This was a fun one. The client asked to see a classic side-to-side, back-against-the-wall 70’s Marvel pin-up with exploitation/B-movie film mainstays Power Man and Iron Fist… but gender bent as females. That’s always fun to do, so the gender-bending was easy. The colors were challenging because of yellow being used in both costumes, so I tried to differentiate IF’s from PW’s in color and tone. I also tweaked various other colors to be more complimentary, and used a dark blue/black for PW’s pants, because I just can’t do that ‘it’s black, but it’s blue in 4-color printing!’ style of inverted coloring from back in the day. I wrapped IF’s breastline with the ubiquitous dragon tattoo in a way I thought looked logical. The biggest challenge in this piece was with Power Woman. I didn’t want to bulk her up like She-Hulk or Power Girl or similar. I wanted her to look feminine. An early draft of this sketch showed an equally muscular female version of Power Man, and I have to say, she looked freaky. But with an athletic, but less muscular, physique as shown, her arm flex doesn’t have the same impact it could have.

But hey, breasts!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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