The Soul Sisters Revisited

[Adrian Bamforth]

I expect it's been discussed elsewhere, and I'm probably stating the obvious, but I take Steve Yeowell's Red Seas cover to be an homage to Lichtenstein's Pop Art pieces (hence the unusual-looking speech bubble), which works on paper (no joke intended) since he is able to use his stripped-down style to match the paintings. However, aside from the questionability of pastiching a pastiche, the problem is that The Lichtenstein pieces are are actually pretty crap as reproductions, and of a somewhat soulless style (perhaps intentionally), while Yeowell's version is not good enough to be a good Yeowell's piece, while not bad enough to be a good Lichtenstein homage. Oh the irony.

[I, Cosh]

Also, Jena looks like a man in drag.

[Roger Godpleton]

So does your mom.

[James Stacey]

Every time I post on this forum it's insightful and enriches people's experience.

[Steve Green]

I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I don't have much to say on Soul Sisters is it's not something I've read in 20(?) years, and the only thing I can really comment on is Shaky's art which didn't do much for me...

[Emperor]

I expect it's been discussed elsewhere, and I'm probably stating the obvious, but I take Steve Yeowell's Red Seas cover to be an homage to Lichtenstein's Pop Art pieces (hence the unusual-looking speech bubble), which works on paper (no joke intended) since he is able to use his stripped-down style to match the paintings. However, aside from the questionability of pastiching a pastiche, the problem is that The Lichtenstein pieces are are actually pretty crap as reproductions, and of a somewhat soulless style (perhaps intentionally), while Yeowell's version is not good enough to be a good Yeowell's piece, while not bad enough to be a good Lichtenstein homage. Oh the irony.

It seems the Lichtenstein angle was added in rather late in the game, they cropped the image a bit a added some colour effects on top with the speech bubble:

Initially, however, the cover was simply a heart wrenching scene from the story, with the pop art idea introduced later

...

Next are the flat colours. It was at this point that the Lichtenstein idea was mooted. Steve says "The Lichtenstein idea was suggested by Tharg after seeing the final cover colours..."

http://2000adcovers.blogspot.com/2012/01/steve-yeowell-wedding-day-dots.html

Having Eddie Izzard play Jena Makarov was in there from the start though.

[I, Cosh]

I hesitate to ask, on account of the danger of it coming off me-me, but why is everybody talking about Steve Yoewell? Steve yowell didn't draw the Soul Sisters, Shaky did.

Steve Yeowell is more interesting than Soul Sisters and fresher in people's memory. Add to that most people wont remember much about Soul Sisters and the ones who do don't want to offend you.

...the strip is much, much better than people have been going on about forever, to the point where even I bought into that.

David's story is great, Shaky's art is outstanding - and even my own script-doctoring contributions strike me as the better end of my stuff when it's good.

I don't know what people have been saying forever so I can't respond to that, but I've just read the story for the first time. I wouldn't say it was shit, but it's certainly not great. So, on a par with the majority of short-lived Meg strips really. Shaky's art is a lot of fun. After Grant's comment above, I was interested to note that the first four or five episodes do have a lot of detailed backgrounds then he sort of gives up on that towards the end. There's also one fantastic panel with one of his standard looking figures against a scratchy, felt-tip backdrop of stuff getting bombed.

Unfortunately, the best art can't make up for a boring story and that's pretty much what you've got here. I can see what it's trying to do: create a light-hearted, throwaway romp riffing on daft sixties TV and comics. It probably doesn't help that I don't have much affection for either of those things but I think it fails because, rather than pastiche or homage, it's mostly just quotation. There were a couple of things about it I found mildly amusing and I'm happy to accept that it may just be my sense of humour that doesn't chime with the material, but a line like "...this is the hardest timber in the world, so ask yourself one question. Do I feel penitent?" doesn't even make me smile in recognition.

Although I believe the art came after the story, it actually reads as if it was written by someone who'd just seen Shaky's portfolio and been asked to come up with a narrative to make sense out of it.

[Colm]

I've been doing a 2000AD / Megazine re-read of late, so I've actually read Soul Sisters relatively recently.

I have no issue with Shaky Kane's art. He's not one of my favorite artist but I quite liked Soul Gun Warrior and Shaky's Beyond Belief pages usually made me chuckle.

Speaking of which, therein lies my problem with Soul Sisters - I didn't find it funny. Much like David Bishop's other comedy series in the Megazine, The Straightjacket Fits, I feel it tries too hard to be wacky. Or perhaps there's simply too much zaniness in both strips. Dredd stories about the crazy citizens of MC-1 are usually funny because there is always the straight man there to arrest / shoot them at the end. From what I remember Soul Sisters lacks this grounding character / setting (Brit Cit is unrecognizable from the grim and corrupt world portrayed in Armitage) that can help make good comedy. 

Or to do away with any attempts at grand analysis, it just didn't have any jokes that I found funny.

Apologies Proper Dave, I don't post here very often and I didn't really want to wade in and criticize something that you were creatively involved in. But given that you asked and not many of the regular posters could help you much, I thought I'd offer my opinion.

[Colm]

...criticize something that you were creatively involved in.

poor grammar edit:
...criticize something in which you were creatively involved.

[JOE SOAP]

Prog: 126, Shaky's first art in the prog.





He had his name and style down even back in '79.