Welcome to the "Satin Steele" site at DCM Studios Online! I hope you'll enjoy your visit here.
So if you're wondering, "Okay, why all the muscle-women?" all I can say is, hey... I like 'em! I love looking at them, I love drawing them. I'm also into comics, anime, sci-fi, almost all that "geek culture" stuff. These interests naturally manifest themselves in my work; e.g., I wind up creating comics that feature muscular women as their main characters.
And then, there's Satin Steele...
Not my earliest creation (that honor belongs to the afore-mentioned "Leenah"), but the one that I felt sure would become my "signature" property, as Batman was for Bob Kane and Superman was for Siegel and Schuster. And whereas a majority of my work is designed to appeal, firstly to me, and secondarily to my fellow fans of "femuscle", Satin was aimed equally to the "mainstream" reader - the "normal" person who may not necessarily like even the idea of "muscles on girls" but who'll respond to a well-crafted story that provides drama, humopr and strong characters.
Ironically, though, given that Dyna fulfills this function today, Satin was first born out of a desire to see noble "Wonder Woman"-type heroines with sexy, muscular physiques. I can't say exactly when all the elements came together in the form of the dynamic blonde with the killer bod and the stray forelock, but it must've been around 1984 or '86, when these drawings - the earliest ever drawn of this exciting (to me, anyway) concept - were done.
During this time I had a dream that influenced the visual look of Satin Steele. A simple dream, at least what I remember of it: Loni Anderson, as she appeared in WKRP In Cincinnati, wearing a black swimsuit. She smiled at me, raised her arms... and flexed baseball-sized biceps! Soon after, the sketches you see above were drawn. I was not deliberately trying for a likeness of Loni Anderson, but when I saw what I'd drawn, I decided to let her be the inspiration for Satin's "look". As I continued to produce drawings of Satin, of course, she began to look less and less like Loni (and more and more like Satin).
The name came out of nowhere; but it is among the creations I am proudest of, since it perfectly encapsulates what Satin (the woman and the series) is about; evocative of the saying "an iron fist in a velvet glove". I think the Billy Joel song "The Stranger" might have been a subliminal influence, as the first verse (which talks about the masks or "faces" we all wear "when everyone has gone") contains the lines "Some are satin, some are steel..."
I loved the name "Satin Steele"; but I faced a dilemma: I didn't want that to be her "real" name, that is, the name she was born with. I didn't think it likely that a real person would be named "Satin" (although somewhere out there, there probably is), and I grew up watching cartoons and other kid shows wherein the characters had "stupid" names, like "Inspector Detector" and "Troy Tempest" and "Dr. I. M. Sinister", and I went through that phase myself as a youth when I was doodling my own comics (in class when I should've been studying, of course). So I wanted (and still do) "real world" names for my characters. I decided that "Satin Steele" does make a killer "stage name" (well, I think it does), but that her real name would be Janet Steele. Why "Janet"? Well, it's been my favorite girl's name since childhood, and as luck would have it, I'm married to a Janet (very happily, too, I might add); so the name becomes an homage to my beloved as well.
So... I had a character, a name, and a concept: a "reluctant superheroine"...meaning that Satin never actually intended to be the one to "save the day", but things just kind of happened that way (and strangley, they'd all "happen that way" while she just "happened" to be dressed in little more than a bikini and cape...) I toyed with the idea of giving Satin some super-powers; I can't find it, but I do remember making a drawing of Satin flying above the city skyline. But I abandoned that idea in favor of a more "human" heroine, one I felt readers might be able to identify with more, and worry about when they see her face down some outrageous supervillain or monster armed with only her wits, her courage, and her somewhat-greater-than-normal strength.
All that remained was to actually produce some comics! Which I did, starting in about 1990, when Satin Steele #1 first rolled off the Xerox machines at a Kinko's in Orlando, Florida. Although I did send off submissions to (and got rejected by) some of the smaller comics publishers at the time (like Antarctic Press), I was more determined to see my series published and available than I was interested in making money (I figured the "money will follow" - and I'm still waiting for it!), so I jumped into "Small Press". (Some of the specific info at that link is out of date; I no longer produce paper comics now that the Internet is cheaper and lets me reach a wider audience, and I have no idea if Tim Corrigan is still publishing "Small Press Creative Explosion"; but that article does pretty well chronicle how I went about small-press.)
I produced 3 issues of Satin Steele over the course of... well, three years. (My productivity back then was no greater than it is now... *sigh*) Then, after issue #3, I found myself with a bad case of writer's block. Which is a recurring obstacle with me; so many times I find myself creating a character and a concept, and then only being able to come up with two or three plots for that series. (Sometimes I think I unconsciously keep creating new characters as a way to break writer's block: a counterproductive solution, unfortunately, since the block simply reasserts itself with the new character...) Around 1998 I began to conceive of a new story for Satin: a different kind of tale from the heroics and derring-do I wanted to chronicle in her series. This new story was based loosely on something that happened in real life to a bodybuilder friend of mine (at the time; we've lost touch over the years and I have no idea where she is or if she's still a bodybuilder). I embellished a few details and added an antagonist, and was very satisfied with the outcome. Then I found myself thinking about what happened once Satin got home from this contest... and began to realize that the "ordinary" (compared to the outrageous happenings of the current series) story of Satin's bodybuilding career itself, and how her quest to win bodybuilding's top title might affect her personal life, was as worthy of being told (probably more so) as her confrontations with extra-normal menaces. The solution at first seemed to be to publish two separate Satin Steele titles: one to continue her "superheroic" exploits in the present day, the other to chronicle her bodybuilding career from (almost) its beginning.
I think it was about this time that I started hearing about this "Internet" thingy; and as I found out more about, I began to realize what an extraordinary vehicle it would be for getting my art to my audience. I instantly "retired" from small press and began to esablish a presence on the World-Wide Web. The fourth "issue" of Satin Steele, "The Hundred-Year Itch", would be produced exclusively for the Web; its pages would be designed to be read on a monitor without scrolling... and, because it would cost no more to do so, it could be published in color! But as I began laying out and drawing the pages, I began to see big gaping holes in the plot; holes which I found myself unable to fix without rendering the entire story worthless. So I abandoned that story, and soon after realized that I was much more excited about drawing the story of "bodybuilder Satin" than I was about "superheroine" Satin. So I abandoned the "superheroine" series as well.
Now if I've got you curious about what those first three issues of Satin Steele were all about, fear not! These issues are available at the Comics Library page, as are all the comics I've put on the Web so far.
If you're more interested in seeing what Satin is up to now... uh, that is, near the beginning of her bodybuilding career, "Contest Jitters" starts here. As are all the comics I'm currently producing, Satin Steele v2.0 is a "work in progress"; new pages are posted as they're finished. For that reason, I maintain an update blog to alert my faithful readers to what new material I've just posted to DCM Studios Online.
I hope you'll enjoy reading "Contest Jitters" and the rest of your visit to DCM Studios Online. I charge no membership or other fees to access the site; but if you like what you've seen and want to throw a little lucre my way as "encouragement" to do more, well, that's easy:
© 2005 David C. Matthews