Why I Hate Greg Horn

Thank god he's not doing the covers for Ms. Marvel anymore.

(Dave reminded me.)

Not exactly Separated at Birth

(With apologies to Bully)

I'll admit right off that with me and Kalinara, this is the opposite of that Star Sapphire Green Lantern cover. I giggled and rolled my eyes at this one and she found it distasteful.

But as a Private Benjamin reference?

The iconic Goldie Hawn image:



Ms. Marvel #29:



Just to drive that home, Goldie Hawn again:




If that's an homage, it's a piss-poor one.

It'd be a funny homage, were it for the cover of say Benjamin's Privates or some similarly themed pornographic take on the movie, but a superhero book?

You know, I never thought that I could respect Greg Horn less as an artist, but the thought that he was intentionally referencing Private Benjamin rather than Army@Love or an actual porn movie... Well, that just digs a new cellar under the Hall of Artistic Shame.

I'm so disgusted I'm impressed, actually.

But I'm sorry, it can't be what he was thinking. I'm almost certain it's a reference to an Army@Love cover, but I can't find it. I've seen that pose before in the annuls of military-themed pornographic images. It's not a Horn original idea. It's not a reference to that movie, either.

This one'll be quick because I'm short on time.

Bellatrys has been puzzling over an X-Men cover for the last couple of days, trying to figure out what makes a feminine pose and costume and what makes a masculine one. Meanwhile, and between her and Willow they've figured out precisely what's wrong with some of these cheesecake covers. First, take a look at the original cover, and the three remixes Bellatrys made. Now Willow's comment on the Xena one:

Personally I'm very surprised that my first thought on the Xena one was get up. The spine's the same, the ass up is the same - though it's covered. Maybe it has something to do with Xeam = Strength to me.

But I don't find it gratuitous. I just go "Xena Get Up!" and worry about the bad guys and who was strong enough to do that to her.

Look at Conan and Storm again. The most prominent part of each picture is the exposed left buttcheek, there's also a good central view of her exposed back and a little bit of the side of her breast. The first thing you notice in the picture is the exposed flesh and that sets the tone of the whole image.

With Xena, her plain leather skirt covers her butt (it falls just perfectly to) and her breasts are fully covered, and the what stands out is her armor, not her flesh.

Superman is drawn the way his costume normally is, covered up with a shiny uniform. Not particularly provocative.

Every part of a piece of art is important, because the artist is trying to set up an overall mood. Every line in the drawing needs to support that mood somehow. A piece of superhero art is supposed to evoke a sense of heroism, even when the character is flat on their face. You are supposed to look at it and be impressed with what knocked them down, and ready to see them stand up in the next panel. That's what a cover image should be. Its supposed to make you want to pick up the book and look inside to see who they're fighting and how they kick the bad guy's ass after being thrown so badly.

When an artist focuses too much on making the subject of the piece look sexy, as Larocca (arguably) did with Storm and Bellatrys did (purposefully) with Conan by put so much attention on bare flesh, they destroy that. If the viewer's eye is first draw to a titallating image of a character's butt and thigh, you've lost the chance to make them worried about anything other sex. The viewer is not thinking about how the character got to be face-down on the ground, the viewer is focusing on the character's butt. The viewer is not anticipating that this character will crawl to their feet and punch the bad guy in the face, the viewer is thinking about the possibility of even more exposed flesh. Its not a matter of femininity or masculinity so much as sexualization period here.

This is one of those points that subjective, some people might not think that Storm in particular is a distracting amount of skin (comparatively, it doesn't seem like a lot except that her butt is the focal point of the cover) and its certainly not the worst cheesecake I've ever seen but its a good example of an artist slipping over the line and losing the desired effect. Its not just that its unnecessary, it is actually harming the overall image by screwing with the artist-viewer communication. If you go out of your way to draw cheesecake you lose a lot of the drama superhero comics are supposed to give us. Pinups are one thing, a cover scene like this is another. (Interior artwork is the worst time to be cheesecakey at all, because then you are interrupting the story itself by distracting the reader, but that's another complaint entirely.) The cover is supposed to make me want to buy the book. I'm supposed to look at that on the rack, get worried about what they'll do with Storm (granted that image makes me worry about how they're handling Storm but not in a way that makes me want to see what they're doing to her) so that I'll pick it up to see who tossed her and how she gets back on her feet.

The bottom line is that in a visual medium too much sexy can hurt the story. Artists need to be more thoughtful about what they put in an image.

Uhh...

I can't own this.

I tried the Ms. Marvel trades and adored them, but I don't want to buy the normal book. The covers are too offputting. Why does Marvel put Greg Horn on cover detail for all the female books? They could at least find an interesting cheesecake artist. Being extremely generous, his stuff looks like he stole an aspiring lingerie model's portfolio and is photoshopping different costumes on her pictures.

Still missing the point.

Loren over at Suspension of Disbelief did an overlay test and discovered that the Power Girl cover was altered before release to give her a smaller breast size.

However, her lifeless posture, incorrect anatomy (the breasts are still anchored to her ribcage -- boobs don't work that way!) and utterly vacant expression remain.

Good god, DC, its not about the fucking cup size. Its about when your artist doesn't bother to draw the rest of her because he thought big breasts got the character across.

They don't.

Next time you kick Turner in the butt, make him fix the rest of the cover too. Or better yet, don't hire his lazy ass!

Now that its quiet enough that people can read more closely

(People meaning me, of course)

Takeshi Miyazawa's description of the cultural snafu, which I've just now (that the whole thing's died down a bit) had a chance to read thoroughly, tells me much more than I want to know about Marvel's art policy (Emphasis mine):

I drew the previous cover to Heroes for Hire and was asked to choose at least two girls out of the cast and draw them as sexy as possible so, naturally, I did.

If there is one thing that everyone should take away from this, its that using "sexy" as the defining trait for a character (and seriously, if that's all that is matter that a character be drawn as in the cover, that's a "defining trait") is a stupid idea.

Edited to clarify: This interview is from an artist who drew a previous cover, relayed the instructions he got, and described what probably happened with issue #13. I quoted him because I felt the art instructions he repeated were extremely important and the whole point of Miyazawa's post was that by Japanese standards, that cover was attractive so I didn't want to get into the cultural differences of what's sexy and what's creepy, but instead wanted to point out what Marvel was telling their cover artists to do.

If the phrases "strong, aggressive, brave, or heroic" were used instead of just "sexy" there may have been a very different cover, but we can only conclude from the end result that none of those words were important enough to be used when communicating with the artist from another culture who had never seen the characters before.

So who lost sight of the idea that these were 3 kickass women, Joe?

Cover Cliches

I did it again. I bought an issue based solely on the cover. It wasn't a series I was reading, or had heard about. It was actually the 3rd issue of a 6-issue miniseries. Silent War #3.

Like the last issue I bought just for the cover (the issue of New Avengers with the Scarlet Witch on the cover), it made me sad. I don't know why I'm such a big fan of Magneto's kids, but I always have been. I'm a sucker for any appearance they make. I scanned reprints of early Uncanny X-Men for them. I pick up random issues of Avengers when one of them is prominent on the cover (this is how I have the trade paperback of The Morgan Conquest). The first set of back issues I picked up when I was done with BMT and living on my own for the first time was the first two issues of the Amazing X-Men miniseries that tied into the Age of Apocalypse crossover. It was my favorite, because that was the one where Pietro was leading the X-Men. I have every issue PAD wrote of X-Factor and beyond that. Hell, I even own some of the 1997 Quicksilver series (I have the Heroes For Hire crossover).

So I've had issues with Marvel, or rather I've avoided buying issues from Marvel, since Wanda flipped out. It seems to have soured me on 98% of the Marvel universe and I dropped every Marvel book I read after Disassembled. It was such a wasteful stupid thing to do to a character.

Then I nosed around and picked up the first half of House of M, because I thought they might fix it. I dropped it when they revealed Pietro was the antagonist.

Then I picked up Son of M, just in case they fixed at least one twin. No such luck. Unlike the crossovers where Wanda was featured as insane, Son of M was a wonderful series. It was wonderful comic miniseries in the same way that The Last Sherlock Holmes Story is a wonderful book. Its skillful and engaging, and everything fits as they go through it. this somehow makes it more sickening than when the hero is completely mischaracterized, because the writer draws you into the story and its like a perfect horror picture. You empathize with the main character. That character is your hero. And you watch, helplessly, as they act completely within their nature and destroy their own sanity.

(If only Wanda's story could have been so good.)

Still, it was very depressing and I rationalized buying this because maybe, just maybe, it could get fixed.

It isn't.

But at least I still have this cover.



Isn't that beautiful? Crystal looks strong and protective and powerful here. Looking at the cover makes me forget a little bit about losing Wanda, mainly because I've never seen Wanda get to display such a presence. Not many female characters do. That's probably why I got out of my way for covers like this and like the Spirit #4. Its an image you can just look at and feel strong.

Last week, I saw a picture that looked much the same. It was on a T-Shirt in a souvenir shop and showed a classic poster of Luke and Leia for Star Wars. It was a little different from the ones I'd seen before, because rather than posing at his feet and holding a gun, Leia was wrapped around Luke's leg. It was the first time I'd seen that poster, but it didn't really make an impact on me. I thought at the time that it was the familiarity of the pose. Then I saw this cover.

I wonder if the artists understand what they convey when they do a role reversal like this. As a woman, I'm expected to empathize with the male characters as well as female characters (the whole "if boys will read it, girls will too; so make it for boys" mentality that the Entertainment industry displays) but that doesn't change the fact that when I see a man and a woman on a cover, I tend to identify with the female character.

So a picture of the traditional version, where the man is standing and radiating power while the woman is on her knees clinging to his leg can be offputting because at first glance my mind wants to identify with the female position. But the male character is the stronger in such a picture. He's the one we're meant to empathize with while the girl is the throwaway. So there's a little bit of distancing that has to happen. I have to ignore the gender difference to identify with the stronger character. Something is lost, and I see the art through a filter. I've seen tons of poses like this, with the woman wrapped around the man's leg, and they've never struck me as a good pose.

But looking at this cover the power hit me right away. There was no distance, there was no filter between me as a viewer and the stronger character. I got the full effect of the picture.

Its hard to describe, but when I saw it my heart felt a little lighter in my chest, my cheeks felt warmer and the corners of my mouth turned up in a smile. I think I may have stood a little taller in the store.

Now (because I know some poor soul who's cursed with apathy is misreading this feeling as a comment on the general state of my life) that's not to say that poses like this are as great as finding the cure for cancer, or my first taste of butter pecan ice cream, or that that's the most wonderful feeling I've ever had in my life. It was good enough to shell out the three bucks for a book that featured characters I liked. I've just lovingly detailed the experience so I can ask you all one thing:

Is that what it feels like for men when they see the typical pose?

Now I just need an envelope.

Wrote another letter to DC, this time over this. Feel free to pinch your nose and read aloud Comic Book Guy-style:

Dear Mr. Didio,

I saw Eddie Berganza's guest column in DC Nation last week. I had a mixed reaction, as a female reader

On one hand, its nice that you know we exist. I've been reading since I was 12 and over that time I've gotten the distinct impression that comic book companies only think guys read.

And I am casually interested in Supergirl. I pick it up from time to time to see if I like what's going on, but I'm not a big Kelly or Churchill fan and with Super-books I read for the creative team. (And implying the Power Girl is a "bimbo" by creating a "mimbo" equivalent doesn't endear them to me.)

Now Green Lantern books I'll read even when the writer and artists are unknowns. I love Green Lantern. I have the T-Shirt. I have the toys. I have the 'piggy' bank. I WANT to buy the entire series from the 40s until now because I ADORE the concept.
But I've dropped Green Lantern 3 times over the last 13 years. Twice because Jade was being treated like crap, and once for costumes. I never thought I had a problem with cheesecakey costumes before (love Wonder woman, love Power Girl) but Ivan Reis' interpretation of Arisia made me cringe. The shirtless Star Sapphire on the cover of GL#18 made me drop the book in the middle of a storyline. It looked like porn.

While its heartening to see an actual superhero book looking for female readers, its hard to stomach the sentiment when another book makes it crystal clear through exploitive art that female readers are not welcome.

Look, at DC you have an AWESOME product concept-wise. Superheroes can and do appeal greatly to women and you have the icons. And its wonderful (hint, hint) that you have pleasing female readers in mind.

Just don't stop at the 'girl' books. I'd read everything you put out if I felt welcome to.

Its obvious that column was because Supergirl's sales are declining and they know that women are reading due to the Girl-Wonder.org letter campaign, but I don't think they realize how stuff like this and Minx sound when contrasted to the mind-boggling sexism of the Green Lantern #18 cover. So I thought I'd bring that to their attention.

How Did We Miss This?

I was been bagging and boarding my comics (turns out I had two longboxes worth just sitting around in piles) when I can across New Avengers #4 and its Spider-Woman cover.



It reminded me of an old post on Mortlake on the Schuylkill where Melchior quoted a Bendis interview from Wizard Magazine:

"Wonder Woman won't sleep with you--but you have a shot with Jessica," says Bendis. "You're not waiting in line behind Superman." (p. 77)

Naturally, we all mocked him for fantasizing about ink and paper.

We missed something more damning.

That quote is the perfect example of a writer writing for men and not for people. It goes to the heart of every problem with female characters in pop culture. Spider-Woman isn't considered better than Wonder Woman because she has a simpler backstory, a more relatable personality, or more potential as a character. She's just a fantasy fuck that's closer to reality. This writer isn't even trying to get his readers to identify with the character here, he's presenting her as something to masturbate over.

It all comes down to writing characters of one gender as who your readers want to be, and characters of the other gender as who your readers want to have. This quote illustrates that attitude perfectly.

It makes me wonder how many of these female characters are written as sexually open because the writer thinks an active sexuality is an interesting character trait with story potential, and how many are just written that way because they think men will only read about women they'd be able to get into bed. It also depresses the hell out of me.

On the other hand, it makes me glad I'm not reading any Bendis books right now.

It's an old quote from an old magazine, and its a point that's been made before (many times through art, and I think Melchior may have felt it was worth being left unstated), but I just had to go back and point it out again. I just wish I'd noticed it and made a bigger fuss back in February.

I Can't Believe I Did This

That image was so hideous it put me off blogging for three days. (Well, I had other issues, but it certainly didn't help my enthusiasm).

The store didn't get most of the comics on Wednesday, so I had to go in today to get mine. While I was there, I did the unthinkable.

I crossed Green Lantern off my pull list.

Don't panic, I'm still me. I'm fine with getting Green Lantern Corps and Ion (loving them both so far), but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for the main book right now. I'd still be getting it if either the POW storyline had never happened, or the artist had the slightest idea about what looked good on a character.

See, it's not even so much the sexism with Arisia and Star Sapphire as it is the sheer ugliness of the two costumes. Add that ugliness to the fact that they make my favorite title something I can't carry in public without hiding the cover. Then add in the sexism of no male character having been drawn in a comparable monstrosity. It's totally soured me on the art.

The writing is annoying me because of the POW storyline, and also because John Stewart is completely absent. They keep promising, but he never actually shows up.

I might pick it up again when the Star Sapphire storyline is over, not sure though. I'm not sure I'd be willing to read a resurrection storyline with Katma Tui right now. Can you imagine what sort of costume that stupid artist would put her in?

Because A Thousand Words Wasn't Nearly Enough

My writing skills need work. I'm apparently able to entertain well enough, but when it comes to the true purpose of writing -- getting the message across, I've been falling short.

Case in point, yesterday's link to my cover analysis yielded this response. Kalinara's answer (originally found here) well-summed up my intention, but I can't help but wonder if this could have been avoided.

Take the tail-end of the comment, for example:

When you embrace this cover, you're not embracing a noble view of womanhood. You're embracing the view that a woman can only be noble if she rejects and battles against the sexuality that a male-dominated culture finds threatening.

You see, I agree with the base of Hippokrene's argument. The Femme Fatale is dangerous to men, she's a representation of male fear of female sexuality and the seeming control it has over them. She's an attempt to place responsibility for male actions on the female object of the actions.

However, there's a flipside to it, and that's the path of least resistance. I had a coworker once who tried to use feminine wiles to get mostly male coworkers to make things move a little faster for her. I hated watching it then, and I hate watching it now. Before she went overseas, she trained me to take over her additional duties (Hazardous Waste Disposal -- yuck) and advised me to do the same. I expressed my disgust and told her I'd be doing things my way (which involved scowling, growling and intimidation). But, I admit, it seemed to easy to do. So easy to play the game, play into their hands and expectations. All it took was an upward thrust of the chest, a suggestive tilt of the face, and you had that attention. You had what looked like power. It was a false sense of power, though, based entirely on the attention you got from the man you were speaking to. After you left, he'd not be considering you a coworker he did a favor for. You were an object of desire he got to look at a little while. He got to see your breasts and your smile and your eyes in return for a little attention. He got a little fantasy time, and when you came back, he'd expect the same.

Now, add a few years of doing that, and you sew on a stripe or two. Suddenly, you're Sgt Fatale. You go back to that guy, and he's still Amn Supply. You need something from him, and, according to military hierarchy, you are supposed to be the one in power here, not him. However, he's expecting that smile, that fantasy. Is it right to give that fantasy to him? It may seem harmless, but in order to do so you're sacrificing your own personal earned power of position over the situation for the illusionary power of your sexuality. Come crunch time, and he's breaking a safety rule or a security rule and you need to stop him -- How much authority will you have?

There's an internal struggle in that cover to me, the struggle between two parts of yourself -- the part that has valuable skills and dignity, and the part that wants to get something done the easy way. As I looked at that cover, I saw Osira, a supervillain. Supervillains always take the easy way. She used her sexuality to get ahead. Diana doesn't do that. She's clearly a sexual being, look at her outfit, but in the picture she emphasizes power and strength and rage, not sexuality.

The comment particularly got to me, though, because I suspect it could have been prevented. I wrote that analysis early Friday morning, and briefly played with a point. A point about the usual Good Girl-Bad Girl fight and how this doesn't conform to that dynamic. Normally, in such a cover, we see an emphasis on the Good-Girl's, well, "Goodness" and purity and "Niceness." Diana does not look nice. She looks like she's about to tear those snakes to pieces and then start on Osira. "Good girls" typically resemble pre-Hades Persephone. An innocent, good natural girl who is fighting to avoid being taken advantage of. She is defending her virtue. In such images, the "Good, Pure Woman" is always just as exploited as the "Bad Girl." If anything, with the "Good Girl" it's worse because there's an element of victimization. She's being swept away by unrestrained sexuality and must fight against it.

It makes me sick too. But this cover doesn't have that victimization. Diana shows some control here. She's not the victimized "Good Girl" defending virtue against the "Hussy." She does not represent an extreme. She's a normal, moderate woman who is fighting a twisted extreme of sexuality. Like all supervillains, Osira represents an unhealthy extreme, while our hero represents the healthy middle-ground. The image shows a perverted representation of femininity, of sexuality attempting to sweep Diana away, but she's not going gently or frightened or scrambling to get away. No, she's enraged, and exerting force, and ready to demonstrate not six kinds of violence on her enemy. As her creator himself points out, Diana always breaks free and overpowers her captor.

I was bothered by the comment, a bit discouraged, and genuinely annoyed because I figured that leaving in what I'd discarded would have cleared it up, even if it had disturbed the flow of the writing. I talked it over with some friends. Tekanji, who I remember when she first saw the picture mentioned her eye was drawn to the large snake around Diana's thigh, mentioned there was some Virgin/Whore dichotomy in the picture, Kalinara brought up the awful emphasis on Diana's "virginity", and Soyo perceptively pointed out the extreme polarization of sexuality in our society (which she'd already covered in this essay a few weeks ago). We managed, between the four of us, to pinpoint the difficult position of the artist. You couldn't avoid polarizing the subjects, Diana would not be seen as a moderate persona and it would bring up the Virgin/Whore dynamic if there was no sexualization on Diana's part. But, truly, in a cover with bondage and tentacles is it possible to de-sexualize a woman in a bathing suit? Not a chance. If any more sexualization was added, the Dodsons ran the risk of crossing the line to objectification and truly brining in the Good Girl-Bad Girl imagery as Diana would clearly be exploited. Kalinara and Soyo argued that the complaint of Diana being the pure and chaste woman up against the evil temptress would be less likely in that case, but it would have killed any appreciation I had for the cover. The best possible situation was the one there, with Diana powerful and ready to attack and Osira exploited, but by herself.