FANTASY FEMALES

Why do women in comic books look so ugly? I mean, they really look horrible. Tiny, tiny waists with dental floss costumes, the same "cute" face, and huge... frontal assets. They're painfully ugly. Do guys really have such bad taste that they actually like looking at those things? Are they really so unfamiliar with real women that creatures like that are appealing to them?

What is it about women in the comic books that makes them impossible to draw as real human beings, or even as muscled human beings instead of sexed up monsters? What is the problem with male artists who refuse to show women as powerful beings (unless it's sexually powerful)? And why do otherwise intelligent companies like DC and Marvel hire these bad artists for their books?

As a woman, I tend to think about these issues all too often. Usually, the problem is most obvious when I pick up my Previews magazine and flip through it looking for good stuff. My senses are generally assaulted by so much of that ugly artwork that the questions start flowing... what kind of artist would draw something so bad and let others look at it?

Obviously, though, I'm not the only one who thinks about it, as the following cartoons demonstrate:

Robotman is a comic strip about a cartoonist and his robot friend. Sometimes this strip is the height of funny, sometimes it falls pretty flat. I liked the Teletubby arc (who would've thought that Mr Rogers could be so evil?) but find a lot of the humor to be fairly forgettable. When the cartoon skewers comic books and comic book art, though, it tends to be spot on.

In the above comic, in case you can't read it, Robotman comments that "Whenever I see comics with elaborately rendered women in skimpy outfits, I always wonder if males cartoonists get some unsavory erotic pleasure from drawing them..." Monty, the cartoonist, reacts by wiping drool from his chin.

But the women these guys draw aren't even beautiful!! I rarely see truly beautiful women in comic books. Indeed, I don't even see many anatomically correct women in comic books. I expect a level of idealization in comic books, people never look as perfect in real life, but when that is exceeded into the level of gross exaggeration, I can't help but be disgusted. I'm sorry, but you cannot show a female's butt and breasts full-on in the same image and be realistic at all. You have to look hard to find a truly beautiful woman in a comic book.

The prettiest Catwoman I've ever seen was, believe it or not, on a Wizard magazine cover. In her regular book, Catwoman, a cat burglar, has very large breasts and a tiny thin waist. On this Wizard cover, the artist chose to draw her with smaller... assets, and a more realistically proportioned body. The result was the most believable Catwoman I've ever seen, and a picture that stood out from the rest. When looking through the women on that cover, Catwoman definitely was the best and most beautiful.

Why are large breasts and thin waists so popular among current artists?

However, I could ponder the mystery of male minds with regards to comic art for ages and never understand how they find such stuff attractive. What is more compelling, more dangerous, is the effect such artwork might be having on young minds. That's what the next cartoon is about.

Between Friends is a great cartoon about women, and how they interact with the world and each other in this modern age. Although I don't really fit any of the categories presented, I recognize all the women in the strip as archetypes that fit my friends and relatives. This strip is consistently one of the best in the business, and while it always can get a chuckle out of me, it often also gets me thinking.

After I saw the above cartoon in my local newspaper, I was astounded and pleased. Sandra Bell-Lundy hit the nail on the head with this commentary about the role of females as both characters and readers. On the one hand, mature women find most comic book women ludicrous. They walk into a shop or see a catalog full of T&A, and never bother again. The ones who do bother are quite often children or others who might be very easily influenced by media. In the comic strip, Maeve is right about the self-image problem that is a potential for women who read comics. And she, like so many people, is unaware that women do read those books.

Sadly, this is a problem with virtually all forms of mass-media, not just comic books. However, with most forms of media it's less obvious. A beauty magazine undermines a woman's self-esteem by claiming to be helping. A TV show uses only the most lovely women. With comics it is "in your face" and often too crude or blatant to ignore. While it can be argued that the others are more insidious and therefore more harmful in the long run, the art in comic books is undermining both comics as an acceptable medium and the girls and women who read them.

The result is an industry that shuts out half its potential audience. With audiences constantly shrinking, you would think comic book companies would be smart enough to not drive off any woman who wants to read their book with ugly sexist artwork.

In conclusion, I'll offer a perfect example of the stupidity of comic companies, straight from my former favorite comic book. When Eric Battle took over the artwork on Aquaman, he turned Mera into a floozy who wore a dress consisting of strings, despite her history of always covering herself from head to toe. In issue #52, they brought back a classic artist, Jim Aparo, to do a flashback that took up the top part of the page. On the bottom part of the page was Eric Battle's artwork. Comparing the two was a study in contrasts: good art and a pretty Mera on the top of the page, and ugly Mera drawn badly on the bottom. Reading it was painful, because you knew that the bad art would take up the full page again next issue. It wasn't long after that issue that I dropped the book.

If I dropped my formerly favorite book over bad art, is it any surprise that most women never get into comics?