SJWs and the Topics of Sexualization and Misogyny.

[Thanatos]

In both the gaming and graphic novel worlds, it would seem that the topics of sexualizing women to be male power fantasies, et al., have come to an all-time high in the eyes of the general public that consumes these mediums. I am curious to know everyone's thoughts on this, and whether you think what Maddox says is true.

[Border Patrol]

SJWs exist solely to kill fun.

[saxdude]

Entitled teens that about PC are next to ISIS on the terrible person scale.

[IZob]

Media loves to ignore context so that they can "whip up a storm" which brings in an audience to raise their revenue. But the reality is, knowing the context there is no controversy. Its a storm, in a tea cup.

Also thats the first I've ever herd of Spider Woman.

[Knight of Heaven]

Ah its Milo manara what you expect?! no wonder people are taking notice. And that is saying plenty of the manara genious, because Marvel characters are already sexualized, by concept and tradition, such is the nature of American, super hero comic books, for both male and female super heros...
There is no doubt, this isnt new, yet is also no coencidence either, anyone who knows Milo manara works will understand right way, why all the comotion.
Personaly, i think that was the whole point, to Bring, the iconic sexy, and erotic manara Girls, and its likeness to Marvel superheroines. Honestly it makes perfect sense.
its probably the few marvel comics series, that im able to enjoy greatly, at the moment, the art is just fantastic.
It is also interesting to realize that the majority of Manara fans are actualy women.
Valkyrie and others by Milo Manara.

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Yes all of these characters were already sexualized, the diference is Manara brings class to them.
And that Pisses certain people off. Mostly people ignorant of comic books, and its tradition, and history, from what i call tell from the opinion articles i have been reading, alot of them have pre concieved notions what comics are , or what suposed to be. And its undenyable Manara brings something more to the table, and i think its a good thing. aparently opinionated tabloids tend to make a splash out of this, to draw attention and sales to themselfs. Hopefully they would do the same for the comics in question.
The thing is marvel is on the spotlight, and its a hot theme... mostly, because of changing gender, or ethnicity os key marvel characters, Like the role of thor being replaced by a Woman, or the role of Cap being replaced by an African american ( falcon), or like Spider man to dark coloured American latino Miles Morales, and even more interestingly Ms.Marvel to a teen pakistani muslim, imigrant kamala khan living in the US. Wich is a typical empowerement fantasy storyline.

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Thats right Ms. marvel is no longer Carol Danvers nor Blonde and White. ( as far i understand She is now Captain marvel, and has been "upgraded" to a cosmic themed superheroine, replacing the original kree man Captain Marvel ( mar-veii).

[Condottiere 40K]

1. Marvel tries to remain relevant to it's current readership.

2. Attempting to be so resulted in a lot of characters that seemed trying to cash in on social and cultural trends, feminism, civil rights, and mystic East.

3. Sometimes, the character with an interested creative team manages to step out of the shadows of their male primogenitors, like She-Hulk, Supergirl, Batgirl.

4. Marvel seems to deliberately court controversy.

5. Spiderman was convoluted himself into poses for decades even gymnasts find disturbing.

6. The graphic sexualization of some comics is policy, since competition of all forms of media for the attention span of the traditional demographic that reads superhero comics is intense.

7. Superhero comics in it's traditional form may become extinct, only valuable for the IP that media corporations can leverage for the small and big screen, so may become partially subsidized to explore a variety of stories, characters and plots that the movie script writers can then mine from, or in the case of the new Gotham tv series, extrapolate an unwritten past.

[athanaric]

What does "SJW" mean? OP could be a little more explicit.

Entitled teens that about PC are next to ISIS on the terrible person scale.

I agree, entitled people that about "rape culture" in the US and are using wrong figures to support their diatribes are terrible people. All the more as their silence about recent examples of actual rape culture in other parts of the world has been deafening.
Surely that's what you meant?

[SLN445]

What does "SJW" mean? OP could be a little more explicit.

I presume its Social Justice Warriors?

[Mangalore]

The artist they chose would make Boris Vallejo blush.

Trying to compare male and female poses is kind of missing the point by a mile. It's about what message that picture transfers to start with. Otherwise I fail to see why people are so clingy? There's plenty of porn on the internet, how about we get interesting characters and stories for the other stuff? Wouldn't that be an improvement?

I find this business approach sexist to men. Here boobs, buy! Thank you very much, I have my penthouse subscription already. How about you try to convince me with quality writing or good art?

[saxdude]

I agree, entitled people that about "rape culture" in the US and are using wrong figures to support their diatribes are terrible people. All the more as their silence about recent examples of actual rape culture in other parts of the world has been deafening.
Surely that's what you meant?

Almost as much as entitled people bringing out offtopic bull**** to distract the fact that they have zero arguments to defend their case, and so need to bring up a point that nobody was ****ing debating. Remember different race sexual relations, genetic diversity and the "extinction" of the white race? Oh yeah, I can be snarky too.


You can't ignore the fact that females (and homosexuals, and ethnic minorities) are largely poorly represented in most media, portrayed in physically unmatchable proportions, with eyecandy clothing and stereotypical behavior. Becuase most of the time the character is played out to the lowest common denominator.
Now you could argue that most of the fans want new and interesting characters, female, male or otherwise, and that producers are at fault for trying to appeal to some stereotypical fan base, incapable of looking beyond their bigoted eye sight, and you'd be right.
But then you get outrage from the previously mentioned self entitled yelling out at PC correctness, and *****ing about Racism/sexism against the white male, as if they were in any comparable level, the same; that people are trying to change that view, that are lobbying for more equally portrayed characters and dignified gender representations; Thus you get companies like Marvel, desperatly trying to appease both groups, and then making things like female Thor or Latino Spiderman, mostly dumb and innocous, yet manage to become world wide scandals.

Yes, you could infact argue that political correctness ultimatly hurts the people that it wants to protect, by insincerely forcing them into media and the public concious, and perpetuating it's own racist stereotypes in doing so. And yes, you could argue that things like Female Thor, are a lazy and insincere attempt at making a female character to appease SJW's, and you would be absolutly right.
But then again, most of the people that whine about political correctness aren't upset about the real issues that come from PCness, they are upset that they can't say whatever dumb they want anymore without people getting upset about it, and that they have to share their personal hobbies (which happen to be worldwide multimillion dollar companies) with other people now, and they somehow equal that to persecution.


So yeah, SJW's are annoying, but they are a response to an even more annoying group.

So if you don't want more SJW's, then Lobby for more Korra's and less Powergirl's/Starfire's

[Col. Tartleton]

I hate people who want to screw with my buzz.

[Akhenaton]

@Knight of Heaven, I don´t think that I´m understanding the point you´re trying to make quite yet. Could you maybe show some more material, so that...uh....you could totaly convince me

[Manco]

I was writing an entire rant about how visually male and female superheroes are actually treated fairly equally, after all the most common superpower seems to be huge breasts for both women and men. And that the real issue is characterization and story quality with female superheroes, how for some reason their femininity (and the angsting surrounding it) always becomes an actual subplot rather than a simple fact. But it became a disjointed mess.
If in female superhero-centric comics superheroines were transplanted with male heroes, then we'd have entire comicbooks asking us whether their penis is large enough, assaulting women for daring to expect a man to open the door and whether that hot librarian totally ignored them or not.
Just look at Powergirl's old solo series, everything ever done by Wonder Woman and half the X-Men roster. At times it's like a episode of Sex and the City, that means it's the of something already !

A good plot doesn't care what gender your main character is, except for the personal life bits, and the question why female heroes get shafted by lousy writers and plots should be the issues for these SJW's (since when's that a thing btw?).
Why is Wonder Woman just so damn craptastic? Why is Storm portrayed as a stuck up and is this somehow meant to be empowering? Why is She-Hulk with all that power more obsessed with her bumbling love-life than the fact she's a top tier lawyer and a physical behemoth?

And it's not just comics, just look at how Bioware writes its female NPC's.

[Condottiere 40K]

I don't really keep upto date with almost all of the superhero comics but it does tend to come down to what the creative team believes would interest the readership, and the few exceptions when they're allowed to break the mold, usually because a recognized star wants to semi or completely reboot a series.

Jennifer in a way is supposed to be a contrast to Bruce; her physical prowess gives her a confidence that many women don't have, so you're left with a dilemma. Nothing really can hurt her, much like nothing can hurt Superman but you have more leeway to complicate her personal life, whereas Clark carries around a ton of baggage. It's what would make her interesting, and keeps Superman borderline dull.

The big breasts are for eye-candy, pretty much the same role that the macho physique of the male superheroes play. While a realistic version of Red Sonja is without the chainmail brassiere and bikini, it's fairly iconic and I bet quite a number of people have tried to stretch D&D mechanics and magic item creation rules to make it a viable piece of hardware.

You can contrast that with a number of Japanese anime characters lamenting their lack of proportions.

[Mangalore]

...

The big breasts are for eye-candy, pretty much the same role that the macho physique of the male superheroes play. ....

The male macho physique is not meant as eye candy, it is meant as a representation of strength, heroism, independance. I would say the way I do see it neither the female eye candy nor the male macho physique are actually meant for girls and there is rather few stuff in that market for girls they could take as a role model, power fantasy or eye candy.

It's all meant for perverts like me.

[SLN445]

Beefed up Males are eye candy for the male audience just as much as the busty females are the former being a fantasy about ones own image.

[Condottiere 40K]

Billy Batson being the ultimate fantasy for boys, in that you can change at will into an entity that can dominate his environment, without actually losing your own identity.

[Knight of Heaven]

@Knight of Heaven, I don´t think that I´m understanding the point you´re trying to make quite yet. Could you maybe show some more material, so that...uh....you could totaly convince me

I dont think i can without breaking TOS. Manara is a great artist, but most of his comics have a strong erotic tone.
It isnt the case of the marvels series though. Even though they are Rated T+
But my favorite comics from manara, are the paper man the clic series, The borgias, WWW, Gulivera, or Aphrodite or Mozart, or Bolero, or kamasutra there are some cooperations with Hugo Pratt that i like specialy as well.

The artist they chose would make Boris Vallejo blush.

haha yes without question. Thats why i Said all this outrage while overbearing, and idiotic, it is no coencidence either.
From what i understand that was the whole point from bringing Manara in.
If you know Manara earlier works then you will know he does more then blush anything from Boris Vallejo. His works are quite explict.
But above all while they are adult oriented, they are stil adult eroctic comedies.

And it's not just comics, just look at how Bioware writes its female NPC's.

Bad writting is bad writting, either of female or male point of view. But sure, there is still the coorporate mindset that this things only apeal to teenage boys. While that might be true in the past, i dont think its true now. There is alot of girls and Women that are into comics. I know quite a few.
Im ok with the sexualization of whataver character, if its done well i apreciate it, it all depends on context i supose. I also think is unfair to point out that is key, or the major thing in most cases. I dont think it is. I do consider alot of female characters dont have the attention deserved in their stories.
Take Avengers for example. Hopefully thats changing, because some characters have potencial to be great if explored. A thing that always missing. In female characters. And to be honest in alot of male characters too.

Anyway there is this, im yet to pick up, but it seems great.

http://marvel.com/comics/issue/49557...manara_variant

Billy Batson being the ultimate fantasy for boys, in that you can change at will into an entity that can dominate his environment, without actually losing your own identity.

Indeed, im wondering how they are going to translate it to film, now that The rock was casted already to play Black Adam.

[the_mango55]

I do think females need much greater representation in comics, and they slowly seem to be getting there.

Also, I think that this cover is sexualized and only the extra defensive would argue against that. First of all, Spider-Woman doesn't climb up walls, she can fly. However I do agree with Maddox that this is a variant cover and therefore shouldn't really spark that much interest, there are tons of variant covers for first issues, sometimes there are aroun to 20 different variants for issue 1 of a new series. If they want an erotic artist to draw one of them, I don't see what the big deal is.


There are some weird things about how women are often drawn in comics that I never really noticed until recently.

http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/ is a pretty funny showcase (and stays away from frothing outrage like most of tumblr) of women in comics (and anime, manga, etc) in spine shattering poses. The main pose they focus on is when a woman is drawn with both butt cheeks AND both boobs visible. Where in order to face the "camera" she doesn't turn her head like a normal person but instead twists her torso, often in physically impossible ways.

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They also often take a piece of art and modify it to make it a bit more realistic and believable. And usually they don't make it any less sexy when they do it.

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[Akhenaton]

I like where this thread is going Keep it up, guys! (and girls)

I dont think i can without breaking TOS. Manara is a great artist, but most of his comics have a strong erotic tone.
It isnt the case of the marvels series though. Even though they are Rated T+
But my favorite comics from manara, are the paper man the clic series, The borgias, WWW, Gulivera, or Aphrodite or Mozart, or Bolero, or kamasutra there are some cooperations with Hugo Pratt that i like specialy as well.

Oh yeah I like the Borgias! It fits the period 1 on 1. Also all the cursing is really good in greek, makes it really powerful. I imagine it to be the same in portuguese/spanish. The golden "donkey is also really good and then there is the one with a statue which comes to life and flies with her...but maybe that´s from kamasutra. I´m sure you know his work about human history, it´s really about the constant of human nature. Kinda like a mathematical formula where though you can get different results you´d still work with the same constant....

Druuna goes in some ways even further than manara, some japanese manga looks rather tame in comparison. But I can´t show it here, the moderator would instantly nuke me

Another Comic I like is the belgan series Natacha. It isn´t as mature as manara or druuna, but it has a lot of good humor so characteristic of belgian comics.

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But thinking about it, I´d like to ask, is this debate more of an american issue? Because it seems to me that here in Europe represantation of men & women in comics seems to be rather equal.


PS: Knight of Heaven, do you know a skilled modeler who would model the valkyrie into Rome II ? We should propose to CA to hire Manara as their artist for the next game^^