SPIDER-MAN 2002 SPOTTED :
in the documentary I'm watching, "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch", one of the marketers says he realizes when Abercrombie's image was becoming "bad" in the public eye, is when the bully Flash Thompson is wearing the brand while trying to beat the shit out of Peter Parker.
I actually really appreciate this "character design" moment. Cuz Flash is in some canons, actually rather poor. But he still wants to pull off the "better-than-you" jock vibe, so he'd work at a gas station for a week to be able to afford one polo with a moose on it.
Meanwhile, Harry Osborn is wearing something that's more "quiet luxury", a nice parka and sweater that his daddy's money got him. Like actual rich people don't wear loud branding with giant gucci signs everywhere, they be pulling the Willem Dripfoe and casually mention they're wearing a $5000 plain prada shirt. Hell I can even see Harry trying to buy surplus military gear to try to be more "punk" than his heritage, to match with his store-bought Chairman Mao mug.
Then we got Peter Parker looking like he walked out of Old Navy grabbing whatever's on clearance, maybe even wearing Uncle Ben's old stuff. Cuz he's y'know poor.
Anyways, I love "normal" character designs like this so much. Like these are all regular jerkoffs, they don't have custom clothes, they don't have cool anime outfits. But a shirt from different mall brands just says so much about what KIND of regular jerkoff they are...
(angus is def an Abercrombie armpit model who gets lured into the Abercrombie jet plane to serve cocktails in a boxers)
My tism has been activated by the documentary about 2000's mall culture
#characterDesign #spiderman2002 #harryOsborn