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Gender-switched art seems to be very popular these days, as with the gender-swapped JLA and Avengers. Well, over at Escher Girls, webcomic creator Shobana ‘Bob’ Appavu (Demon of the Underground) served up this gender-swapped Avengelyne/Shi cover.

I decided to whip this up after browsing through your blog today…  I wanted to see what it would look like if the two characters with such ridiculous poses and outfits were male.  Just as I suspected, drawing this made me feel *dirty.*  I love tasteful male nudes, but drawing this felt very uncomfortable and sexist.  I wonder if/how these male artists can draw females like this and not feel anything out of the ordinary.


Actually, we were under the impression that guys who drew sexy girl covers ENJOYED drawing them. What do you think?

1 COMMENT

  3. So, don’t know what male Evangelyne would be called, but for the other I definitely vote for “Shi Male.”

  6. The truly dumb thing about this new meme is that if you know any gay male comic fans you’ll realize quite a few of them already see superhero comics as a kind of softcore porn. But hey, the feminists feel the need to take over Geekdom and spoil it all for the fanboys so whatever.

  7. Interested Observer essentially beat me to the punch.

    All these gender flipped art pieces do is strike me as being something gay male fans would love or do for themselves. It doesn’t strike me as sending any kind of message about how sexist such images are when they feature women. But if some fangirls feel the need to do this kind of thing, have at it.

  8. “if you know any gay male comic fans you’ll realize quite a few of them already see superhero comics as a kind of softcore porn”

    Ahem.

    I am a gay male comic fan, and I find that absurd. Sure, the muscles and tight costumes are sometimes nice to look at, but my standards of “softcore porn” are a bit higher than that. :) Individual tastes vary of course, but the vast majority of superhero comics are pretty damn low on the homoeroticism scale.

  9. Vincent Moore writes: All these gender flipped art pieces do is strike me as being something gay male fans would love or do for themselves.
    ———————————-

    As a gay male, I found the art embarrassing, the poses ridiculous, and the ‘sex appeal’ at a level of zero.

    There is nothing attractive about the guy on the left, who looks like he grabbed the top and bottom third of an old spidey costume, and flaunted his ass around in it.

    The other guy, on the right…why does it look like he has very saggy breasts that start from his shoulders?

    don’t get me wrong, I have found some comic art very erotic without meaning to (as a matter of fact, I just saw the cover to Invincible Iron Man #517 (due out in may), and I found that cover to be more erotic, featuring just a chest and a lower jaw than I did with these two gents above, letting it all hang out.

    This is the cover I am referring to….

    http://i.newsarama.com/images/invim2008517_cov_red_02.jpg

  11. As a gay male fan, mainstream comics do NOT portray male superheroes in any way similar to the sexual portrayals of women. Male characters are posed and drawn to appear intimidating or powerful, not sexually charged or seductive.

    The only times I see male superheroes or male characters in comics looking the way Greg Land, Mark Silvestri, or Terry Dodson draw their women is when I’m looking at Patrick Fillion comics, which are SUPPOSED to be pornographic. Yes, those poses are sexual and exploitative and objectifying, but that’s the point. It’s porn and it isn’t claiming it isn’t.

    If I saw the same Fillion-eque anatomy and poses in my monthly issue of Uncanny it’d be a drool worthy change of pace and still ridiculous, but I don’t see that. I only see women ludicrously drawn with hips narrower than their shoulders and breasts bigger than their heads (in convenient “boob-socks”) doing flying splits and pouting their lips or biting their fingers, ass back, breasts out, while fighting things trying to kill them.

    If Uncanny X-Men was a porn comic like Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, I might say the commentaries are exaggerated, but it’s not. This is how some artists represent women, or, God forbid, actually believe women should look like when they’re engaged in serious situations, like fights to the death or preventing the world from being nuked by the Shi’ar.

  12. Someone once said that romance novels were to women what porn is to men. So instead of trying to create a visual comparison, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the corresponding comic would be a comic that, while fighting the villain, the hero constantly thinks and tells everyone about how in love he is with his girlfriend and how weak in the knees she makes him feel blah blah blah blah?

  13. Gee, funny how no one asked about my sexuality. I’m no muscle queen but I do know quite a few gay men who had their sexual awakenings reading superhero comics. I know there are a lot of gay men whose first order of business is being PC and submissive to the “feminists” but I’m sorry, the depictions of superheroes are incredibly erotic and ridiculously idealized, whether you’re talking male or female characters, so I hate to tell you so-called straight guys but you’re basically immersing yourself in beefcake. My own tastes run more towards the classic Gil Kane swimmer body types.

  14. No one asked about your sexuality “Observer”, because referring to gay men with a third-person pronoun made it clear that you were either a) straight, or b) a gay man who wasn’t comfortable with his sexuality, even to the point of hiding behind a pseudonym. The reactionary anti-PC/feminism rhetoric supports either explanation, but I’ll take your belated self-identification as queer at face value.

    If most superhero comics really qualified as beefcake, they wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are with adolescent straight males (of whatever age). Those are men who respond to male eroticism with fear and loathing. They squirm at butt shots. They practically squeal with disgust when an artist draws a man in spandex with a visible bulge where his cock and balls would be. Subsequently, most superhero comics feature neither, to pacify those poor shrinking violets.

    I’m happy for you that you manage to find eroticism in drawings that are clearly aimed at gratifying the power (but not sensuality) fantasies of straight men and boys (not you). But as a gay pornographer, I’ve made it my business to understand not only what turns my own crank, but also the cranks of other gay men. That can include a lot of things. But as a rule, superhero comics – especially the muscle-and-anger ones – do not. Sorry.

  15. “No one asked about your sexuality “Observer”, because referring to gay men with a third-person pronoun made it clear that you were either a) straight, or b) a gay man who wasn’t comfortable with his sexuality, even to the point of hiding behind a pseudonym.”

    Ah yes, it had to happen- Biphobia rears its ugly head yet again! Biphobia, the last socially acceptable form of hateful bigotry in which self-appointed commisars like Dan Savage can declare an entire class of humanity non-existent. It’s the 1950s all over again, kids- only this time it’s those dirty fencesitters who are the outlaws. You’re either straight or gay and don’t even think of stepping out of line. Right, Jason?

  20. Very interesting! I wonder how much of the “uncomfortable” factor comes from the ambiguous style of the art vs the actualy gender swap.

    Ron, thanks for the link to the cover for Iron Man #517. HAWT!