Posted in: Comics | Tagged: adam hughes, batgirl, Comics, dc, entertainment, marvel, Randy Bowen, Wonder Girl

The Adam Hughes Bust That Wasn't Really A Bust That Almost Was But Wasn't

Published Mon, 07 Jul 2014 19:00:08 -0500

Back in about 2000 I started writing for a website called the Comic Book Galaxy, where I would review busts and statues that came out. One of the other columnists was Chris Ryall, now Editor-in-Chief at IDW. I was a huge fan of the mini-bust series done by Randy Bowen and Marvel and collected just about all of them. That's how I got the job.

I noticed at the time that the "busts" changed as the series went and stopped being true busts in the artistic/sculpture sense. The dictionary definition of a bust is this: "a sculptured, painted, drawn, or engraved representation of the upper part of the human figure,especially a portrait sculpture showing only the head and shoulders of the subject." Somewhere along the way the busts started growing arms and in some cases on the female characters would go all the way down to the thighs.

This is basically a good illustration of what technically is and isn't a bust using two Captain America mini-busts from Bowen. The earlier one on the left is and the newer one on the right isn't.

I know… pretty pedantic, but still it sets up the following sketches from Adam Hughes vault that he shared on his twitter page. The first couple are all from the line of DC mini-busts, Women Of The DC Universe, he did (and I own).

They all look cool, and like I said, I own them… but each of them shows basically from mid-thigh up. A very liberal definition of a bust. Hughes also showed one of the other designs he had turned in for Batgirl and that is what made me want to do this post. My guess is this one wasn't rejected because it strayed too far away from the definition of bust.