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Grim & Gritty Frippery

I spent the weekend sick and miserable, so it’s probably good I wasn’t blogging. I did manage to read Brian Michael Bendis’s and Marc Andreyko’s Torso, which I really enjoyed, and watch Labyrinth, which I didn’t. Though From Hell overdid the annotations to the point where I would almost have rather read them than the comic, I would have liked to know where liberties were taken and what the sources were for Torso. Maybe this was in the floppies.

I also finished rereading The Dark Knight Returns, and it’s given me a lot to think about. Before I say anything substantive, though, I have a question that’s bothering me. I’d appreciate any insights from any of my readers who are also DKR readers. What’s up with all the women with asymmetrical orange hair?

I’ve already commented on how strange Gotham’s homogeneity is to me, and maybe this is related. It doesn’t seem to be a look like those of the Mutants or Sons of the Batman or Nixons, since the style crosses a spectrum of women who are really only related in that they figure prominently in the story.

It seems unlikely that asymmetrical orange hair is a fashion, because Ellen Yindel, Carrie Kelly and Lana Lang don’t seem like they’d have any interest in following fashion trends, though the almost-indistinguishable talking head news anchors certainly would. It doesn’t seem to imply that the women in question are professionals, since Carrie has it and the prostitutes don’t. So basically this hair is some sort of leitmotif and I can’t quite put my finger on it. It may be some sort of meta note, something that women with power display, whether or not the characters choose to present themselves that way. I’m still at a loss, though.

And the story ends with Carrie in the new Batcave starting a new life. What will her hairstyle be when she’s an adult? And why?