The Enchanted Dagger

Ahh, my darling Lucy.  I’ve been waiting to delve into the subtle nuances of self dri— wait, whats that?  You want to hear about his outfit?  You can’t be serious!  Oh well… alright, I figured you’d be asking about that.  I suppose if good ‘ol Roger didn’t want us to talk about his clothes he wouldn’t be so garish, would he!

One of the things that originally drew me to The Enchanted Dagger was Roger’s singularly unusual costume.  The first EDag story I was able to track down on-line via the excellent Four Color Shadows blog portrayed Roger in the full body, red one-piece featured prominently in Issue #1.  It’s the most minimalist “superhero” costume I’d ever seen…no logos or anything.  It made me a little uncomfortable!  Further investigation revealed a near identical costume in a latter story, this time in bright lime green.  As my take on the material began to develop and Roger became a political actor, I really loved the idea that the power of the Dagger made him so powerful that he could get away with wearing these totally bizarre costumes and still command respect.

This particular off-the-shoulder number was inspired by the late, great David Bowie, from his Ziggy Stardust era.  Feeling myself to something of a misfit in my formative years (and most subsequent years, for that matter) I was naturally a big Bowie fan.  I started work on this issue a couple months after his untimely passing and it was a no brainer to pay tribute to the man.  I really would have liked to have met him.  Another influence on my costuming for Roger, perhaps in spirit more than in function (and if you run a google image search you’ll understand) was a great 1980s club kid/textile artist named Leigh Bowery.  He made these incredibly wild, fabulous outfits…baffingly unique stuff, especially for the context, which was mostly going out dancing.  Some people are just born with an incredible creative talent to go to weird places with it.  Bowery was one of those people.  He was a big, beefy gay rugby player who made weird clothes.  I saw a great documentary on him.