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No time to write anything ourselves but the interesting links keep coming.

Exaxxion-1Lea Hernandez has launched a MANSTREAM site, with such things as the MANSTREAM AWARDS:

Award: STRATEGIC PHALLUS AWARD (HALL OF FAME)
Winner: Cannon God Exxaxion
Publisher: Dark Horse
Artist: Keiichi Sonada

Sometimes a space bike is just a space bike- even when it’s poking a girl in the bazoonogas.

What makes this picture a Manstream classic is how expertly the artist has captured the viewer’s line of sight. A recent scientific eyetracking study reveals that men tend to look at male crotches in photographs. Sonada obviously anticipated this, composing the picture so that the viewer’s eye would zero in on the guy’s crotch, travel the length of his, um, ‘bike’, and zero in on the boobyprize. Now that’s Manstream science at work!

Tamora Pierce, YA author who wrote a WHITE TIGER mini series and has clashed with the comics world before in her blog, did not like the HEROES FOR HIRE cover:

Three supposedly strong, war-like women, strung up by their wrists, in chains, the emblem of the slave (paging John Norman…); dazed and helpless (someone on scans_daily said it would be hilarious if they were awake and mad; I think it would be powerful and redemptive); bared practically to their navels (but no nipple showing because nurturing organs would be dirty in this screwed-up pervo-catering censorship universe) as nameless Things with glowing eyes (and probably elongated barbed dicks) slaver in the background–and phallic tentacles reach up to their crotches. Misty’s clothes are ripped; she’s bleeding. Do her eyes and Colleen’s glimmer with tears? Colleen’s mouth hangs open–to receive a tentacle?


It’s not right that we have these powerful women. Let’s humiliate them publicly, on the cover. Let’s strip them of their power, wit, and rage, and show them off to everyone who walks by, to show what powerful women can expect, even when we’ve showed them being powerful. This is what happens when women strut along, kicking butt. This is what they can expect. Savor and learn!

The worst? It was drawn by a woman.

Now Marvel can say, see? We have women working for us, and moreover, she had no problem giving us the kind of cover you whiners have been squealing about. Real women give real men what they want.

Interestingly, via a long series of links, we found this at Of Course, Yeah! which found a number of hentai-like covers in Marvel’s FEBRUARY covers, but as Steven Padnick pointed out, men usually FIGHT BACK against the tentacles.

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SLG’s Jennifer DeGuzman weighs in:

And I don’t want to say this, but I really don’t think a lot of men in the industry and who read comics understand. I don’t think they get why it bothers someone like me or Heidi or Lea or Elin (a self-proclaimed publisher of pornographic comics). People steeped in the imagery of the superhero comic book have become rather numb to this kind of depiction of women, it seems. And they don’t see their whole sex depicted as a sexual object as a rule rather than an exception by the industry’s biggest companies, with the result that no matter what kind of work we do to bring different kinds of comics to the marketplace, tits and ass are the abiding image of women in comics.


John Jakala looks at comics by women that he enjoys, but finds superhero efforts underrepresented:

When I made a conscious effort to include superhero comics on this list, the first thing that came to mind were unpublished pitches: Tintin Pantoja’s manga-inspired version of Wonder Woman and Rivkah’s playful take on Batgirl. But those comics will probably never be published because DC doesn’t want to dilute their characters or some other nonsense like that. (But it’s OK for DC to dilute their own characters by coming out with a new version of Supergirl every other year and by making Batgirl unrecognizable to the general public.)

Going back a bit further, I remembered enjoying Ann Nocenti’s run on Daredevil and Rachel Pollack’s stint on Doom Patrol, but I think I may be in the minority in both cases. (I recall Pollack’s Doom Patrol being especially reviled.) Plus, I don’t think either run has been collected.

Tim O’Neil discovers that Marvel is also setting black men on fire.

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Finally, this page of from Cerebus, where we see Dave Sim’s takeon what is the REAL battle (Sorry I just don’t remember where I found this! but I will add the link when I ave time.)

AND…why are we still talking about this? Well heedthis new study:
“Repeated exposure to one person’s viewpoint can have almost as much influence as exposure to shared opinions from multiple people. This finding shows that hearing an opinion multiple times increases the recipient’s sense of familiarity and in some cases gives a listener a false sense that an opinion is more widespread then it actually is.”
[via Kottke]

3 COMMENTS

  1. Well, all four of us guys at my store all agree that Heroes For Hire sucks, and is worse now with that damn cover.

    I flipped through the latest issues because someone said Zeb Wells was a good writer and all I saw was ass shots. Shiny, shiny ass shots.

  2. This is thing is getting so boring…

    [sarcasm]
    The the real problem of superhero comics is the lack of fat arry super-heroes, why do all the heroes have perfect sixpack, I mean that’s completly irealistic and creates in the women the false impression all men are like that.
    Worse than that only that guys from 300 [/sarcasm]

    I was just wondering since when Heroes for Hire is a mainstream comic, I mean it’s a regular top 10 or top 50 comic?

    The cover looks like one of a hentai manga or anime, but it’s sure has hell was efective, don’t remember of anyone spending so much time talking about HfH (I personaly didn’t even knew the comic was being publish)

    [sarcasm]Shame on me[/sarcasm]

Comments are closed.