Superheroes transformed into women

That Batwoman/Superwoman image is actually by Ed McGuiness and is from an issue of the Batman/Superman comic where our heroes go to an gender-switched alternate reality, iirc.

And the “Spiderwoman” image is actually Spider-Girl, Peter Parker's daughter from an alternate future. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-girl).

Onto the more genuine ones and I hate that they've given the female Punisher a belly shirt. That's supposed to be armor and having a strip of exposed flesh right beneath the big white skull target on her chest is just asking for trouble.

Apparently the artist for the second Hellgirl is Jeremy Roberts.

Most of these annoy me quite a bit. The second Hellgirl is good. While I would have liked her to have a harder edge visually, I like that she looks as if she doesn’t put up with your shit.

As for the rest… “hot chick, hot chick, hot chick, hot plump chick, hot chick, hot chick.” There are too many hot chicks in superhero comics and not enough women!

Both genders are, of course, given a sort of idealised treatment in comics, but men get more character along with it. Here, we see Magneto – who most of us know as an elderly man – turned into a voluptuous 25-year-old chick. Punisher, a man at least in his mid-thirties is an early-twenties hot chick with an exposed belly for no reason. Asterix and Obelix, two pretty common-looking dudes are turned into two hot chicks (though I do appreciate that one of them is of the “big and beautiful” category, and I like how the artist used Obelix’s belt.) Dr Manhattan inexplicably lost his doctorate. Astro Boy, a CHILD, is now a hot chick in her early twenties. BABE Sapien?!

*sigh* this is why we can’t have nice things. Don’t get me wrong. I think the artists are great at what they do, but wouldn’t it have been a much more interesting creative challenge for them to actually interpret the characters rather than just slap a different costume on the same “generic hot chick” over and over again?

“Stylised” doesn’t mean “hot babe” though. You can have a stylised female figure that looks like Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Catherine Zeta-Jones or Michelle Pfeiffer as well. All attractive, middle-aged or elderly women. It’s possible to do “attractive” and “varied” at the same time. Like the way Hellboy and Abe Sapien are cool-looking and attractive in a weird way but they both look nothing like Bradley Cooper.

I’m not blaming comics for this. There’s a problem of bad female characterisation in film as well. Comics just make it so much more obvious where our cultural biases lie. Traditionally, we make women the mother, the damsel, the whore, the girl next door, the old hag, and a few others. The worst is the flawless, smart, kick-ass babe with a hot body who knows how to fix cars and dates the audience stand-in regardless of the fact that they have more or less nothing in common. That’s a Transformers reference, obviously.

There are a few makers of media who rebel against this, of course. I love Joss Whedon’s female characters in most cases. He doesn’t write male or female characters as much as he writes CHARACTERS. He knows the difference between men and women, but he goes against the cultural stream. Look at Kaylee in Firefly compared to Megan Fox’s cardboard cutout from Transformers, for example. Kaylee’s incredibly attractive, but that’s not her defining character trait. She isn’t the Attractive Mechanic. She’s the Nerdy Mechanic with a Heart Of Gold and A Lust for Life in all its Forms. And that makes her attractive.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. It’s entirely possible. I do think, however, that there is a lot of cultural baggage behind what we might consider “just a drawing for the lulz”. But what we decide to draw for the lulz says something about us as a society.

Oh my! Poor Spiderwoman! It’s broken spine Escher Girl party over here. http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/

Would you rather have fucking homely chicks as heroes and there are homely chicks who are drawn hideously for comics. But uh, give me a money baby drawn super heroin and I’m happy. I’ve been with comics since Jack Kirby and he couldn’t draw chicks to save his life. -Laughing- But hey, Jack was the man, undoubtedly and still one of the best.

All of em are great, but The Punisher, man, they have to armor her up. That’s what Frank does nowadays anyway, minus the War Journal series.

As for the Splinter Cell chick? Naw, looks way to anime. Overanimed, but I’m not gonna bitch or complain at the next con if the chick I hook up with is wearing that outfit. Booya! You won’t hear me complaining.