I suppose that was mean of us.

I always wanted to get some of those artists into that position, then have them try to throw a punch, or make any other sudden athletic move. On reflection, though: liability issues. Way too easy to injure yourself.

BATTLE SCENE. Male characters: Grrr! Arrrgh! Punch! Kick! Zap! Female characters: Ooh! Aaah! Crotch shot! Poledance move! Lookit my butt!

HEROIC WALK-IN-A-ROW THING. Male characters: Stride. Glower. Female characters: Saunter. Sashay. Pout.

UNCONSCIOUS ON THE GROUND. Male characters: Sprawl. Ouch. Female characters: Spread 'em. Pose. Lie about like a sex kitten except, you know, unconscious.

WEARING CLOTHES. Male characters: Well, they're clothes. Female characters: Clothes with a boob sock, even if the character is supposed to be a conservative Muslim.

JUST FRICKING STANDING UP. Male characters: Fistclench. Bigshoulders. Heroic. Powerful. Female characters: Twistback. Sexy ladyosis. Pout. Pornface.

This is why I don't buy Marvel or DC comics anymore. Because I can remember (get off my lawn) when they didn't pull this crap!

For me it's something like this - I see pictures like these and think "Wow! It's a bright red dinosaur with an apeman on his back!"

I look at the pictures on the first link above and think "Wow! They're some kind of alien snake women! Oh no, they're not."

Next we'll be asking Batman to carry extra liability insurance, to cover the injuries of all those people who somehow run into his fists.

Less seriously, this isn't a good example as Batman goes one better by running free clinics (in his Bruce Wayne persona)

Stumptown, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Matthew Southworth is a noir detective story set in Portland, Oregon. Like Portland, it's got some color.

I will say that the sexualization of female characters in comics in recent years has destroyed any hope I had of making my daughter the third-generation of comics fans in my family. Both my mother and my father read comics; both gave up comics while in college but my dad picked up the habit again when I came along.

My daughter's read some of my old comics, some of which she liked, some of which she disliked as insufficiently gender-equal/unfeminist.

But though she's tried today's comics several times, nothing's worked for her. Kids' comics (Tiny Titans) worked for a while, but she outgrew them and there was nothing to appeal to her at the Golden Age (12). She was reading manga and graphic novels by then.

Now, at 15, she's mostly given up manga but is still reading graphic novels, though not as many as she was a few years ago (high school workload = insufficient free time for reading).

She might like "Atomic Robo"... "B.P.R.D."... Terry Mood's "Echo"... Busiek's "AstroCity".... "Girl Genius"...

Almost Escher-esqe how that pose mananges to prominently display both breasts and buttocks. I wanna see the "Strong Female Characters" climbing an infinite staircase..."

Well...
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html

If we only count comics produced in North America as Real Comics... well, I occasionally pick up a collection of something from Marvel or DC at the library, but the only one I liked enough to reallyfollow has been Runaways. And even that wobbles a bit from one collection to the next.

Manga certainly has its own set of unrealistic gender tropes. It just also seems a lot broader than US superhero comics--which isn't surprising, since "superhero" is a pretty narrow genre itself, compared to everything comics can involve--which means it's much, much easier for me to avoid the ones with gender tropes that get on my nerves, or art I don't like. I haven't even bothered to try for US superhero comics in years. Much as I like the concept of the genre, when the people in charge of the company are explicitly saying their audience is one that doesn't and isn't supposed to include me, well... why should I bother wading through the slush pile?

Same concept.

Look at the superhero comics and you have unreal bodies topped by realistic, though ultra-pretty, heads. Superman himself can look way out of proportion, not just through perspective effects, and the same head is on a different body as Clark Kent.

As for the fan service aspect, I've seen outright pornographic comic book art from Japan, and they don't resort to that sort of posing.

It's an old slur, but one that's hard to dismiss: American comic-book artists draw as though they've never seen a naked woman.

Which is odd, given the Interweb, Rule 34, et al...

I suspect the teenager defines them similarly, with the additional limit of "things shelved in this particular part of B&N." (that would be the magazine section.)

Graphic novels/manga (the latter of which rarely venture into the capes-and-tights area) are shelved where the _books_ are. She thinks of them differently as a result.

(I agree that there are definitely visual conventions for human figures in manga as well. But though people are distorted and idealized in their own way, they retain a stronger sense of "normal/real" than most male and female main characters in US superhero stuff. And a number of the stories the teenager was following starred actual normal-looking people, since they were often about teenagers and young adults with no superpowers or supernatural/paranormal abilities.)

Her access to non-mainstream comics/floppies is very limited. There is 1 comic-book store in our neighborhood but it gives off the classic "no girls/no newbies" vibe. There's 1 near the office that is much better, environmentally-speaking, but I'm afraid that the ship of opportunity has sailed--at 15, she decides her own shopping destinations, and the comics store is never on her itinerary.

And yes, "Girl Genius" fails because of the drawing style. She just can't get past it.

Keep in mind there's more to comics than the superhero stuff, or the non-superhero stuff created within the superhero aesthetic. Carla Speed McNeil is, as you say, one good example, and her work has less in common with the superhero end of things than it does with "alternative" comics. (By which I mean "mainstream." Comics are weird. The stuff that might appeal to a broad audience is called "alternative," and the stuff aimed at the small number of people who resemble the Comic Shop Guy from The Simpsons is called "mainstream.")

These days, the best comics are far more likely to be sold in bookstores than in direct market comic shops. Almost none of them are sold as traditional 32-page magazine-style comic books. Outside the world of DC and Marvel, it's pretty much a dead format.

I find that most of the best SF/fantasy work in comics tends toward the magic realist end of the genre. A few "alternative" cartoonists who might appeal to SF fans--just off the top of my head, not a systematic list--include Cathy Malkasian (surreal fables with an animation sensibility), Jacques Tardi (steampunk adventure), Ben Katchor (for Cavino and Borges fans), Jim Woodring (indescribable), Jenn Manley Lee (who has a SF webcomic called Dicebox), Jason (deadpan fantasy/suspense stories starring animals), and Kevin Huizenga (mostly not SF, but it feels like it shares SF's worldview). I'd also recommend Seth's Wimbledon Green, which is not really SF but explores some of what drives people to immerse themselves in traditional comic-book worlds.

Realism/style is an issue which is mostly taste. If superhero comics were full of women with sexualised poses and costumes AND men similarily drawn then we could accept or reject it on it's merits.

On a related note, XXXenophile (NSFW, obviously), is a blast.

On the other hand, Girl Genius does have sexualized bodies, but the poses are not unnatural, and it's story-driven (plot and dialogue), so the drawing style doesn't bother me.

A) An unrealistically high proportion of sexy, not always fully clad, and athletic people populate this world, but at least a real human being can take/hold that pose, AND there's a story. (Geroge Perez-era Womder Woman (1987, IIRC) or Girl Genius, much manga.)

I'm basically okay with this; TV and film have the same unrealistic numbers of "highly attractive" people (And frankly, TV could do with more of them who actually have hips and bust, or, in the case of super heroines like Buffy, athletic musculature).

I also don't mind some fanservicy drawings, as long as they're of human beings. (I like it better when they include some half naked male figures for those of us who appreciate the variety... Girl Genius has been a bit LESS balanced this way than some other Foglio works.)

B) Have you MET the female of the species? (Rob Liefeld etc.)

These just insult me and turn me away. I can only determine that they based their models on Barbie dolls with the old G.I. Joe twist-around waists.

The strong female characters strips in the OP... didn't do anything for me either as skewering the trope or as humour. Shrug.

- the Bowler to her father's skull, after avenging his death . Yes, I heart Jeaneane Garofalo.

I thought Modesty looked realistic, as did Dracula...now Elfquest, well, not so bad as some of the above examples, but that may be damning with faint praise.

I find it funny that fanboys like TrashedMyCookies scream about "realism" whenever anybody asks why female comic characters appear to be not much more than an expression of the artists' sexual fantasies. It's not "realistic" to show male superheroes wearing Tom of Finland chaps and codpieces, either, but funny, outside of The Authority or The Desert Peach it's only the girls, never the boys, who get the "hey reader, is this hot or what, amirite?" treatment.

Has anyone tried this? It sounds like it would be a hoot.

Anyway, the difference between how male and female superheroes are portrayed is this: The males are drawn as the ideal that a hetero adolescent boy is supposed to want to be, while the females are drawn as what those boys are supposed to want to have.

Leaving aside the questions of whether we should be presenting those ideals, or how idealized we should be making them, what many women in the superhero-comics fan community are asking for is to have the characters they identify with presented as be-ideals (figures of agency) instead of have-ideals (objects of lust). Also, not to have them stuffed in fridges.

I'm still reading Modesty Blaise: our local paper was one of the ones that ran the strip right up until the end - at which point it immediately started running the whole thing again from the beginning. So I'm getting to catch up on all the stories I missed first time around on account of not having been born yet. (Except "Willie the Djinn", which got skipped for some reason.)

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that we're currently up to the 1970s, when Romero was doing the artwork, and Romero is a bit more keen on drawing scantily-clad females than is perhaps entirely good for the story - but it has to be said that he clearly does know what a female body looks like, and what shapes it can't be twisted into.

I don't blame Miller et al. for getting things about that battle at Thermopylae wrong. I blame them (especially Miller) for acting as if anyone who points out the errors present in the depiction they chose to present is some sort of degenerate kill-joy monster who does not appreciate Great Deeds and Heroic Heroes Being Desperately Heroic.

...by gritting their teeth and trying to spit words out.

I recall an earlier go-around on this topic, somewhere other than here, that inspired a set of images attempting to depict male superheroes (Superman, Green Lantern, etc.) in a comparable manner. Some of those images are burned into my memory, but I'm afraid their location has not been so persistent.

And actually, it drew *humans* fairly proportionally.

(Story-wise, it did need some work on gender politics, but not nearly as much as many of its contemporaries.)

fidelio @ 53: That defensive "you criticized X, why must you destroy everything heroically manlybeautiful!" attitude is prevalent all over, and it usually misascribes the motives of the critique completely. They assume complaining or pointing out flaws means being like the reviewer who covered Game of Thrones who obviously didn't like epic fantasy, didn't want to watch the series, and seemed to take more joy in mocking the style of story than the flaws in the actual work in hand.

Whereas, it seems to me that most of the people who complain about things complain because it *is* something they wanted to like, they wanted to be enthusiastic, but the painfully bad historical innaccuracy/racism/sexism/art, etc. was getting in the way. It's critique by enthusiasm, or at worst by enthusiasm narrowly thwarted.

(Remember the thread on ML after Return of the King, which was FULL of people who loved the movie and the filmed trilogy and were celebrating that love -- but also so full of nitpicks and critiques of its flaws that people outside the fandom would have good reason to assume we didn't like it at all.)

Looking at the strips, I can see what you mean about Romero's work, but his has to get on with telling the story. It's a strip from a daily newspaper, three frames per day. The reader can't be assumed to be able to look back at the previous day. So, while there's a degree of fan service, both Modesty and Willie, there's not space to waste.

Over in the USA, comic-book artists could work with the page as the visual unit, much larger, and able to support different ways of sequencing the frames and focusing attention. They could afford to dwell on a female figure.

I'm looking at the opening strips of La Machine, the first story, and it starts very low-key, with Sir Gerald Tarrant and Fraser looking at a block of modern flats by Hyde Park. But look at what goes on. They know something about Modesty. And the second strip tells you a huge amount in three frames. Tarrant doesn't give his full name. but Modesty knows who he is. And when she asks what he wants to talk about, he says "Murder."

Three frames, four speech balloons. We know from the first strip, by the hats they wear, which figure is Fraser and which Sir Gerald, but this is what blows the door open on all those years of adventure.

And many of the commuters reading that strip, in the London Evening Standard on the way home from work, would be dressed very like Jack Fraser, even in 1963. For a brief moment they would imagine themselves having a part in that strange and exciting world.

That's nothing like the comics coming out of DC and Marvel.

I am late to the party, and did have to check to make sure my memory wasn't being too forgiving, but the comics associated with the Buffyverse tend to skip the unnecessary and unrealistic sexualization of female characters. (Best in BtVS season 8, less so in AAtF and the Spike spinoffs.) There's some sexualization, but it's more of the aspirational idealization variety than objectification sort, and it is generally germane to the plot line. (Yes, teenage girls are going to sexy themselves up to go dancing. Not so much for the slayage or having conversations or research.)

I stopped following Season 8 about a year in* so Current Mileage May Vary, Void Where Prohibited, et cetera. Georges Jeanty's work seems to trend towards realistic, so that may be a jumping off point. Obviously, picking up the BtVS comics requires an interest in that 'verse.

*not due to content or image issues, but because my brain refuses the comic font. It's all caps, so comics yell at me, and emphasis is always on the wrong words. This is a problem I have with all comics, web comics and graphic novels.

The difference I see between manga and US comics is that in manga, male and female characters tend to be idealized in similar ways--hyperthin, large eyes, etc. And while there's no shortage of fanservice, it's pretty equal opportunity whether the hyper-sexualized character half-undressed striking a sexy pose while throwing a come-hither glance at the viewer is male or female. What gets to me about US comics is the gender dismorphism, both in body type and in presentation. It is, as Avram says, painfully clear which one you're supposed to want to be and which one you're supposed to want to do.

In addition to Carla Speed McNeil (Finder) and Brian Clevenger (Atomic Robo), I would also recommend Evan Dahm (Rice Boy), Dylan Meconis (Bite Me), Ursula Vernon (Digger), Tom Siddell (Gunnerkrigg Court), and Ted Naifeh (Polly and the Pirates).
I also like Warren Ellis (Freakangels) and Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak), but they veer back into boobalicious territory.

Most of the above are available online, and I'm pretty sure all are available in paperback collections. I am way too lazy to find all the links, though.

Yes, that's it.

Avram @49: I don't think we really disagree.

It even has a tribal society based on spotted hyenas that plays with some interesting inversions of the gender-role-stereotypes complained about upthread.

Finally, _Digger_ has the overwhelming advantages of being completed and being available in its entirety online. (Also can be had in dead-tree format.)

Disclosure: No relationship other than that I'm a huge fanboy.

Hah. Reminds me of the first time I encountered a male belly-dancer. It was at Denvention 2, back in '81.

If you'd have asked me about whether a man doing belly-dancing moves would work or not, I would have guessed no.

But, turns out, works just fine. ::sighs dreamily::

My first guess would be that market research has identified them as the population segment most willing to throw money away.

I'm encouraged to see that Netflix picks up little indie films, but I'd love to see something which is to movie studios as PBS is to television; e.g., viewer-driven production rather than market-driven. Subscription MGM, or something of the sort. No clue if/how the monetization would work out, but I really love to find someone committed to producing movies/TV pitched at me.

Most likely, it's just that's the market demographic the superhero comics industry has, and they're afraid of trying anything new. And they're stuck in a self-reinforcing loop: They've been appealing to the immature male demographic for long enough that most of their editorial staff come from that demographic, so they choose artists and writers from that demographic to make comics to appeal to that demographic....

Which suggests that there's some serious money to be made out there, should some enterprising soul ever decide to tap that market.

Unfortunately, most of the stuff I see pitched for the fem side of that age range just makes me want to hurl.

I don't think it's quite so calculated as all that--I think they make the comics they make because those are the books they themselves want to read. I suspect market pressure is more of a rationale than a driver.

(And I'd be very surprised if the majority of comic book buyers are teenagers. This study (done via facebook data, so grain of salt and all that) says that 18-30 is about 2/3s of the market. It also puts female readers at about 25%. [Unless by "immature" you didn't mean calendar years alone.])

That seems very plausible to me. People in businesses don't automatically flow into different personalities just because there's money to be made doing something different.

The other problem for organizations that have been around for awhile is that they've got sunk costs and ongoing projects which make it harder to change what they're doing.

On the less dramatic scale, I've read that electric razors weren't developed by steel blade razor companies.

None of this means that big and/or old organizations can't change, but it's harder than it looks from the outside.

I recall "Heroes of the Equinox". Definitely worth a look.

Of course, there's always Asterix.

We were exposed to the French originals at school, but I didn't get some of the jokes until I read the English versions. They're not always the same jokes, but the translations have been brilliant.

And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium...

... on the subject of unrealistic body shapes...

For some reason, it seems relevant that at least one major manga studio was created, and is still run, by women, who do all the writing, character design, etc. I don't know of any equivalent in the US comics industry (although I admit my knowledge of that industry is far from exhaustive).

Should you be inspired to try Rucka's Queen and Country series, I'd warn you off the 3rd one.

I just read Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 1. It includes 3 Queen & Country books, all written by Rucka but with different illustrators. I liked the first two, but the third, Operation: Crystal Ball, is illustrated by Leandro Fernandez, and I hated his work. Tara Chace is supposed to be strong and fit, but he draws her in the grotesque style, with a waist smaller than her head, huge breasts, etc, and posed in ridiculous postures. I looked up the following books in the series, and see that Fernandez didn't illustrate any of them.