Lady Pictures

A few days ago I mentioned the Darkstalkers tribute book and how its cover ruins and potentially cheapens the quality and importance of the entire thing. I believe my exact words were:

"I realize that Darkstalkers is a franchise known primarily for having half naked cat ladies and succubi and though I dare not ask artists to tone it down did they really need to increase it?... look at that fuckin cover? way to rob the book of any dignity by featuring such a prominent thong"

Good to see copying from blogger keeps the links by the way. The point is both gaming and comic book nerds get a bad rap because their interests are so male oriented that creators often overdo it when it comes to the sexual nature of their products. This has been a problem since the beginning for comic books because art was not technologically limited in the golden era of comics as it was for video games. While I am sure that Capcom, for example, wanted to create some really realistic thunderthighs for Chun Li they simply could not do it in the 1980's.

I write this because I recently ran into an example similar to that of the Darkstalkers book. The image above is part of the cover for New Avengers: The Reunion #1. Its a very nice drawing of Hawkeye and (his wife? girlfriend?) Mockingbird, so nice in fact that it made me curious as to what the book was about, but not nice enough to make me cheat on Green Arrow.

I did my research and found the title and the complete cover. My reaction was pretty close to this:


Complete fucking disappointment. As you can see the cover suffers from the exact same problem as the Darkstalkers book: ridiculously unnecessary sexuality in the form of a female character wearing uncomfortable undergarments. Lets not get into the whole "shes a superhero, why would she wear that" argument, lets focus on the goal of the artist: get an ass shot in order to sell the book. Did it work? I can see many people (women) being insulted enough to forgo the book and the entire series (a five issue mini), I can see many going for the more subtle variant, even the stereotypical nerd.

I can also see myself not buying it and its not because I'm insulted by the site nor because I'm some sort of prude, in fact I'd argue that a well done cover girl is a good thing, but rather because I'm appalled at the fact that creators feel a need to appeal to the basest instincts of all nerds. Not to mention that, like with Darkstalkers, the inclusion of the ass focal point makes the cover very unattractive. Unfortunately with the Darkstalkers book there is no variant, the horrid cover will have to grace the bookshelfs of those of us who end up buying it, forever forcing us to explain how we're not, in fact, nerdy perverts but rather just consumers with limited choices.

As for the Avengers book, I never bought it nor I have any intention of doing so. Not just because of the stupid cover but because this whole Dark Reign is starting to become kinda grating: we get it: Norman Osborn owns the world, lets focus on improving Runaways and Deadpool now.