COMIC ART CORRECTIONS

I’m gonna share a little secret.  I don’t know if any of you remember this:

It hit the big newspaper websites, and for a brief week, my inbox was inundated with emails and what-not.  Cause I drew that.  It was a knee-jerk reaction to this:

Now, the initial image is bad enough. At least Adam Hughes has the ability to imbue his women with a confident power to their sexuality.  I mean, it’s not ideal, but his anatomy is generally good and the expressions say a lot about the character.  She’s looking over her shoulder and basically saying with her expression, “Yeah right, Tiger, like I’m gonna do YOUR damned washing.”  Where-as the maquette Marvel made of the image basically says, “Fuck me from behind, Tiger, while I do your laundry.”

I was mad.  In my anger, I ended up objectifying poor Peter Parker.  In response, everyone said how sexy the image was, and I was horrified cause that wasn’t the point.  My point was to show how *ridiculous* and *wrong* it is to do that to a human being.  A lot of men were horrendously upset with the image I drew.  Unfortunately, the message didn’t get through to them.

During that time, I did some more sketches with my sister, drawing tough male comic characters in sexual poses.  Mine were probably way more exposing and bondage-y than what my little sister did.  They’ve been gathering dust on my hard-drive since 2007.  A lot of people have been doing similar images, and I figure with these pictures flying fast and free through the aether, I may as well drag the old sketches out from their hiding place and share them with you.

I’m hoping, five years later, that the response will be better this time around.  Without further ado, the images:

That one of Nightcrawler was based on an image of Tigra in the same pose.

Not gonna lie.  I’m kind of in love with Wolverine’s saucy smile. My sister has a way with expressions.  Now, my sketches:

Okay, it might be hard to tell without me colouring it in, but basically, the costume creates an X right over his asshole.  It matches Emma’s costume, you see!  A couple costume!

I decided to go for a bit of a BDSM look with Batman to bring out his dark side.

I felt kinda bad doing this to Superman.  I used to watch the movies when I was a kid, over and over and over again.  I actually wanted to BE Superman.  My cousin said I couldn’t be, because I was a girl.  I said I could be, because I had dark hair like Superman.  He said I had to be Supergirl, but Supergirl was blonde, and I didn’t relate to her.  I wanted to be STRONG, like Superman.  So putting him in this get-up felt a little sacrelige.

Now, I am NOT ADVOCATING THIS TREATMENT FOR CHARACTERS OF ANY GENDER.  I am showing these images as they illustrate:

- How degrading they are

- How ridiculous they are

- How against the grains of their characters they are

- How impractical they are

Dudes - I want to you to stop and think for a moment, how these images make you feel.  And then stop and think that with every image of women in similar ridiculous poses, costumes and presentations that never take the characters or individuality of the characters into account, that you are making women feel how you feel right now.  Even if you didn’t draw the damned picture.  If you support it with silence, or worse, buying the damned comics, then you’re contributing.  You’re part of the problem.

But I don’t hold my breath.  It’s notoriously hard to get through to people in a position of privilege.  So I suppose my sisters, allies and I shall be drawing our sketches and protesting the hell out of the shabby treatment we get from mainstream comics.

*shrugs*  Hey, it’s a hobby.