About that Manara Spider-Woman cover...

[alschroeder3]

A lot of talk in the fan press about the sexism of that Milo Manara Spider-Woman cover. Generally, I am with people when they talk about the oversexualization of females in comics.

But in this particular case...oddly enough, I'm not so sure.

Let me explain why...

This is the Manara Spider-Woman cover....

And yeah, I can understand a lot of people's outrage. Some people even posted a male version, a la that Hawkeye page, to show how ridiculous it was. I probably shouldn't reproduce that without permission, but surely I can link to it.

The only thing is--I've been a fan for quite a while of comics. And THIS is the "pin-up" of Spider-MAN from Spider-Man Annual #1 by Ditko.

Which if anything was MORE, ummm, objectionable?-- than the male version of the Manara cover. Ditko had hundreds of similar shots of Spider-MAN...and if Manara had reproduced that particular pose EXACTLY, the furor might be much worse!

So...discuss? Is there a double standard here, or is the outrage justified?

(I tried to do a relatively unsexual-exploitive heroine in my webcomic MINDMISTRESS about a modern heroine inspired by Athena (in the same sense Flash was inspired by Mercury, Superman by Hercules, etc.), but even I had her wear "armor" that fit her as snugly as say, Tony Stark's was, because I thought it made a more pleasing image. So I'm probably as bad as Manara.)

Anyway...I'm not taking a side either way. I'm not really sure myself, in this particular case. Certainly I could name HUNDREDS of examples where comic artists have gone out of their way to present heroines in sexually suggestive poses where they wouldn't if it were a male hero. I'm just not sure if this particular case justifies the outrage.

Just presenting the images, and seeing what others have to say...

Have at it.

Comments

[bizarrohulk]

For me, it's not so much the pose, but the fact that her "costume" literally looks like body paint. There's no material on Earth that would cling to her buttocks like that.

[panthyr]

Agreed. That said, what the hell did they think they were going to get from Milo fucking Manara? Seriously, I love the man's work, but it's erotic comics.

[arilou_skiff]

That, and well... How should I put this? Her posterios is emphasised? Spider-man in that pose has a relatively "normal" ass, Jessica's is... Not neccessarily impossible, but certainly of an unusually ample size and shape?

EDIT: Honestly, She's Spider-Woman. Not Baboon-Man-Woman.

[raspberryrain]

I would agree. But Jessica Drew's costume usually does look like body paint. Leialoha actually drew it like a bodysuit, but most of her artists have drawn a stylized naked woman with lines painted on.

And artists have been drawing characters with painted-on costumes, visible linea alba and rippling sixpacks, for twenty-odd years. It's a convention, and this is firmly within that convention.

This is not new, and I think it's less egregious than the previous Spider-Woman #1 cover where the "costume" actually went into her navel and was shaped around each breast individually.
http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2009/09/spider_woman_1.html

I may not like it, but Webby's costume is body paint. At this point, they need either to admit that her costume is canonically body paint, or admit that their artists don't seem interested in drawing clothes realistically.

[zaqari_waliz]

Yes there is. Especially when it's specifically shaped to hug certain areas. This isn't a serious feat, and it's not only plausible but done.

That said, the material couldn't be very protective. So she better either have super endurance or be very confident in her ability to dodge.

[zing_och]

Spider-Man doesn't tilt up his ass to show off a wedgie, so I'd say his pose is a lot less objectionable.

[mrstatham]

This. People haven't objected so much to the idea of the pose, which is standard Spider-Man/Woman, really, but more the fact that she is quite blatantly posed with her ass higher than her head. There's definitely worse illustrations out there (although saying 'X is worse' is arguably a deflection at best and just because one person doesn't object to one thing, doesn't mean they can't object to this), and it *is* a variant cover, but they aren't doing the best job of selling Spider-Woman to female readers (or to me, frankly) with a variant cover like that and Greg Land bringing along his notoriety along as the lead artist.

[junipepper]

This.

[lilacsigil]

+1. The focus of the Spider-Man cover is his face (well, mask). The focus of the Spider-Woman cover is her ass. I don't blame the artist for the pose - this is his style and what they hired him to do - I blame Marvel for hiring him for the job. But I do blame the artist for that hideous face. For someone who says he loves drawing women, he obviously pays a lot more attention to some areas than others.

[cyberghostface]

Well also speaking as someone who's not taking a side either way (I get why people have a problem with it but I don't think it's a huge deal) there's not nearly as much emphasis on Spider-Man's butt as there is on Jessica's.

[squirle]

There is something wrong with her face. It looks... concave.

[mrstatham]

Her neck must also be at an odd angle beneath her hair.

[icon_uk]

A chap over on reddit rendered her as a 3d model, based on this image.

It's not a pretty sight

Not sure I agree with it, but....

[mrstatham]

I think that must be exaggerated at least a little, personally - I do think the pose is overdone and I think her neck must be at a really curious angle, but I don't think the model as generated is bang-on.

[jlbarnett]

to me it looks like a frozen action image. Like she's wall crawling and something makes her look up

[thezmage]

There's one thing wrong with that model: it assumes that Jessica is on a flat plane, when she's actually climbing over a ledge. Her back right leg is clearly dangling over the ledge instead of bent on the ground, and her left arm is also a little further down than the rest of her body, but not as much as the model shows.

[dr_archeville]

I've seen a similar (but better) discussion here.

[charlottesmtms.livejournal.com]

Having such a microscopic nose doesn't help matters .... thank goodness this is only a variant cover!

[tugrul]

Their poses are not the same at all. Spider-Man is drawn in a way that a citizen would look up to him if he were on the wall. His body language, everything, looks menacing, like a spider lowering itself head-first.

Jessica is drawn like she's ready to, pardon the language, take anal.

[icon_uk]

Agreed that this is an artist known for his erotica, so he's doing what he was paid to do, but I have to say that image is just... ridiculously over-posed and the painted on costume just makes my eyes water at what the sheer uncomfortableness of it must be like (We're talking the wedgie to end ALL wedgies, and every time she tried to walk the friction would be agonising).

[stubbleupdate]

Peter is being viewed from below.
Jessica is being viewed from above.

That alone makes the poses not really comparable, because there is more tied in to the image than just the posing

[stubbleupdate]

That's what it reminded me of

[majingojira]

To me, Spider-Woman has always been a character steeped in oversexualization to the point where the cover didn't even phase me. I see people complain about it, but all I see is the tip of an iceberg that others fail to realize is a tip.

[arilou_skiff]

Which is odd, since she's not, AFAIK been much of a "sex symbol" even among comic-nerds.

[thezmage]

Yeah, but her character has "sex pheromones" as a super power.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of thing that makes me pretend they stopped making comic books after the 70s.

[majingojira]

She's a minor one to be sure, but on the list of things she's known for, her being a sex symbol/object is easily in the top 3. Along with "Not related to Spider-Man in any way" and "Was replaced by the Skrull Queen for Secret Invasion."

Above things like "Has massive trust issues" and "Is Claremont-friends with Carol Danvers."

Spider Man Doesn't Look Like A Freak Of Nature In Body Paint

[7dialsmystery]

Perhaps this will clarify why it's offensive and not the same as Spider-Man's pose.

http://observationdeck.io9.com/milo-manaras-variant-spider-woman-cover-is-uh-1623556624

http://observationdeck.io9.com/the-spider-woman-pose-in-3d-1628779722

Re: Spider Man Doesn't Look Like A Freak Of Nature In Body Paint

[majingojira]

The problem with the CGI thing is that according to Manara, her leg is over the edge of the building, hanging down.

Everything else is pretty much there, but I'm a stickler for accuracy.

[silicondream]

Hmm, personally, I don't think Peter's pose is more objectionable. His lower body is totally flattened against the wall, in a way that is more acrobatic than sexual. It would also be very difficult for a human to achieve, which helps slightly creepify his body language.

Spider-Woman, on the other hand, is in a standard porny pose, with her butt raised up in "come hit this" fashion. Said butt therefore becomes more of a cover focus than Peter's is--it certainly takes up more of the cover--and it's depicted from a different angle so you get to, well, look straight down her crack. (And marvel at how uncomfortable she must be, with spandex all up in her business like that.)

Then there's the fact that Peter is looking down at the viewer, as defined by both the wall and the shadowing, and rearing up slightly, whereas Jessica is crouched on a horizontal surface, with the viewer looking down at her. (And everyone in those buildings behind her ogling her rear view.)

And all of Peter's muscles are standing out--not in body-builder fashion, but just showing how he's constantly exerting his strength to defy gravity while crawling around. Not so for Jessica, except for the (quite nice) muscles along the spine.

So yeah, I'm not going to bother being outraged about it, but I'd say complaints are justified. Peter's pin-up shows him as a powerful and unsettling character who can skitter down from above and confront you without warning. Jessica's a glamour model on a roof.

But as others have said, you hire Manara to do your cover, what do you expect?

*Edit* and now I notice that others have said most of this. What I get for writing earlier but not posting before breakfast.

[raspberryrain]

I think at this point people only are talking about this cover because other people are talking about it. And as publicity goes, I think this is just bad publicity, because everyone's complaining about it. I don't know how far it can drive sales, but I don't think it will help much, and it will probably even hurt. The previous Spider-Woman series had a similar controversy, and it pretty much sank into oblivion.

The sad thing is, Manara (flat-faced ladies aside) is a good artist who understands not only the human form but a wide variety of clothes, and he could have drawn a suit that looked like a bodysuit were he hired to do so.

Spider-Woman did as well as she ever has when she was on a kid's cartoon and when the comic book was being drawn in a cute way. (I still think Leialoha was the best artist for that book.) And, yes, when she was a viewpoint character, rather than someone filtered through a male character's perspective.

Marvel has a bad habit of trying to make her creepy and sexy per the early pitch--back in the days when Marvel published stuff like Tomb of Dracula, and her book was written by the same guy that wrote Tomb of Dracula. But Marv Wolfman really did play her as a straight-forward superhero, not as a mysterious inhuman sexpot created by mad science (in fact, they ditched that "spider transformed into a woman" origin to make her more relatable and less just weird). She's not Vampirella.

Claremont and Leialoha let her be spooky, but also with a supporting cast of more or less normal humans to ground her. Even with all the weirdness in that run, she was still played as a basically normal and relatable human being. I know I'm biased, since that was one of my first "superhero" comics as a kid, but I don't know if anyone has managed to match that run since; and I haven't been masochistic enough to spend money finding out if I'm right to be pessimistic.

(Maybe they should bring Chris Claremont back.)

[junipepper]

I think her neck is actually broken.

[big_daddy_d]

Honestly.. here's the deal for me and why I haven't flipped out. It's Milo Manara. Honestly it's one of those things where..well shit don't put a lion and a gazelle together in a locked room because we know what will happen. One of them is going to be well fed. Also... all things considered.. THIS? This is what it took for there to be outrage? I just don't care.

[kaileighblue]

The only thing that really bothers me about it, other than personal style preference, is the angle of her head.

[misanthr0pe]

Those poses look quite different to me. One is a flat crawl the other has the posterior raised, which has more of a sexual connotation.

[northstarfan]

I don't get the "It's Manara, what did you expect?" comments, as if he's incapable of making choices wrt to the content of his work. Manara has done a ton of variants for Marvel and in most cases delivered your typical cheesecake/brokeback poses (for the women, anyway). He's shown he's capable of doing something other than straight-up recycling porn poses ala Greg Land. In this case, he chose not to, and he (and the editor who OK'd it) deserve the criticism for their poor judgement.

[ablackraptor]

I think what bugs me about it isn't just so much that its oversexualized, but that its just badly drawn. It does't end up being sexy at all; it just looks like her spine and neck are mishapen and the angle the image is drawn from is terribly picked. Not to mention, the ass is just weirdly drawn; I can't even imagine how the guy thought it looked sexy when he drew it.

I mean, doing a pointless sexy pinup is bad enough, but if you're going to hire someone to do a sexy pinup picture, at least make sure the final product is at least well drawn.

[master_of_suprise]

The sad thing is all this controversy could've easily been avoided. All they needed to do was give it a side angle too make it look like she's climbing up a building.