Numero Deux

Okay, so I don’t want to come off as a super-feminist, uber-activist girl. And I know that the main audience of these comics is young men. But, seriously. The way women’s bodies are portrayed here (and in a lot of comics, actually) is rather...gross. And unnecessary.

Take, for example, the image on page 51, where all we get of Jean is the left side of her butt. 1) If the artist wanted to establish that Jean’s perspective by placing the point of view behind her, why don’t we instead see a whole-body shot? Or her shoulder? Or the back of her head? And 2) This is a good example of a tactic used in advertising, where the woman is portrayed as being a fragment of her own body (think of the add where Serena Williams is talking about I don’t even know what, but she’s only shown from the neck down).

Also, I was surprised when, on flipping through the book the second or third time, when I came across page 54, where we see Jean...and her nipple. Yeah. It’s right there. Again, how is this necessary? Aren’t the skin-tight spandex costumes/dresses-with-the-fronts-missing (Candy, page 60, Jean page 68) revealing enough? Why go that extra step?

Now, I can’t completely trash the way the women are drawn here. In comparison to the fantasy series Soul Saga that I read part of, for instance, these women are old-fashioned and modest. Which may have something to do with when this was written. But the women’s bodies are actually fairly realistic in proportion – they actually have hips! And the most important bits are always covered. Ant, to be fair, the men are shown quite scantily clad as well in some parts (Wolverine is shown pretty much naked on page 157). It’s just unfortunate that it’s only getting worse as the medium progresses - again, in some cases; I’ve in no way read enough comics to make any general statements.

Anyway...there’s my rant. I really should write something about what I did like about it, huh?