When I wrote the script for Savage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment back in the spring of 2009, I specified that in the final scenes Tonya should be wearing “a sort of ninja-guerilla-superhero-Zorro costume.” It became my task two years later to interpret what the heck I meant by this, so before drawing page 170 I did a preliminary costume design:

Even though this was a pretty rapid sketch, I’m pleased with how it turned out. The outlandish costume and hair is a good foil for Sen. Greg’s new straight-laced look. The posture is believable and the proportions are a lot more naturalistic than one can usually expect from me. I’ve actually had to be a consciously cartoonier in the finished artwork for the sake of consistency.

My main regret is that at some point while drawing this the ol’ hormones must have taken over, because I made Tonya look sexier than she’s really supposed to be. (What’s with those gams? And isn’t she supposed to be 43?) I always intended Tonya to be a proxy for the reader, a sympathetic punk rock everywoman with real life dreams and problems etc., and I think making her a super-hot babe gets in the way of this. I worry that on certain pages of the comic, especially as my own knowledge of constructive anatomy improved, I probably lapsed into some unwarranted horndoggery, and if so I apologize. That’s also a betrayal my own principles: DC and Marvel’s ridiculous body imagery and unrealizable physical ideals, both masculine and feminine, were a huge part of what repelled me from reading any comics whatsoever for most of my righteous teenage years… and a desire to smash these norms is part of what brought me back to comics in my mid twenties.