Purses

Hey everybody it's been a while since I last posted here. Well let me tell you, when you're driving down the highway and encounter a reverse space wedgie of immense proportions, turn around, just turn around. That said I'm alright and I'm already at work on The Super Cliche Hero Chick #4 and I figured I should put something up on the ol' Wonder Blog. So What shall I post about? I'm not doing a production blog for this issue as I spend most of those going "uh.... this week I drew... and stuff" I could write about how DC and Marvel seem allergic to making money... but that's too much work. I know! I'll write one of my self proclaimedly (that's a word... now) witty and insightful comic culture pieces, Hm, uh.

Purses! 

Hey where are you going? this one's gonna be good!

Okay As you may know I write comics. And I've done two series' that have both been led by female main characters. Well  the other day I noticed something, only twice (in the same issue) in my ten years of drawing female led comics have I ever drawn a purse. I thought "well that's an oversight I draw women and I've consistently left out one piece of  kit almost every woman I know carries." After this thought I noticed, while reading comics, nobody draws women with purses, or at least no one who draws the comics I've been reading. And that got me thinking, "is it an oversight or a purposed omission?" And sadly I don't know, I really don't have an answer to that. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't make up some. So here are my thoughts on this huge yet not that big omission in comicdom.

Comic artists are mostly guys and can't get into a feminine mindset. 

Let's face it most comics artists are guys (sadly) and guys just don't think about lady things all that often, unless their married or researching. So let's say married. Since men don't carry purses they don't give them any thought. And sadly many of the men that draw comics think girls have cooties* so it's not likely to change. As for the women who draw comics maybe they're all folks who don't carry purses, or maybe they do carry purses and I'm seriously over thinking this. so onto another reason.

The purse is so ever present that it's invisible. 

There's a psychological concept (sorry I'm not gonna look up what it's called for a silly post about purses) in which we view a persons affects as a part of them. This is best exemplified by the scenario where you see you're uncle Horace in his car driving down the street  and you say "Hey it's uncle Horace!" instead of the more accurate "It's uncle Horace in his bitchin' 57 Chevy". Uncle Horace's car becomes him when he's in it,  perhaps this same effect happens with women and their purses. Leaving the purse as an un-thought about detail. Or it could just be...

Comic artists draw a bajillion things for every comic and who gives a crap about a stupid purse. 

This is probably the heart of the matter. Most comics involve drawing the same thing over and over again, while nowhere on par with animation, a comic artist could easily draw their characters around  a hundred times per issue. And that's on top of places, things, cars, animals, monsters, weaponry, airplanes, explosions, shrapnel, Kirby crackle, power cosmic, dinosaurs, spacecraft, not life as we know it aliens, and cosmic incidents rivaling the big bang. In all of this it's really pretty easy to forget a little thing like a purse.

This is kind of a shame because personal affects can be great tools of visual narrative. Because anything someone keeps on their person can tell us about that person without being told. So maybe we artist should think more about little things like purses. Maybe it'll help us in making our characters people, and thus our comics better.  

Hey this worked out pretty good maybe I should do more of these. Well see you around. 


* sorry I just need to take that potshot again.