Let's Talk About Marvel Comics And Spider Woman's Ass

[the December King]

I have always liked Manara's work and so I fully expected a sexualized pose when I clicked on this article. The man has talent and has been drawing women for decades. His erotic art is legendary.

I'm not sure getting such an artist to draw a cover for something like Spiderwoman is a good idea (except to generate chatter, of course) because I feel it does imply a more overt sexualisation to the character than should be in a comic.

So, love the skill, not the subject, I guess.

 

[Kameburger]

I can't control the reflex I get to roll my eyes everytime this kind of thing pops up. I mean I think what no one seems to really think about is as an artist, you are always going to draw what stimulates you, and I mean that not in a sexual way, but something that catches your eye and interests you. Something that makes the chemicals in your brain swirl a little. I mean I think we are getting a little bit high and mighty consider we're talking about literally the pro-wrestling of printed entertainment. And I don't mean to say that comic books are artistically lacking, far from it in fact, but as someone who likes to draw, be it men or women, there is a very large tendency to draw women for example in a way that I find attractive, or men in a way that I find cool, which is first and foremost subjective in nature, and probably a bit primal as well. And that's just me speaking about my tendencies as an artist.

I remember there was quite hilarious stand up act by an African-American comedian maybe 10 years or so ago (I don't remember who it was and I'm not sure how much fame he reached, but he had this one joke where he was traveling through the super market with his father who was pointing out how racist all the food was. "look at these olives, the green olives are in a jar, but the black olives are in a can, Why do you have to lock the black olives up?!" admittedly hilarious, but also illustrates a good point that sometimes we go looking, and expecting this kind of thing to appear and when we try hard enough, low and behold it does!

When I look at this variant cover I see one of those kinds of drawings where a more abstract artist does his take on a comic character, where it's not so much sexual as it is his particular style of drawing the female form which is neither realistic or very comic book like for that matter.

With that being said, it's not like he is creating an unrealistic standard of beauty, or objectifying the character in any real way that I can tell. She's not being used as background art, she isn't chopped up and in a refrigerator, she doesn't have some kind of sexual expression on her face, she isn't being kidnapped by Bowser, and even more over, she isn't dressed exactly like her male counter part. Where is she setting back women? Because her tights are revealing her form quite a bit? Have you guys seen the yoga pants sub reddit?

Those yoga pants reveal quite a lot on their own, so what are you gonna blame this girl for? Keeping up with the trends? Having a kinda weird shaped posterior?

Equality is not a "wack a mole" game, you don't get points for bopping people every time they step out of what seems to me to be an extremely blurry line.

 

[Therumancer]

I find this overall discussion to be utterly hilarious, and truthfully I don't think those "upset" about fantasy or comic artwork represent anything of a minority, nor do I think sexy images like this speak only to men, since women create characters a lot like this too, and female artists also do artwork like this... indeed check out the "Titans" collection which has comic-inspire artwork done by Boris Valejho and Julie Bell.

At any rate, something people need to understand is that Spider Woman is conceptually a sexually charged character. One of Jessica Drew's powers is literally based on sex pheromones which allow her to attract/manipulate men and put them into a euphoric state, though it has the side effect of repelling women. She had had to go out of her way to use a chemical compound to negate that in the past.

Basically the idea is that she has powers like a female spider that attracts and kills mates.

What's more all of the Spider characters have been shown in some rather awkward, spider-like poses, and it's been joked about in the past that it seemed like the artists have gone out of their way to show Peter's butt in a firm, well-defined, way over the years... so really, this doesn't bother me, especially seeing as sex appeal is one of Spider-Woman's things, whether she entirely likes it or not.

The point here is that this is one of the characters that you'd actually have to justify NOT showing like that given part of the whole point. Indeed some portrayals of the character have had her actually apologizing for acting too much like a sexual predator, sometimes without realizing it. I believe for example in "Marvel Ultimate Alliance" for example (a video game) when you talk to her in Doctor Strange's Sanctum (if she's not in your party) she makes some comments about this and the Pheremones, but it's been a while. The point is that her and Spider-Man periodically tend to act like human spiders and move that way, even when they don't intend to, or realize they are doing it, people have had that take on the whole "Spider Person" thing for a long time now, though to be fair it arguably wasn't always that way and artists didn't always latch onto the whole "Spider-ness" of the characters.

This kind of thing also manifests in other ways in comics as well, for example quite a long time now Spider Man surprised a lot of people (including himself) by taking out Firelord (a cosmic powered Herald Of Galactus) using hit and run tactics, and a finisher that had him literally moving around him with punches and kicks and stuff at greatly accelerated speed, akin to (and inspired by) the burst some spiders get when webbing prey. This kind of thing has also been used for things like his some of his finishers and super movies in various fighting games and such. It works because you know, he's a SPIDER man, so he does occasional speed bursts even if super-speed isn't one of his powers. The same applies with Jessica Drew to an extent and Spider-like aspects of her characters, one of which is that she literally has "Super hotness" as a power.