I seem to be posting a lot about comics lately...

[telophase]

...so here's a link to a post by Noah Berlatsky over on comiXology about bad superheroine cheesecake, titled "Adding Incompetence to Insult."

But more often, you get images like those above, where Star Sapphire's costume makes her look vulnerable, not tough…or the Marvel Divas cover, where everybody but Hellcat is making with the bedroom eyes, and the only threat is that Black Cat's costume may pinch so tightly that she actually pops apart at the waist, causing everything from the torso up to go swooshing about like a deflating balloon.

Comments

blecccch

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

The unreality of comic-book women, body and mind, is a major factor in me not reading comic books. Which is too bad, because like many other women who do not read comic books, I have, you know, money to spend on things like that.

The lack of physiological reality in comic book artist's drawings reminds me of the lack of reality of women's bodies in art of the Middle Ages, in which nude or nearly-nude female bodies seem to be male bodies with a couple of half-apples stuck on the upper chest, hairless and wrongly proportioned.

The writer in that essay is too forgiving. None of the women drawn have real-looking bodies or costumes; even if glued on, they'd fall off when the skin moved or stretched. The Page-style barbarian would look like hamburger in a real fight, even with that sword; she's utterly unprotected. It's her boyfriend's sword and she's waiting for him to get home from the pub.

[akaihyo.livejournal.com]

I, also, like cheesecake art and I like superheroines and superheroes. I also entirely agree with Mr. Berlatsky that they should rarely be mixed. Superheroines need to be competent and professional, just like superheroes, and that means practical costumes and reasonable (i.e. athletic) bodies.

And I did love his last comment, "Sexism may be bad, but incompetent sexism is just intolerable."

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I had not seen the Marvel Divas cover before. Oh. my. gosh. *sigh*

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree about this being a matter of sexism.

Oh, I by all means agree that there is massive incompetance involved. No doubt about that. But it's not sexist in the sense that it's not aimed at female characters. Have you looked at the male super heros? They are just as absurd as the females.

It's not that they can't draw women, they just can't draw period.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

He makes a number of valid points, although I'm surprised he didn't bring up the infamous Heroes for Hire "tentacle rape" cover that Leah Hernandez went after last year (I think it was last year; it might have been '07). That is an older example, though, so I think he may have just been focusing on new releases. With the exception of the Trinity cover, he's pretty dead on. I think the shot with Supergirl's bosom in the foreground was just poorly thought out and isn't intended to be cheesecake, but rather focusing on the Supergirl/Superman "S" on her chest, rather than her chest itself. Mind you, that is the stupid Supergirl costume, with the white bellyshirt, that DC made the artists change to because it had to match up with the cartoon (because, you know, viewers of the cartoon are stupid and can't tell that there are different costumes and appearances due to different artists), and it was designed pretty much for cheesecake's sake to begin with, so there's some inherent pinup ineptitude there to begin with.

(EDIT: Here's (http://divalea.livejournal.com/456637.html) Ms. Hernandez's LJ entry on the Heroes for Hire (or as she calls it "Heroes for Hentai") cover.

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

I get less offended by the shape female characters are drawn than I do about the position in which they're posed. Comic characters (in manga and DC/Marvel) rarely have realistic proportions, but it does tend to be only the women who get to stand in back-breakingly twisted poses so we can see their asses and breasts in the same picture. It would be nice for DC/Marvel to have a female character who didn't pose like a porn star in every frame.

(Actually, I'm less sure about the manga treatment of women, being more into shonen series. I'm mentally comparing, for example, Yaone from Saiyuki to those caracters in the link you posted; they all wear ridiculous outfits, but Yaone is strong, capable, and not a porn star.)

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Have you heard about this new breakthrough in the field of high-resolution 3-D graphics (http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/new_video_game_technology?utm_source=onion_rss_daily)?

[matildarose.livejournal.com]

Word word wordy mcwordy.

In a related note about 'cheesecake is okay as long as the person is able to kick ass too', I was watching a few episodes of Birdy: Decode the other day and was realizing how, despite how ridiculous Birdy's costume is (http://otakureview.today.com/files/2009/03/tetsuwanbirdy.jpg), that it really didn't bug me after I saw how the series handled her character. There's definitely fanservice in the series, but, compared to the 'lol diva boobs/ass TWIST' debacle, she's downright the opposite in how she just throws herself into situations like she's Superman instead of 'LOOK AT HOW SEXY I AM *liefield twist pose*'.

This isn't an East vs. West thing, btw- Anime/manga can be downright horrible or even worse when it comes to sexism. However, when I see something that impresses me from either side of the pond, that fact alone will keep me coming back to that series for more.