2 posts tagged “comics”

Tekanji has a series of posts up (here, here and here) on Official Shrub.Com Blog about a "How to Draw" series from Wizard.  While she talks about the various forms of sexism that pervade the guide, I'm going to talk here about the aesthetics behind the suggestions.

Scans from the guides can be found at Ratcreature's posts (here, here and here).

Disclaimer:  I can't draw worth a damn.  But even if I don't know art, I know what I like, and this ain't it.  The most charitable interpretation is that these guys are trying to maintain job security by giving bad advice to newcomers.

For the guys, it's all about the muscles, each one drawn in agonizing detail.  No fat, no veins unless they're being shown exerting themselves, but every ab and pec and lat and delt is there. 

For the men, hard and cut.  I try to see as much musculature as I can.

We can trace pictures from muscle mags, and while the figures may look lifelike (if the tracing is well done), they aren't superheroic.  They are just real, normal people, even the bodybuilders.  Superheroes, especially in the fantasy of comic books, should be more than that.  So, without further blab or blather, let's look at BIG MUSCLES!

Real superpowered beings - not just the ones we read about in comic books - need big muscles to fight for right and all that good stuff.

Now I know they're not going for "realistic" in that sense - they're not average, they're heroes!  On the other hand, what does Superman use for weight training, planets?  Can you picture Hiro from Heroes all steroided out like that?  And even "fit" people don't look like that unless they are specifically into body building and developing muscles for show rather than for use.  Look at some Olympic athletes sometime - I'm partial to swimmers for that, because I used to be one and because it's a sport with a good overall balance of muscle use, but any sport would do.  Do you see *any* athletes that look like these drawings, even in a scaled down "real world" sense?  Mostly you see definition on the larger muscle groups, and maybe a hint of the smaller ones.  Minor muscle groups the size of some of the drawings there would actually potentially interfere with the superheroics these characters need to be doing.

Are there really comics readers who *like* this level of obsession with anatomy (or rather with musculature - the rest of the anatomy, not so much)?  At its best, you're going to get something like Michelangelo, but most of these artists aren't going for that kind of effect.  I think it's more about serving a gatekeeper function - not everyone who can draw a passable figure has put in the amount of study and practice to produce a believable bodybuilder figure, and as long as the "professional" artists can keep that as a norm, their jobs are more secure.

For the women, it's all about stereotypical "sex appeal" (I guess female supers don't need BIG MUSCLES! to be heroic) in ways that aren't actually all that appealing:

When drawing the female character in action, be sure to keep her feminine looking.  An easy way to do that is to straighten her feet and hands so that they each come to a point - this will give them a dangerous knife-like look while still keeping their sex appeal.  Arching the back, legs and torso will ensure your character's femininity no matter what you have her doing, be it running, jumping, or kicking through a wall.

Can you imagine Wonder Woman or Birds of Prey drawn by this guy?  Luckily for us, Terry Moore shows up and pwns the crowd:

The figure on the left is a common pose in hero art, but it is also the most criticized.  Why?  Well, putting the exotic dancer pose aside, it's obvious that the forces of nature don't apply to this body - as opposed to the figure on the right, which displays muscle mass, room for internal organs, a working spinal column and gravitational effects.

The thing is, even from a purely visual standpoint (i.e., before you know anything about the characters), Terry Moore's characters are far more attractive than the "sultry" women, whether drawn by the other artists or by Moore himself.  And I don't think I'm alone in this respect, though you'd never know it from "guides" like this.  (Which leads into a larger rant about beauty standards, genres with overwhelmingly male audiences, and the Designated Hot Girl, but not today.)

[This post originally appeared on Official Shrub.com Blog.]

So my latest infatuation is Terry Moore’s comic Strangers In Paradise, which I discovered through the immensely fun Scans Daily Livejournal community. It’s well-drawn and well-characterized, and is erasing that reluctance to check out indie comics that the hipper-than-thou movie adaptation of Ghost World instilled.

What struck me, though, was a letter to Mr. Moore printed in the second issue of the first run, which asked:

I do have some criticism about the writing… is it me or do you hold a dim view of males?

[Spoilers for the first issue of Strangers in Paradise follow.]

Now, I’m assuming that these letters were published in the original printing of the second issue, which means that they’re responding only to the first issue. In that issue, we’re introduced to the following male characters:

Freddie: The boyfriend of Francine, one of the lead characters of the comic. At the beginning of the issue, they are fighting because Francine doesn’t want to have sex with him. She then catches him cheating on her, at which point he breaks up with her. Francine suffers a nervous breakdown, and injures herself crashing her car.

David: An art student who meets Katchoo, the other lead character of the comic, and goes out for coffee with her. When Francine crashes her car, it’s David who pulls her out of the wreck.

…And that’s it. Two men. One good, one bad. When the two are Batman and the Joker, nobody takes this as a statement on masculinity, but add women to the mix and suddenly a less than flattering portrayal becomes man-hating. (I do have a few issues with how being skinny, attractive and independently wealthy get mixed up with each other and with being “good,” but that’s a rant for another time and place.)

Now I’m still making my way through later issues, so I’m not yet sure what the overall portrayal of men in Strangers in Paradise is. But honestly, Terry Moore’s opinions on gender are not the point of such a letter, nor is actual “man-hating” the point of any of the accusations that get levelled. I’m convinced that the main reason such accusations are phrased as “hating men” - rather than making a more specific response - is to reframe. Instead of being about the comic itself and the behaviors described therein, the discussion is shifted to Mr. Moore’s own opinions and men as gestalt. It’s not so different from the pre-emptive defense that’s meant to make the respondent forgo criticism. The effect this has is to dismiss the criticism by applying it to “males” in general rather than a specific behavior; we can no longer see the tree for the rest of the forest that’s sprouted up around it.

Terry Moore’s discussion of the letter:

Basically I told him I don’t have a dim view of males, or of women. I do have a very dim view of the games we play with each other and so does Katchoo.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this: most charitably, it reads as “I don’t hate men; I hate the patriarchy”; but it has hints of “Women do it too” - i.e., of accepting the reframing. Freddie’s entitlement-minded behavior in the first issue is a very specific form of harm that deserves more criticism than simply being lumped in with “games” like waiting a day before calling a romantic interest back.

Still, the comic itself has a compelling story - I do like romances, even if I try to make sure I don’t take them too seriously - and I enjoy the art style, so unless something comes up that makes me want to throw the book across the room (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin), I’m going to stick with it.