Quirk, slave girl of the future

  is the artist.  Here is his alternate version.


Quirk is a pop artist from 2099 who dreamed of rebellion.  Seems a villain had strong ideas about how to deal with rebellion.   


This one takes some explanation, fairly elaborate explanation.  The 2099 comics were a series of comics released by Marvel.  The idea was to retell classic super heroes (and one villain Dr. Doom) in a far future dystopia.  I've got a nostalgia for the series, though in hindsight their value ranged from pretty good to pretty awful.  The best one was Doom 2099 and I'm still quite fond of it.

More personal to me was Hulk 2099.  It was one I really wanted to be good.  It had a great theme.  The Hulk was a savage, a primordial throwback , rebelling against the over-civilized, mechanically dependent world.  His design was even prehistoric, though it was a very odd mix of giant sloth and reptile.  And multiple rows of sharp teeth.  And a spikey, ridged tongue.  Okay, the design was kind of stupid.  But come on.  The Hulk had CLAWS.

His sidekick was Quirk.  She was a pop star who wanted to be a REAL rebel, not a pretend rebel singing empty songs.  Just think of all the "empowerment" songs we've got right now that are about nothing, and you'll understand.  Anyway, when she sang music that pissed off the evil corps, they put a hit on her.  The Hulk saved her and she tagged along.

The pairing was pretty good.  The Hulk was all "I'm savage and powerful, back to the primitive, raaaaarrrg!"  Meanwhile, Quirk was still a product of civilization.  Then they stopped appearing in the 2099 specials and got their own comic series.  It all went to complete garbage.  The art.  The writing.  Everything.  Even ruined Quirk (she start sleeping with the least interesting characters) and Hulk's characters.

It's all a bit of a sore spot with me.

There were a lot of design challenges with Quirk.  She's described as "having more races in her blood than the Grand Prix."  According to Quirk she's "part Japanese, part Jewish, part Mexican, part Afro-American."  That's a challenge to draw or color to begin with.  Add the fact her skin color was not always CONSISTENT.  Grey seemed to be the most common. 

Another design problem were the styles.  The ideas the 2099 had about the future were always silly.  Now they're silly AND dated.  So we had to come up with a new design.  drew a lot of influence from Mass Effect and the Fifth Element.