job I hate and am overworked at, was not the future I was promised

Alarm bells being rung by Maureen Johnson on AI and the Big Publishers

[im-smart-i-swear]

coming back home.

@barrenclan

[soleminisanction]

So a while back I ran the numbers to confirm a suspicion that fandom trends towards a trans Tim Drake, and there's a lot of bits and pieces around his canon material that I think contributes to that interest. But there's a particular, subtle one that's been poking at my mind a lot because I think it might actually be a pretty significant factor that nobody really notices:

His costumes.

The original Robin costume, the one Dick and Jason wore, is childish but exposing. It's innocent enough when they're being drawn as spunky children, but during the period when Dick's still wearing it into his late teens and early 20s, it's practically as revealing as a lot of the women's costumes (and, in retrospect, almost certainly laid some of the groundwork for him sometimes being sexualized by the art and writing the way female characters normally are -- George Pérez, at least, absolutely put him on display every bit as much as he did Starfire and Donna).

Damian's costumes, meanwhile, lean more into archaic/fantasy armor designs and are thus largely genderless outside some vague allusions to the codename's Robin Hood roots. And Steph's is, well, a minidress, and one designed to show off her figure, drawing explicit attention to her femininity.

But then you have Tim's most iconic costume, his original one, which is not only fully covering in a way the original look isn't, it also, by virtue of being designed in the 90s, sports a very specific feature: molded body armor shaped to look like pectoral and abdominal muscles. In other words -- an idealized male body.

Not every artist always included that detail, but it was an explicit part of the design that you don't see as much these days, at least not for teen heroes. Which means it's inadvertently the perfect costume for a trans masculine Boy Wonder. It's got built-in body shaping. The cape and tunic layers even help to make his shoulders look wider.

Tim's second costume, the OYL later suit, doesn't explicitly have this body shaping element, but some artists still hint at it in the same way that Dick's Nightwing suits do (ie, we assume they're not showing off their real muscles with skintight suits for safety reasons, but who knows). Plus it comes with the bonus gay longing of changing the colors to mourn the dead crush he's too deep in the closet to recognize.

And then you've got his modern Robin look which has the same kind of shaping going on in a sleaker, more subtle way, though it can vary from artist to artist how much the red part of his suit is drawn as a breast plate vs. a part of the bodysuit.

As a bonus, the design also has a tendency to make him look lean and lithe, in an interesting contrast to Damian who, despite being physically smaller than Tim, tends to have a presence that makes him come across as stockier and more solid, possibly because he's more heavily armored.

You even see this with some of Tim'snon-Robin looks. I've mentioned this elsewhere but, the original Red Robin look making him look older when the cowl was up honestly makes a lot of sense. That suit was originally designed for a Dick Grayson who was pushing 60 to conceal the extent of his age while still communicating his maturity and development. It makes sense that it'd work the other way, to make 17 year old Tim look like he's in his late 20s/early 30s.

It's tunic over a body suit design is also just aesthetically pleasing in terms of forming an elegant male body type, the same way a well-cut suit can be. Again, it does especially nice things for the shoulders, which is why I personally prefer it to the fully bodysuit redesign they give him in the latter part of the series. Although as we can see from the details in Marcus To's art, even that body suit has seams strategically placed to suggest muscles.

And then of course there's the 2016 Rebirth era Red Robin costume, which is just a more heavily-armored version of his classic Robin look that's trying really hard to make him look masculine and mature, which means... exaggerated muscles.

And the thing is, it's not that this doesn't happen with other characters' costumes. But for various reasons it specifically didn't happen with the other Robin costumes, like I described at the start.

Which is not something I think people consciously notice. But I do know that, when I was writing my transmasc Tim fanfic a few years before realizing that I myself was also transmasc, one of the images that solidified the story for me was how good it would've felt the first time a transmasc Tim put on his new Robin costume and saw the Boy Wonder looking back at him. And I remember specifically thinking about how nice the shaped armor would be for that sort of thing.

It's kinda funny how an obvious attempt to enforce gender norms wound up, for lack of a better term, backfiring, at least in my opinion. There's just something about exaggerating the masculinity of Robin, a role designed to contrast and foil the already exaggerated masculine ideal of Batman, that makes it feel like a performance.

[kodyisover]

I wasn't sure if folks would want webcomic promotion shoved in their face following the news that the U.S. just voted away its own democracy. I wasn't sure if I - a BIPOC trans person living in the country that just voted away its own democracy - would want to talk about that webcomic. But I looked at the news Wednesday morning, felt about 15 seconds of despair, and then I was immediately filled with resolve.

If my queer, trans existence has become an act of defiance, then let me rebel. If the content of this comic becomes unpalatable to the law, then let me go until they stop me. I'm going to keep creating art and Keeping Time because I need to, for myself, foremost. This story is queer and messy and not meant to be an ethics guide, and might be the kind of work that'll find itself under the censorship crosshairs of the upcoming administration. But until then. Until I have no options. I'll be here, making my queer as fuck art.

I guess, to borrow the words from Denver here...

Fuck it.

Let's keep going.

Start from the beginning | Latest Update

[linecrosser]

Whumptober 2024 - Day 13 - Whumpee using themself as bait | defiance | "Take me instead."

[barrenclan]

are we going to see defiance again in the main plotline? did you have an ending for defiance in mind, or were they more of a plot device. this deer is going to drive me insane

I think possibly continuing to read the comic will answer these questions for you!

[dedalvs]

San Diego Comic-Con Panel (2024)

If you're heading to SDCC this year Jessie and I will be there giving a presentation on language creation in Room 11 on Thursday (7/25) at 7:00 p.m. We'd love to see you there!

[hyakunana]

"Your people need their heroes."

Their heroes:

[rising-defiance-au]

RISING DEFIANCE ┋ VOL 1 ┋ PAGE 36

HD IN FULLVIEW ▪︎ UNEDITED BELOW CUT

[edifythedefiance]

Edify The Defiance Vol.1

Chapter 1 Page 12

[START] … [PREVIOUS] … [NEXT]

[defiancecomics]

I'm maybe starting a tarot deck??

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

wwwyf organizers voice Okay guys where should we build our monument to nostalgia culture and indulgence that destroys. Las vegas you say?

[warverse]

Iris had recommended a great mentor for these two. Too bad Enyas a sore loser <3

But the brohoes need some guidance because they're getting too many wake up calls that pew pew gun and hanging someone isn't going to always work.

Don't worry I'll try to not make this a cliche mentor trope, more mama bear dad figure which I think will make it more fun ++

[fellhellion]

had thoughts. went insane as per usual.

[graphicpolicy]

Preview: Grendel: Devil's Crucible - Defiance #4

Grendel: Devil's Crucible - Defiance #4 preview. After surviving the Anti-Grendels and a double vampire attack, Grendel Prime, Ptolemy, and Hari Smythe finally make it to the Grendel Grotto #comics #comicbooks