There's been a bit of a kerfuffle recently over an almost ridiculously sexy Spider-Woman cover drawn by Milo Manara. I was quite surprised by the uproar, actually - voluptuous ladies in skin-tight outfits is definitely not new to comics. For whatever reason, this particular drawing seems to have crossed a (seemingly arbitrary) line into unacceptable territory.
Personally, I was more intrigued by critiques of this cover that approached it from a this-is-bad-art perspective. This article shows how one person made a horrifying 3D rendered version of this Spider Woman. I also really liked this blog, where another artist picks apart the anatomical issues with the covers.
Generally I think that the comic book world - and the world of cheesy superhero comics in particular - is a place for fantasy so this isn't that big of a deal. That being said, on a personal level a cover like this one might turn me off of the comic unless I was already familiar with the content.
Does this sort of thing bother you? Do you think women in comics are generally ‘over-sexualized’? Do comic artists have a responsibility to present their characters in a realistic way?
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FRIDAY NEWPOST - "FanService" and Sexy Ladies in Comics
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Sept. 12, 2014
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jamoecw at 9:39AM, Sept. 13, 2014
when i read comics spandex didn't 'tent' in comics. of course in those days breasts were the sexual organ, so but cracks weren't shown so much and boob valleys. this is no different. i think this is like the spice girl thing, too many women are seeing this as what guys want. any male nerd would just as well watch porn if he was horny, it really is women that turn such silliness into something that gets headlines. they get offended by such as well. had it not been raised as an issue of using sex to sell, it would have gone unnoticed, and possibly sold a few extra issues. now it has made headlines, and people (guys and girls) will seek it out. is it unrealistic? yes. is it sexualized? yes. did it get people talking about it? yes. is it 'too much'? relative to what? not free hard core internet porn, or modeling in vogue (http://en.vogue.fr/uploads/images/thumbs/201221/vogue_paris_num__ro_de_juin_juillet_2012_5460_north_545x.jpg - a magazine marketed towards women).
El Cid at 9:22PM, Sept. 12, 2014
It's not supposed to substitute for porn; it's just supposed to get your attention. There's no way anyone is going to see that picture, and not at least give it a good hard look. That's the most you can hope for from a cover. If people buy the book, it's probably because they took the time to look inside and decided they like what they saw from there.
KimLuster at 9:03PM, Sept. 12, 2014
I dunno, I can see the point in yoga booty shot pics (you're trying to explicitly create erotic art), but to put the same type of pose in a comic, for a woman who's supposed to be on the prowl after baddies... What exactly is the artist trying to accomplish? No... I get it to a level. It has people talking (no such thing as bad publicity) and lots of males snap it up (which I don't fully get when real porn is just a few clicks away for anyone)... There's just a disconnect for me I can 't figure out. I mean, it's not like Manara or other artists have to do the fake-spandex thing as way to draw nudes around the censors these days. You can draw real nudes (as he has done - lots) and sell them well (as he has). I guess it is the context that matters. If I see art like this in something I know is explicit erotica (and we know, despite the inability to define it), my reaction is different, more appreciative, whereas if I saw this in a comic stand I'd give an eyeroll...
El Cid at 8:34PM, Sept. 12, 2014
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious what they were going for here, and it's safe to say that their goal was never to impress anyone with their ability to accurately render fabric and anatomy.
dedasaur at 7:25PM, Sept. 12, 2014
It's Manara! Whatever happened to artistic license! Who the heck are all these fanboys? XDD Have an anatomically correct mickey mouse: https://www.facebook.com/GuillemMarchComicsArtist/photos/a.754488787947325.1073741826.371791869550354/754488754613995/?type=1&theater
El Cid at 5:50PM, Sept. 12, 2014
Drawing women (and men) in spandex as if they're basically nude is nothing new to comics. It's basically a way to get away with drawing naked people without running afoul of the decency police. While the pose itself is anatomically incorrect (at least for a non-superagile superfemale), there's nothing anatomically wrong with this "butt gap," for a woman with adequate *ahem* endowments. Not hard to find reference material out there. Do a Google Image search for "heart shaped yoga booty." There are some other searches you can do, but the results are not quite so PG-13.
bravo1102 at 3:47PM, Sept. 12, 2014
The butt gap looks not so much like a piece of female anatomy but a Valentine's Day heart. Kudos to fallopiancrusader for stating it so well.
KimLuster at 2:52PM, Sept. 12, 2014
I have to agree that butt gap looks utterly stupid...
zenia at 1:22PM, Sept. 12, 2014
Personally the cover bugs me because... he didn't even attempt to make her clothes look like clothes. It jut looks like she is "wearing" body paint. Spandex, even though skin tight, behaves a certain way. Especially on her butt... that looks totally ridiculous.
fallopiancrusader at 8:11AM, Sept. 12, 2014
The first thing that amazed me with this cover was how lousy the artwork is. Milo Manara is a master illustrator. How did he end up making such a crappy and amateurish drawing? The connection between mainstream comics and porn is a cherished tradition that goes way back. Back in the 1990's it was pretty well known that many mainstream comic book artists would base the poses of their female characters on pictorials found in that month's porno magazines. You could consistently buy the one month's issue of Hustler magazine, and then the following month's issue of a big mainstream super-hero comic book title of your choice, and see the exact same poses transcribed. Make of that what you will...
fallopiancrusader at 8:02AM, Sept. 12, 2014
I love reading and making comics that celebrate the beauty and sexuality of the human body. It should be noted, however, that we still live in a society that overwhelmingly defines a woman as a sexual commodity that can be possessed and traded by men, at the whim of men. I think sex and sexuality need to be viewed within this context. One would think that wearing blackface shouldn't be any more offensive than any other costume decision, but when viewed within the context of a racist society, blackface stops being a costume, and starts to become a vehicle for the propagation of said racism. Portraying a man in a sexually exploitative pose will never have the same effect as portraying a woman in the same way within the context of our society, because sex is used as a criterion for defining a woman's oppression, but not a man's.
El Cid at 6:17AM, Sept. 12, 2014
Does it bother me? No. I see that it's bothered certain public mouthpieces who've taken it as their responsibility to tell women what they're supposed to be offended by. I'm less sure that most real women are as offended, or even surprised. The *insides* of those comics are littered with images like that one. Are women over-sexualized? They are sexualized. "Over" sexualized? Given the medium, and audience, I'd say it's about what you should expect. I'll also say that, as a man, I don't feel offended or threatened by all the beefcakey male poses in comics, which are basically the same thing. Men and women are sexualized differently by society. And comic artists have zero responsibility to represent their characters realistically. That's why they call it 'art.' Different artists have different styles, and over the decades publishers have learned what style has the best chance of selling books. Don't get mad at them. They're responding to the input we've given them as consumers.
bravo1102 at 6:14AM, Sept. 12, 2014
I don't mind the hyper-sexualized pose, but really get the anatomy right, make her look like a woman and not a frog.
KimLuster at 4:18AM, Sept. 12, 2014
I do lots of image searching as inspiration for my own work, and I've come across this thing called 'The Hawkeye Inititiave' several times. It's an attempt to draw the superhero Hawkeye (who is male) in the same provocative poses as found with many female superheroes. This is meant to show the ridiculous and sexist mentality when drawing female ('see how stupid a male Hawkeye looks in the same pose'). I never really got it... Females really do pose differently when trying to be sexual - intentionally so (just like they purposefully wear high heels, thong bikinis, and skimpy minis). While I do think drawing overly sexy ladies in comics tends toward the juvenile and I often find it distasteful, I don't really find it exploitive, and I certainly don't think it proves the point by trying to draw men the same way. The genders perceive 'sexy' differently and sex still sells, from comics to 50 Shades of Gray.
MOrgan at 2:41AM, Sept. 12, 2014
What strikes me as ridiculous is the way artists ignore how real fabric works. No matter how skin tight an outfit is it is NOT going to follow the skin exactly. Has any modern comic book artist even heard of tenting? Not to mention squishing? They seem to think that you can't make women look sexy in something resembling real clothes... and they're wrong. Then again, maybe I should just take some of my nude drawings, add lines at the wrists & neckline, and color them like a costume and submit it to get work at a comic book company?
Gunwallace at 1:12AM, Sept. 12, 2014
They asked Milo Manara to do a cover. What did anybody expect? We should be grateful she has clothes (of a sort) on. Perhaps that's the real issue. Why ask him in the first place?