DARNA

Mars Ravelo, a famous comic book artist and writer here in the Philippines, has always been a recurring enigma to me, especially whenever I look into his creations, Darna, Captain Barbell, etc., and it was only recently that I managed to somehow break the code, special thanks to my brother, Rienque LeVerite , who reintroduced me to the history of Mars Ravelo and the original vision for Darna in particular.
Due to the popularization here where I live, I always thought of Darna and the rest of Mars Ravelo's works to be below average or even just bad. This was, in part, because of the lack of imagination, effort, creativity, and budget when it comes to the live-action adaptations of his stories. I soon realized how wrong I was to project such mistakes in iffy production pipelines and disjointed narrative foundations onto the originator.
I have now been reinvigorated by doing my fair share of research and deep dive into the source material available, and I plan to uncover more. Darna and her arch nemesis, Valentina, are such interesting characters that actually even go as far as venturing into cosmic, religious, and even horror territories that I see now where the mainstream media is missing out on. Blame what you will for this, but there is definitely something wrong with how such wonderful stories are being taken up into the small and big screens.
Having already stated a mouthful, I guess I just wanted to try and dip my toe into this by showcasing my personal take and redesign of the character that, hopefully, retains and respects the core of what makes Darna an excellent superhero/goddess! Whether or not this does well, I do plan to explore and illustrate more local heroes and stories from here on out, and we'll see where that journey goes.
Nearly forgot to mention, the actress I chose for my illustration of Darna here is none other than the gorgeous Liza Soberano!
God bless y'all!
Cheers!!!