“I loved Ron Lim at the time, he was one of my favorite artists. This isn’t his best work. This feels like a rush job.”-Mav

“The words ‘fashion’ and ‘costume’ get thrown around a lot in comics scholarship, and it’s not the same definitions a fashion scholar would use. Costume is static; fashion is ever-changing and purely aesthetic.”-Monica 

And why we should study superhero style: “Superheroes are defined by duality. If you only talk about the costume, you’re only talking about what they’re wearing half the time. You’re only talking about half the story, and half the character.”-Monica

“It’s important to think about whether this is clothing the character chose, or whether it’s been given to the character. Because you need to know whether the clothes are saying something about the person who’s wearing it, or are they saying something about the person who’s giving it.”-Monica 

“The Coney Island girls all know someone who’s been assaulted by a partner, but the thing that they do is dress her back up so that she looks cute and flirty… They exist in this unspoken world where they can’t escape being defined by men, and male violence. They pick each other up but can’t change the situation.”-Monica 

Anna: “Is there a way to tell a racial transformation story that’s not problematic?”

Mav: “As a fan and a scholar, I want to have it both ways. If you are a mutant that’s a shapeshifter, what race or gender are you really? I think the exploration is important. But it’s still humans that are reading and writing this. There’s a blackface element to it. There’s a ‘you are masquerading’ element. Yes, her race is ‘mutant,’ but you can’t divorce it from the cultural context.”-Mav

“Mutant as a fantasy racial category always risks appropriation because it has the potential to consume every other identity category. Superpowers often sit uncomfortably with metaphors of difference because of the ways metaphor stands in for reality.”-Anna  

“In classical art, there’s a difference between nakedness and nudity. Nudes tell a story. Nakedness is porn. Superhero costumes are nudes. But here, sans costume, Brian becomes naked.”-Anna

“There’s a convention in romance where an aggressive masculine figure needs to be humbled to make him an appropriate partner for the empowered woman.”-Anna 

“Meggan tells the man who tries to assault her ‘you made me get angry.’ It showcases the paradox of how men’s aggressive behavior is complicit in women’s aggressive behavior.” -Andrew