(bright music)
- Welcome to Tales from the Comments,
the first NerdSync video of 2016.
Exciting stuff. - [Voiceover] Whoo!
- [Scott] This video's gonna be responding
to your guys's comments and questions
that you left on our series of videos
about superhero design.
So, if you haven't seen those videos yet,
you can do so by clicking right there
on the i icon in the corner to check 'em out.
We've got videos like why superheroes wear tights,
why they wear underwear on the outside of their pants,
why they wear capes, why they have white eyes,
all that stuff.
Go watch it, and then come back to this one.
I think we should tackle this video by video,
so let's start with tights.
On the poll we ran about whether you guys want superheroes
to wear or you don't want them to wear tights,
71% of you guys said no tights.
As for a reasoning why lots of superheroes wear tights,
Sjono and lot of you guys, like a bunch of you guys,
said that tights are easier for an artist to draw,
and I understand where that mentality is coming from.
I just don't think we can say that objectively.
I think there are lots of differences in artists,
and each artist will have a different skill set,
so some might be really great at drawing people with tights,
Some might be terrible at it
and they like drawing loose-fitting clothing.
So, I don't know if I can say that that is objectively true,
but, I mean, I get the logic behind that.
Undecidedgenius brings up a really great point
that I wish I included in the video,
and I'm kinda kicking myself about it now,
which is that tights have the benefit
of being able to be worn under civilian clothing,
which is not something that you can say
for a superhero that might wear very bulky armor.
You see this kinda thing with Spider-Man,
and, notably, Superman is, well,
that whole when he like rips his shirt open
and boom, Superman costume underneath.
Yeah, that's a fantastic point.
Next, let's talk about the video
about superheroes wearing underwear
on the outside of their pants.
In the poll we ran, 65% of you guys said
that you don't want superheroes to wear trunks,
which is not surprising,
but I guess it is a little surprising
that only 65% of you guys said that.
I would've assumed 80% or higher would've said it,
but it's interesting to know that there's a lot of people
out there who still like the underwear, so I don't know.
Way Ward and Sam Wilson both say that the design
of Superman that doesn't have the trunks
on the outside seems to have a bit of a color imbalance,
which is interesting because of what Jim Lee was trying
to accomplish with the new '52 design of Superman,
was to show that you can take the trunks away
and still recognize it as Superman,
even though clearly here that's not the case.
But also, I think, to go along with that is the idea
that superheroes are designed in brightly colored costumes
as a way for the reader to easily follow that character
from panel to panel,
and so by throwing off the color a little bit,
you're kind of ruining
that ease of readability.
I don't know.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
And playing into that similar idea, Joshua Hammond says
that the trunks feel more iconic on Superman,
and I would say personally that if there's one hero
that I would allow modern day to still have those trunks,
it would be Superman,
just because of how iconic it is for him to wear them.
Other characters like Batman
or like the X-Men or something, I could do without it.
It's fine.
But with Superman, I don't know.
I've always made fun of it, right?
But there's something that's okay about it
whenever Superman does it.
Maybe that's just me.
Next, let's talk about capes,
and the poll we ran on this one was very, very close.
54% of you guys said yes to capes,
which means that it only won out by a very small margin,
so kind of a controversial one, this capes one.
And by far the number one comment on the video was
about aerodynamics, as it was brought up in Supergirl,
about why she wears a cape.
They had a throwaway line kind of in the pilot episode
about how the cape helps with aerodynamics,
which would allow her to take turns while flying better,
and I am not a physicist,
so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt,
but this sounds completely wrong to me.
It doesn't make sense.
I feel like it would only create more drag,
and the argument there would be,
"Well, if it creates more drag, then it would allow her
"to slow down and take turns easier,"
but why not just fly slower?
Right?
You could also make an argument
that the cape works kind of as a spoiler on a race car,
but that only works because it's pushing the car
into the ground to have more traction with the wheels,
which doesn't seem to apply with flying, so I don't know.
This, to me, seems like the writers were trying
to explain away why she wears a cape
using "science" that sounds right,
but it's nonsense.
Again, I could be wrong about this,
so if I am, let me know in the comments.
I did know about this when I was writing the video,
but I just purposely chose not to include it,
because it doesn't make sense to me.
Lastly, white eyes.
78% of you guys are in favor
of those classic superhero white eyes.
Hunter Clark brings back up the argument
that the white eyes are easier to draw than full eyes,
which, I guess, makes sense if you're doing close-up shots,
but in the wide shots
I feel like it wouldn't matter that much.
It'd just be a little dot you'd just put right there.
Again, this whole argument is probably personal preference
to the artist and not an objective thing
that anyone could really argue.
Robert Lawrence writes a really great comment
about how movies try to avoid the white eyes
with their superheroes because it limits
what an actor can do if you cover up their face.
They can't show as much emotion.
It limits the expressions they can do.
And this kind of reminds me of how Tom Hardy was praised
for his performance as Bane
when all you could see was his eyes.
Robert then goes on to talk
about Dredd being an example of how that argument
of covering up an actor's face limits their performance
is kind of BS a little bit,
because he points to Dredd as an example
of where Karl Urban only had
like his lower jaw to act with
and none of his eyes whatsoever,
and still an amazing performance.
And I guess this will all come to a head
whenever we see the Deadpool movie
and see how the white eyes are portrayed there,
which, based off the trailer, looks pretty good.
And a couple corrections-slash-clarifications.
Elizabeth Alleman said the examples we used
for the Greek statues were not actually Greek but Roman,
and I want to clarify a little bit here.
The Gods in Color exhibit is
both Greek and Roman sculptures,
and it just so happened
that our editor only pulled the Roman statues (laughs)
for the video, not any of the Greek ones,
so apologies for that,
but it still does apply to the Greek statues as well,
plus it was a quote from Lee Falk
who said that he was inspired by Greek statues,
so I was just trying to go off of the information
that we got from him directly.
Even if he was confused and meant to say Roman statues,
he said Greek, and that's all I have to go off of,
so that's why I said Greek.
And lastly, I will stop referring to Phantom as a pulp hero.
That one is 100% my bad.
A couple last thoughts before we end here.
When it came to the polls
and voting for should a hero have this or this,
a lot of you guys threw up the same sentiment,
which is it really depends on the character,
and for the most part I agree,
but then Zachs Mind wrote an interesting comment
that it doesn't really depend on the character,
but rather it depends on the artist.
The artist knows what style they're good at.
They know what they're capable of.
And you can always change up facets of a character.
Right, we see this with Alex Ross, as I pointed out,
drawing Batman with no white eyes but regular eyes,
and it looked great.
It looked fine.
And I think it really does
not necessarily depend on the character
as much as people would say,
but I think, yeah, it is about the artist
and it's about maybe even the story a little bit,
of what you're trying to portray with the character.
So, yeah, really good point.
Lastly, I thought it would be interesting to try
and take all of your guys's votes
and try to come up with a character that fits all of it,
so a character that doesn't wear tights,
doesn't wear trunks, does wear a cape,
and does have white eyes,
and that is a surprisingly hard character to find
who has a combination of all four of those things.
The Phantom Reporter?
Does he count?
It's the best I could do.
If you know of any other ones, leave it in the comments,
and if this is your first time hanging out
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And a great place to start is our superhero design series
that we just talked about,
so you can click right here to go check them all out.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I'll see your right here on Wednesday
for another episode of Comic Misconceptions.
See ya.