I Mangled My Witchblade

I Mangled My Witchblade

Oct 07

I mangled my Witchblade. It’s the “deluxe” collected edition of that first set of issues and it’s been with me since college. I’ll spare you the gory details, but basically, I was engaged in a bout of feverish closet cleaning, and said closet has some rather treacherous sliding doors and Sara Pezzini’s tentacle-clad ass was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s mostly visible at the top of a certain sub-section of the book, a sad crumpling that begins on the page where Sara’s “working out,” ie sexy-boxing with her boobs flying all over the place (it’s important to work out the boobs when you’re a Top Cow heroine, OK?).

Still. I’m sad.

OK, before you say it: I know. I know. I KNOW. I am not supposed to like Witchblade. It’s one of those generic melonboobs-a-go-go Image titles from the late ’90s. It takes place in the kind of world where being a female cop means going undercover as a hooker/stripper/latex-clad sexy lady almost every night of the week. There are better superheroine-centric books I could have read in college or that I could be reading right now.

I know.

But for whatever reason, this book still means something to me. It’s one of those things I can’t explain liking, that I wouldn’t really bother defending, that I would probably make fun of along with everyone else if it came up in conversation.

But…(*stage whisper*) I still like it.

I’m trying to piece together exactly when I purchased this particular edition. I think it was the summer before my senior year of college. I was subletting a place in Berkeley with a friend, splitting my time between working at my school’s art gallery and interning at a local newspaper. I was high on the drama of Bay Area life, twisted into an anxious knot over my potential “career,” and quite meager in the funds department. It still stands as one of the best summers ever.

In terms of my comics life, I was a little over the Big Two. I wanted something different, something new without eons of backstory. And I really wanted something with a female lead. Reading Witchblade now, it’s easy to criticize. The tale of Sara the Sexy Cop, her tentacle-y gauntlet and all the mean people who want said gauntlet is packed to the gills with melodrama. There’s a lot of perspective-changing voiceover. The T&A is overwhelming at times. But I think what appeals to me now is the same thing that appealed to me then: there’s a definite passion behind the story. It doesn’t always translate well, but it never aims for the half-assed. That double-page shot near the end where the Witchblade completely overwhelms Sara’s entire form? The detailing packed into that shot — the coiling spikes, the blazing shreds of dress, and all that fucking hair — just goes for it. The result is almost assaultive, yet I can’t look away.

And the storytelling is fairly on-the-nose, but there’s something weirdly comforting about that. There are “oh, yeah!” and “oh, shit” moments. Sara’s acceptance of the gauntlet at the end of this volume — and it’s a definitive acceptance, not an “oh, I guess I can live with this” sort of thing — has an action movie epic thing going on that feels exactly right. The various romance angles basically beat you over the head with their SIGNIFICANCE, but after all the fucking repression and love-related angst that seems to go on with most of the other superheroines I enjoy, that’s sort of refreshing.

Even though I can’t say Witchblade is actually good or recommend it to any of my comics-curious friends, I think it reminds me a little bit of, well, me during that summer. I didn’t always make the best decisions, I was clumsy and kind of lame, but I still went for it. I didn’t think twice about dumb crushes. I just threw myself into them fully and freely and dealt with the consequences later. I didn’t guard myself so meticulously.

I guess that’s why that book that I accidentally crushed still means something to me. It’s like an imperfect snapshot of a very specific moment in my life. It’s kind of a dumb, self-centered reason for a connection, but it’s there. So Mangled Witchblade goes back on the shelf, in between Watchmen and the X-books, nestled amongst more respected works. She’s kind of crazy and klutzy and enjoys sleeping in the nude a little too much, but Joss help me, I love her. I’ll try to treat her with more care from now on.