Versace of Apokolips

I glanced at the cover of World’s Finest #30, featuring Intri: Warrior of Apokolips (a.k.a. The Goddess Who Can’t Get Anything Done), and couldn’t help but notice that outfit! Cape. Armored gauntlets. Right breast covered in armor. A very low-cut armored bikini bottom, with orange thigh-coverings beneath, then armored leggings and boots. The naked low-cut midriff favored by many costumed females (especially the Bad Girls), leading up to her naked midsection and… naked left breast?

No, that can’t be right.

But that’s exactly what it looks like. The flesh color is a little darker than her left forearm, but that just seems to be shading from her cape. It’s certainly not the orange color covering her thigh. The only thing that tipped  me off that I wasn’t looking at a still from a movie that had to argue its way down to R? No navel or nipple. I just assume Apokoliptons have navels and nipples.

Most of her scenes in the comic don’t make the dress code any clearer, and in fact it’s more… let’s say, revealing - because she doesn’t even have bikini-bottom armor. The basically flesh-colored cloth (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here) continues down her crotch and around the back to her buttocks, where she looks completely nude - maybe with a little body paint there, but nothing more. (From the front she looks like a Barbie doll down there, of course.) I looked around the comic to see if I could find a corresponding image of Superman, who after all also has a very tight costume, but no - Kryptonian ass-crack is not in view.

There are a few panels where the “cloth” looks a little more like orange body paint, but mainly Intri looks like she’s getting ready for Hippy Hollow. Or maybe Burning Man.

Many years ago, visiting Universal Studios, I happened to meet She-Ra, Princess of Power, and several of her heroic, brightly-clad friends. “Where do you get those costumes?” I asked admiringly. “Oh,” said Flutterina, “we just wake up in the forest this way.” (Later, during a group photo, He-Man groped my butt. But that’s a story for another day.)

The forest has not done Intri any favors. Nor have her hair and make-up people - assuming, that is, that she’s meant to be stern but beautiful.

Intri’s story, it’s worth noting, makes no sense at all. She went to Krypton (of the Earth-Two universe) when it was exploding, and offered to Jor-L and Lara to save the planet in exchange for the infant Kal-L. They turned her down. (Not a second is wasted on the moral complexity of the issue. And later Lois Lane says, without evidence, that she doubted Intri could or would have saved Krypton.) But Jor-L and Lara have no superpowers on Krypton, and the world was falling apart around them. Intri could have just grabbed the kid and Boom-Tubed out of there. She’s a cruel, powerful goddess, and a warrior of Apokolips. She doesn’t need permission.

(Yes, I know it’s Jor-el and Kal-el. Now. But when they were first introduced in 1938 - and, traditionally, in their Earth-Two incarnations prior to The New 52 - they were Jor-L and Kal-L. I think it was considered science-fictiony.)