Actually, I would really like to see a female superhero in a knock-down, drag-out fight with an enemy where broken noses and black eyes and maybe even broken fingers are an option. I would like to see a female superhero who could be depicted taking the sort of horrid damage Wolverine does. I would like to see this not because I enjoy hideous violence, but because it would be a sign that finally, truly, male and female heroes could be depicted doing the same things to the same dramatic effect. It would also indicate that squeamishness at the idea of "frail" women experiencing physical damage would be dead or at least in remission.

More to the point, most of the 'power moments" in superhero comics inevitably end up involving knock-down, drag-out fights where the hero gets busted up while struggling to beat the villain. It's the nature of the genre. If the industry wishes to write about super-heroines, don't make them second class citizens. Let them fight, battle, and be bloodied like the male heroes. Let them have real victories, instead of being meaningless "field leaders" or energy burst dispensors who step demurely aside when Superman shows up.

"Life is way too short to waste it fighting crusades (especially ones like how an artist draws a comic book cover). All it will end up doing is making you into a bitter, angry, resentful, dismissive individual, whom most people won’t want to deal with. This stuff is supposed to be FUN. If you aren’t having it, then maybe the problem isn’t others. Because I see plenty of folks who are having fun (of BOTH genders."

A good point, but I'm not sure I agree - what I do know is that you aren't addressing Turners drawing, but bitching about all the bitching, the whole critical nature of the comix fan community - but I think you're pissing up a rope here, as I say, people form emotional attachments to these things, and tend to be sensitive about things they don't like.

I'll repeat my analysis of Turners drawing made in the CSBG forum, because I think it illustrates the point I'm trying to make, so bear with me:

The target demographic of the entire medium has changed dramatically as the adolescents of the baby boom generation who originally enabled the expansion of the industry to begin with age, and their tastes change - at the same time, there is a need to appeal to new readers, adolescents, and heavy competition from other forms of media that didn't exist in the Silver Age.

I was very attracted to this adolescent body type at one point in my life - when I was an adolescent - now it looks like somebodies kid to me, so it goes.

Not this particular image of powergirl, necessarily, which is a pastiche of styles and symbolism, and what happens when you try to please everybody - she is actually unusually muscular for a woman, her arms are quite impressive, and her upper body in general is the classically masculine V shape, she looks like a juicer to me, in fact - modified only by the exaggeration of her secondary sexual characteristics, her breasts.

Below the waist, she seems to have a very adolescent body, very slender hips - again, a masculine/adolescent characteristic, which is modified by making her waist impossibly thin in order to indicate that she has any hips at all.

Such is the challenge of the comtemporary comic book artist: she has to look powerful for the female readers, sexy for the male ones who tend to be uncomfortable with overly muscular women - even the thin ones cannot be "cut" 'cause they "look like guys", while the younger adolescent demographic is a lot picker about weight - if turners drawing had more average, classical proportions, i.e., her hip approxomately the same width as her shoulders, people would be complaining that she has has "breeder hips", or calling her fat.

Same with faces, to a large extent, comic book women are supposed to have very smooth faces - in the silver age, many female characters had normal nasolabial folds, noses and nostrils - now the faces are mostly lips and eyes, the nose minimized to the point of nonexistence in some cases, and you'll never see a nasolabial fold.

Of course, all of these features add to the artists ability to draw expressions, the nasolabial fold tends to appear prominantly when a person smiles for example, and so the lack of these characteristics tends to result in female faces that look botoxed - Powergirl has that blank expression because her facial muscles are frozen, beacause any lines in her face would run the risk of alienating fans who would complain that she looks "old".

End of excerpt.

The point here is, this particualr drawing is in fact, a woman designed by a commitee - her particular attributes are specifically designed to appeal the often contradictory demands of a diverse fan community - young male readers are probobly the fattest demographic, so their demands are going to carry mroe weight, the rest is is an attempt to appeal to the amall, but still important fringe demographics, the result, an image disturbing to many people on many levels, even if they are unable to articulate what it is exactly that is so disturbing.

So it's inescapable: the drawing itself is the result of of a lot of bitching, which in turn set off a new round of bitching - I actually see it as healthy, it means comics are no longer an onanistic, solitary art form best enjoyed with a flashlight in a darkened closet, but genuinely popular artform.

As for "the answer" that's less easy - currently, fans seem to follow artists, for the most part, and writers, to some extent, while some still remain loyal to particular titles - unless some standardization is imposed editorially, people are gonna bitch when certain arists are going to be percieved as not be doing their favorite characters justice.

I'd like to mention my latest thoughts on Powergirls characterization - the way I see it there are at least four "types" of women, those who for resons of their own do not like to be ogled, and tend to wear the fashion equivilent of the burlap sack - there are thos who are more or less oblivious to the entire quesiton, and dress according to the latest style, what ever it is, and don't worry about whether it gets them ogled or not - then there are those women who dress because they want to be ogled, and in fact may take it as an insult if you fail to ogle them (I don't go to the gym three times a week so you'll ignore me!!!) - and finally, women who squeeze themselves into their tightest jeans and sweaters, spend hours doing their makeup and hair, and then act outraged and insulted when you check them out.

I'm not going to go too deeply into the various motivations for this last, somewhat passive aggressive mode of behavior: could be they do it because that's "what everybody else is doing", and the attraction effect is simply not taken into account, could be they enjoy humiliating men, could be some other deep seated psychological issues, I dunno, but it seems to me that Powergirl falls somewhat into this last catagory, although she has some aspects of the previous one as well.

This in itself sort of suggests hidden complexities in the character that could be explored a bit, and a lot of ways to go with that - i.e., there is a whole range of feminist and counterfeminist critiques that could be worked in by a clever writer here without a great deal of effort.

You could eat your cheescake and have it too.

I'm finding myself sympathizing with Linkara here, the question being not so much are many, many female superheros cheescake, but are they anything *but* cheescake? Sure you can look elsewhere, except that it dowsn't really work that way - one tends to like certain titles and characters, and it seems a little specious to deal with creeping banality in a title you like by saying go like something else - it's damn sure nobody is going to know what you think if you don't complain.

I dunno if I want to see female superheros all beaten up either, but presumably, they are superheros, they get in fights, they probobly get beat up now and again - they definitely get their clothes ripped up, that much is fer sure.

Thing is, Powergirl is just the sort of character that does like to brawl, and I really can't see her taking all the shit she does - the character actually sort of presents an opportunity to deal with issues like sexual harrasment - in a comic-booky way of maybe - but since no one seems able to resist harrasing her, why can't she she do anything but make aidle threats? How does she feel about it? Take it in stride? Feel contempt for the juvenile behavior of her co-heros? She has damn near the potential of Wonderwoman, she's just got big tits - get over it.

I've come to suspect that underlying the criticism of Turners artwork is a suspicion that her bosoms are really the only reason she exists at all - I'll repeat a post I made over in the CSBG forum, 'casue I dunno how many of you have followed the (desultory) dicussion over there:

"I think a lot of the bugaboo about Turners depiction of Powergirl is that a lot of people really want to like the character but apparently she can't seem to escape from the Bimbo dimension, and she's Bimbifying everything she touches - Turner had the misfortune to become a lightning rod for a certain undercurrent of discontent by taking her to new levels of Bimbification".

It all good fun for male readers, but the message to women readers is that you can't take a character seriously if they have a vagina when there's really no reason she/they can't be more dimensional characters and *still* look good.

Result: steadily increasing sales of Manga to female readers - Manga characters are often sexualized to degrees far beyond that of American comics, but they are much more likely to be humanized, they can express feelings (and fight and get bloody noses too!) and they can be taken seriously as something more than an excuse for titty jokes.

Except, that wasn't the point. Adie put out a "challenge" with very specific creitria. I suspect she did so, thinking no one could name a series or character that fit the request. Then, of course, I upset the apple cart by doing just that. After which others (whether intentionally or otherwise) come out to try and debunk my example, with such silliness as "fan art" or a limited amount of scans they've seen (and little or no knowledge of the character).

In the end, however, I did exactly what Adie asked. Spider-Girl is a character that's a powerful/capabile female hero "who’s features aren’t a running joke, and who doesn’t show her thighs, belly, or cleavage." Despite the best efforts of others to try and make it seem otherwise, the example still stands. And she isn't the only example I can name (just one of the most recent).

"I can think of plenty of fights between male heroes that degenerated into blood-on-knuckles ugly brutality. Jaws busted up, masks torn, unglamorous and nasty. Big fights that define the end of a long plotline with a massive crescendo.

I can’t think of any fights between heroines that are allowed to reach this level of intensity. Heroines in big superhero fights are either spewing energy and knocked aside with single blows, or get cleanly tossed aside or knocked around while trying to tussle."

And is this something women find lacking in their own reading? They want to see women pulped and bloodied in fights? Wouldn't that be misogynistic towards the gender, to show them being beaten so viciously? Hasn't female characters being maimed and assulted in such vicious ways, been one of the things that's been crusaded against with such vigor for a while now?

You know, I could probably do here, exactly what I did with Adie's "challenge" and cite an example, but then, I'd only end up with the same result. People coming out to try and debunk my example, even though it completely meets the criteria cited.

And that, in my opinion, is why you see "a lot of the fanbase and industry accept this status quo, and angrily attack people who point out its insanity and lobby for change." Because, despite how so many pundits of this need for change make it seem, things aren't as bad as they'd have us believe. Oh, it's not exactly a level playing field or perfect, but to hear the complainers, nothing has changed since the 1950's. And whenever someone, like myself for example, comes in with an example or can cite an instant that shows that isn't true, they immediately move in to debunk it, either with personal insults towards that person, or changing the criteria of the question until the example given no longer fits it, thereby showing how "wrong" that person is.

Like with so many other "radicals", it's all about the cause. The PEOPLE mean very little. Who cares if you villify someone publicly, because they didn't fall into lock-step with your views? As long as the CAUSE is catered to, little else matters. It's funny how the very unacceptable attitudes and behavior you cite as being done TO your "side's" viewpoint, are also the very same tactics that are employed BY them, when it suits the purpose. In the end, you prove yourselves no better than those you claim are the problem.

Maybe instead of everyone telling everyone else what's "wrong" with all of them, they should cast that light inwards and find what's "wrong" in themselves. It's much easier to improve yourself, than to control and change someone else. I have a father who's an alcoholic, so I know how fruitless an exrecise that is. And this isn't to say that no one should ever speak up, if they think something isn't quite right. But once your point is made, there's little else to be done. Blasting the people who don't agree with you isn't going to change anyone's mind. Altering the point, to disprove another's example that refutes your claim, doesn't make your view any more "right." Some people won't listen to you. Some people will always choose ignorance over knowledge. That's just a fact of life. Constantly screaming your views at everyone isn't going to change that. It will only make YOU seem like the jerk. Again, this is another fact with which I've had much personal experience.

Life is way too short to waste it fighting crusades (especially ones like how an artist draws a comic book cover). All it will end up doing is making you into a bitter, angry, resentful, dismissive individual, whom most people won't want to deal with. This stuff is supposed to be FUN. If you aren't having it, then maybe the problem isn't others. Because I see plenty of folks who are having fun (of BOTH genders).

Honestly, there's a huge world of material out there. You want to see super-heroines who get into bloddied fist-fights? There's books out there that will have it. You want strong female heroes, who aren't just cheesecake images? There are those out there that fit that. Granted, you might not find them at Marvel or DC. You might have to look into the scarey back part of the Previews catalog, but they are out there. You can find almost ANYTHING you want in the world of comics. You just have to be willing to look for it. Sometimes the search will be easy. Sometimes it won't. And if it isn't, that doesn't mean that the stuff that IS easy to find is "wrong." It just means it popular. If you want the materials you like to be popular, you need to seek it out and them help to promote it to others. Talk it up to people. Point it out to the masses. See, if more folks did that, not only would it be easier for tohers to find certain types of materials, but you'd be so busy pointing out this "good stuff", that you probably wouldn't have time to complain about the stuff you don't like. There's the way to effect a positive change.

"The fans don’t want girls in their comics shops, anyway."

No, that isn't true for most. They don't mind (or really care) if girls come into their comic shop. They just don't want them telling everyone on their blogs that they are "wrong" or "evil" or "misogynists" for their choice of fictional entertainment, after they DO come in. Wouldn't seem like much to ask, would it?

"So change can’t happen, because fans refuse to let the dialog happen with any sort of dignity."

Dignity is a two-way street. Just like respect. You have to give it, to get it. I don't see much giving of it from EITHER side. Maybe that's why I have such a hard time seeing anyone involved in this stuff (outside of possibly the creators) as a "victim."

Change can and does happen. The industry today is not the same as the industry of 50-60 years ago. Things are better. They still have a way to go, but there has been forward momentum of change. And I'm sure there will continue to be. But I somehow doubt that the changes that have come, as well as those that will come later, will be due to the "radical crusaders" of either side. Personally, I think they do more to hold back any meaningful change than anyone else ever could. Blurring the issues with their own petty nonsense and personal demons. They should work on fixing their own ills, before they go trying to fix the world's.

I doubt anything I've said here will register with most (except the parts that can be twisted and taken out of context to villify me), but for the few of you who will actually read my words and seriously contemplate them, the real change that needs to come will only come from within, not without. Work on making a better YOU and leave everyone else to do the same. Quit looking for things to upset yourself over and look for the things that bring you joy (and promote them to others, so you might spread that brand of joy). Things aren't as bad as anyone else tries to make them look.

I've seen a lot of drawings (published by Marvel Comics) where Mayday's inexplicably being drawn such that her butt is being forcibly hurled at the camera.

With Spider-Man? Not so much.

The result of this is that Spider-Man is inevitably drawn in more forceful, aggressive positions that emphasize his speed, grace, or power. Drawings of Spider-Girl I've seen (just on scans of the comics, which I don't care for enough to read regularly) include a lot of in-costume depictions of total vulnerability and awkwardness.

Not saying Spider-Man is never drawn in a vulnerable way (he is more than most other male heroes). Not saying Spider-Girl is never drawn in a powerful way, although the entire character seems built around how funny and difficult it is for a little girl to act like her daddy did. Just, at the end of the day, neither Spider-book really violates the law of averages when it comes to the superhero comic art status quo. At best, they merely offer a few more exceptions than is standard.

I think the real anger isn't that superheroines are sexualized in art when men aren't, or at least aren't to the same degree. It's that they're sexualized at the expense of allowing them to be powerful. You know, the difference between art of Superman and art of Wonder Woman.

This is an awkward example to extend with, but: I can think of plenty of fights between male heroes that degenerated into blood-on-knuckles ugly brutality. Jaws busted up, masks torn, unglamorous and nasty. Big fights that define the end of a long plotline with a massive crescendo.

I can't think of any fights between heroines that are allowed to reach this level of intensity. Heroines in big superhero fights are either spewing energy and knocked aside with single blows, or get cleanly tossed aside or knocked around while trying to tussle. If they take "battle damage", it's never anything ugly like visible wounds, just some artistic blood spatters and revealing clothing rips. Nothing like, say, a knock-down, drag-out Spider-Man fight.

For some reason, at all times, the heroine must remain appealing to look upon. The male hero is not so obligated. It's as if only the male heroes have a right to the ugliness of a real fight. Shots of a female heroine's fist forcefully punching a major foe in the jaw and doing damage are rare, and a female heroine tussling with a female villainess in a way not presented as a titillating catfight are exceptionally rare. Two female heroes beating each other the way, say, Wolverine and Sabertooth do? I can't recall ever reading that. The stories just aren't written.

So I think that general, very general, state of the affairs is the real problem. Michael Turner needs to be neither defended or castigated, because he provides little more than what is asked of him. The real targets of fan anger need to be marketing and editorial, which avoid change by accustoming readers to them, and then justify not changing by pointing to sales of the current status quo. If fans are ever to make any difference in this arena, it will be by making it clear we'd like editorial and marketing to do something different. But these forces are invisible, and so more difficult for fans to see, and even more difficult for fans to manipulate. And these forces control the status quo, and these forces have decided that the female dollar is undesirable so long as young men keep bringing their money into shops.

And what's great? Is that a lot of the fanbase and industry accept this status quo, and angrily attack people who point out its insanity and lobby for change. They become enemies of a community that can be shockingly brutal and ugly.

So change can't happen, because fans refuse to let the dialog happen with any sort of dignity. And until it does, marketing and editorial can accept the status quo as profitable enough and need not campaign to win the female dollar. See? The fans don't want girls in their comics shops, anyway. So the heroines will remain largely pretty to look at, and the heroes will continue to have the most dramatic and meaningful battles in a genre where conflict resolution largely comes in the form of fight choreography.

I do agree it gets old, and I got of the bandwagon of villifying artists a while back, whether I liked their stuff or not, when found myself perusing the upteenth thread on how much Liefeld sucks - it's almost to the point of religion, with heretics and messiahs - really, it's just comics books fer gods sake.

I think the fact that they're a genuine nexus between capital "A" Art, commercialism, pop culture and straight up folk art, makes for some weird tangents: an "all things to all people" sort of thing.

Everybody has their little corner staked out, and defends it against all comers - people form emotional attachments to these things.

Anyway, it's all good to me, I only question it when it seems that any one aspect of it is being pushed like it's the only thing that works - lotta "indies suck" CW talk at moment - seems that downloaders aren't stealing the indies in the same volume they steal Marvel, etc. Production values and Spandex aren't everything IMO.

Ah:

http://www.maximonline.com/slideshows/index.aspx?slideId=3422&imgCollectId=180

What I was simply getting at, is that Spider-Girl fits the criteria that Adie was looking for. She is a strong and capable female hero, who's "features aren’t a running joke, and who doesn’t show her thighs, belly, or cleavage." Spider-Girl's costume might be form fitting, but then, so is her father's. Yet I doubt you'll find many folks who will say Spider-Man is sexually exploited by that.

When you came in with your view of "fan art", it felt as though you were trying to make it seem that I failed to meet her criteria. Perhaps I misread you. Perhaps you phrased your point poorly. Whatever the case, for any misunderstandings I might have made on my part, I apologize.

As to the rest of what I said, it's pretty much become my opinion that most fans online don't truly care about the issues they rail on about. Many just want something to rant about or want to look for something "wrong" to complain about, when the reality of the matter is, if they really stopped to think about things, they are way luckier than they ever take notice of. Online communication, specifically by blogging (and commenting on blogs), has become little more than a game of one-uppmanship, with everyone trying to show how much more clever, funny or knowlegdable they are to everyone else. And that if that was to be done away with, you'd hardly hear a peep out of anyone anymore.

Sort of puts all this "sound and fury, signifying nothing" into perspective.

Anyway, that's the point(s) I was making.

Nor am I blaming any creators for what fans do, and I'm not even sure what I'd be accusing them of exactly - The cheescake in general is a seperate issue: the vast majority of superheros are depictions of very fit individuals in very tight and/or revealing costumes, i.e., the cheescake factor is pretty much built in, inherent inthe medium itself, and this includes Spidergirl.

I'm not at all certain I agree with Adie that cheescake is even demeaning, it's hard to say where pruriant interest and simple admiration for the human form intersect: we have evolved to find certain shapes and attributes visually appealing, there is no help for it.

Don't think I've ever seen anybody draw Aunt May palying with her own nipples, just saying.

Nor am I familiar with Spidergirl, so I could not say if I agree or disagree with your assessment that it isn't demeaning, whatever that means to you and Adie, I'll take your word for it, you clearly feel very strongly about it.

And in fact my own personal attraction insofar as I have any, to the New Spidergirl is the fact that she does look like an adult woman, not an adolescent, more aerobic than anorexic. In fact I'm not even entirely sure I'd ever even heard of Spidergirl until her makeover, it definitely caused a small ripple in the artistic community: tweaked something in the collective unconscious there, it only seems to happen with certain characters.

Maybe something to do with the recent interest in gender bending: female versions of male characters which has been gaining strength for a while now.

Then again, it may be that the current generation of fans is growing up, and now they want a real woman, I dunno, I'm pretty much trying to quit second guessing "what fans want" - for every opinion, there is an equal and opposite opinion.

And by "fan art", I'm basically referring to people who either work in the industry or hope to, drawing characters they like but whose books they are not actually working on - creators are fans too: even to a man - or a woman - you might say. And there are detectable generational influences.

My contention has pretty much been all along that if the cheese is getting riper, as it were, it's essentially supply and demand: the artists are giving the fans what they want, and I've heard plenty of anecdotes to that effect.

So what? Creators want to move their comics? Do tell - the opening blog made the point to begin with.

The title of this blog is "Comics Should be Good", I'm just throwing my two cents in on what makes a good comic from my POV - I do find the whole sexualization of adolescence slightly disturbing, the pressures on kids these days are already enormous - but that has as much to do with "Bratz", and the whole fashion/style thing as it does to do with Michael Turners pulchritudinous pubescents.

In fact, if it's going to be a chicken or egg thing, I say follow the money, and I suspect that more money changes hands every day in the fashion/cosmetics, etc. industries, than there is ever going to be in the comics industry.

My opinion is that mass media is all pretty much exploitive by nature, it's the rule rather than the exception, morphological sterotyping is only one facet, so it goes.

So, again, I'm forced to reiterate the question: what exactly you are trying to assert: fans are irresponsible pervs? I have no idea what you're saying, spell it out for me.

So, are we now going to hold creators, publisher and characters responsible for the actions taken by the fans?

See, I was under the impression folks here were taking issue with the choices made by those creating the comic, not what fans themselves might do which could go against their own intentions.

Spider-Girl, the comic, character and creators of her, produce work that is not overtly sexualized and demeans the female protagonist, which is what "Adie" was asking for.

Your attempts to hold the character and creators responsible for the "drool factor" created by "fan art" just serves to prove my feeling that online fans really don't give a damn about the real issues, but only look for something to bother themselves over and rant about.

Maybe fans ought to take a look at their own lack of responsiblity, before they go blasting someone else for their own perceived transgressions. Of course, if that happen, whatever would fans online talk about?

I'm all for cheescake, got nothing against it, it's sort of the middle of the continuum: younger fans will tend to go for the action, the cheese and emotitional stuff will simply go over their heads, i.e., transparent: the cheescake starts to add interest for adolescent readers, while the more complicated emotional undercurrents are probobly more appealing to older readers - ideally, you probobly want to include something on each of these levels to varying degrees, depending on who your target demographic is.

Spider-Girl. Next!

Second, it's not just Michal Turner's art that gives women low self-esteem, it's the prevalance of that kind of body being presented as ideal *everywhere* that does it. Will Michal Turner not drawin stop it? No. But is it wrong to ask him, or ANYONE doing it, not to? No. I dont' care if there are "worse things out there", that doesn't exactly make it "okay".