Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Go Home Feminists, You’re Drunk

                Last week there was a large outcry over a comic book cover by Milo Manara from the upcoming Spider Woman book from Marvel Comics.  It shows the titular hero in a pose that shows off a great deal of her ass as she is climbing over the roof of a building.  Is it cheesecake?  Absolutely.  Is it unnecessary?  Well I guess that depends on your definition of the word. 

For decades, comic books have sexualized, and often over-sexualized women, be they super-heroines or damsels in distress.  Muscle-bound men and large-breasted women in spandex is comics’ stock in trade.  That being said, there are many strong and strong-willed female characters in comics.  Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Chris Claremont created so many strong female characters for the X-Men franchise that not only have they mostly overshadowed their male counterparts (aside from Wolverine, that guy will always be more popular than Jesus) but have become popular enough where a group of only X-Women were given their own book (granted it was only a couple years ago, but still).  Even in the context of “team books” like Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, etc., many of the women characters are written as strong, necessary parts of the team.  Where would the Justice League be without Wonder Woman, or the X-Men without Storm, etc., etc.  Did it take superhero comics a long time to take women seriously?  Absolutely, and the 1990’s did not help that with the over-sexualization of the early Image comics, and comics in general does a downright shitty job appealing to women in general, always has, probably always will.  Mainstream comics also does a shitty job appealing to children, failing to realize that once all of their fanboys move out of their mother’s basements and have to start spending money on rent they won’t have the disposable income for comics that young kids might have (of course if they keep over-inflating the prices of these books they will price their way right out of that as well). 


It's not just the ladies that get posed with their asses in the air. Manara's cover on the left and a J. Scott Campbell cover from the mid 2000's (I believe) on the right.

What I’m trying to say, in my usual long-winded way, is that a picture of Spider Woman’s ass is not an overt attack on women, it’s cheesecake.  And it’s cheesecake from an artist that is known for his erotic comics.  Seriously.  Look him up, but take your safesearch off first or you won’t understand, nor will you find many images I’m assuming.  That’s like being pissed that you went to KFC and got a shitty hamburger.  They specialize in chicken, that’s why you go there.  You don’t commission art from Manara and expect anything but the female form in all its glory.  It’s cheesecake in an industry that was built on cheesecake.  If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.  Plus, it’s a comic cover, it will be on the shelf for three months, tops, then fade into obscurity.  Instead of celebrating the fact that a fan-favorite female character is getting her own series, feminists (many of whom probably do not read comics anyway) attack the fact that one picture, a variant cover no less, is not up to their lofty standards of what women superheroes should look like.  My answer to that is, draw your own superheroine.  Market her, sell her, and profit off of her, instead of inciting anger over something as silly as the fact that too much of a character’s ass is showing.

I will admit, I am not someone that keeps up with pop-culture that much, but why is there such a stink being raised about this while Nikki Minaj shakes anything and everything that she has, shows more skin than any superhero this side of Chaos Comics, and spits right in the face of good taste, without so much as a questioning glance?  Are feminists up in arms about this as well, or is it because she is a woman she gets a pass?  Would that mean that if that cover was drawn by a woman that it would be ok?  That there is a double standard, that a man drawing a woman in a scintillating pose is wrong but a woman doing it is empowering?   This is an honest question, please enlighten me.

There are so many things that we can be raging about as a society…is this really the mountain you want to plant your flag on?  I would much rather question Marvel’s choice of giving Greg Land another comic book to draw than the choice of who draws a variant cover.

No comments:

Post a Comment