odditycollector | This would have been easier if I could draw.

I really should know better, but I clicked on a link to the DC message boards, topic of the new Frank Miller cover.

In summary... this is why I’m going to stay way the hell over here okay thanks. However, one exchange did catch my attention and would not let me shake it as it might have a sane person.

maelithil:
Depicting [women] as an ass, a pair of tits, some gorgeous thighs is doing them a disservice. Distilling them into nothing but their sexual attributes is objectifying. And that's exactly what this cover does.

Random Fanboy:
And notice that Superman's chest is OFTEN a whole panel unto itself. Not Superman fighting the bad guy. Not Superman standing full figure. Superman's chest. Just his chest. His huge, massive, S-draped, extraterrestrially muscular chest. Is Superman being objectified? Is he being used? Should I cry for Superman?

And. Just. What? This is the counterexample?

But! Maybe it’s not that his logic is just that scary. Maybe it's hard to understand what she’s talking about because it really, honestly is that there’s no comparable example featuring a male denizen of the DCU. I mean, even the occasional Nightwing crotch shot *tries* to have context.

Obviously, something had to be done. For The Good Of Fandom.

Luckily, much like Miller, I have no shame.

Totally Appropriate Covers (with bonus, never before seen script excerpts!)

Hal’s flying away from us through a generic starfield, nothing interesting to see except him. Have him wriggle around, giving us a good shot of his package. Add some details, something fancy for the fanboys to drool over, but don’t let it draw attention away from the point of the cover – that Kyle has nothing, NOTHING, on my boy Hal.

Be careful with this one – we don’t want Supes to come off as too powerful, too imposing. Maybe have him lean a bit, off balance, the better to show off his *well filled* briefs. He's fiddling with the waist line, such a cock *heh* tease. He knows he’s got what we want, and if we turn the cover, he’ll let us have it.

Well, we’ve done just about every variation on the theme by now, so let’s go back to the basics: Black on black, a full cover shot of Batman’s ass. Add in the utility belt for colour – give it that Sin City look. Show me thick, powerful legs under that latex or whatever the hell he wears. Clenched butt muscles. Make it obvious this is no BatGIRL we’re talking about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Random Fanboy was probably playing devil's advocate, and he brings up a salient point which was dismissed outright. If any image which abstracts a particular body part out of the the context of the greater whole reduces a human to the quality with which that body part is associated, then that is what happens when you show Superman's chest in an isolated view. I'm not arguing intention or affect, because yeah, that Wonder Woman cover is blatant cheesecake, and there's no sexual subtext to the Superman instance. I'm just wondering if you could say that an image showing only Superman's chest reduces him from a complex human being into a typification of brutish male force. (OK, I know technically he's not human.)

Not trying to refute the overall point being made, just quibbling over how this particular methodology is used sometimes. Abstracted female body parts or unrealistic, idealized representations = trivialization or dehumanization, whereas abstracted male body parts or unrealistic, idealized representations = not relevant to the topic at hand.

Hey! After re-reading some of the other comments I don't know if objectification in itself is supposed to be the villain here or just the lack of parity in the objectifying business.

Does anybody actually mean it un-ironically you say you approve of and enjoy the men depicted like this? Are the images themselves sexually appealing or is it just that the tables are turned and men are now the passive creatures on display, putting you in the position of control? Or is that a turn-on in itself?

Also, I submit that there might also be a reason why female sexuality is displayed so blatantly and almost farcically exaggerated almost everywhere. There's the ingrained cultural assumption which most men, and ESPECIALLY fanboys, have internalized, which is that women probably don't want to have sex with you, unless it's unmistakably expressed otherwise. Hence the need to create these depictions of female receptiveness like the Miller cover. In a certain sense, a female must be displaying herself sexually to be considered a sex object, because otherwise the default assumption is that she's not interested. The binary opposition here is "she accepts me/ she rejects me," with the latter being the usual case. So we make images of willing women to compensate.

On the other hand, I think there's a general cultural assumption that for women, a man will always be willing to have sex with you, anytime, anywhere. So a display of male passivity/ receptiveness is redundant in itself. That's why the beefcake covers have a hint of irony and ridiculousness to them, and no one's responded to the "ooh, baby! I want that!" comments in a negative fashion. To attempt to create portrayals of men as sexual objects fails because, in the same sense as before, men are already sexual objects, already available if a woman desires. No need for outward displays of sexual receptiveness. The binary opposition here is "I accept him/ I reject him." So any image of a man is already an image of a willing man.

So, in summation, there's that.

The difference is, the majority of comics readers don't necessarily want to grab Superman's massive chest and start fucking it like they do Wonder Woman's scantily-covered ass or tit cleavage.

And yeah, welcome to Bluntsville, population: Me.

Which is what I said in the first place. Intent and effect are different in each case. The Wonder Woman image is blatantly sexual and pandering (soft-core porn); the Superman image is not. I also said I wasn't arguing the main point being discussed.

What wasn't clear was that I was talking about the notion of abstraction itself as applied to discussions or critiques of how women are portrayed in media, which was the tangent I wandered off onto. The idea had been asserted that pretty much any abstracted image of a woman is a type of violence towards women, because it reduces them from being a complete entity to a mere body part, regardless of the sexual nature of the depiction. Usually it is overtly sexual but that wasn't necessary to the critique. So, yeah, I was getting into an academic issue which is related to the theme being discussed but not central to it.

So everyone agrees that the Miller image is porn masquerading as a comic book cover. I was just wondering if the posts that approved of the counter-examples for the wrong reasons ("ooh, baby" and "I'd buy that!")were meant to be ironic imitations of the male response to the Miller image or were sincere. Is the point that some of you want equal-opportunity porny comics or just that it has no actual purpose of any kind in an adventure-based medium?

Speaking for myself - and only myself - I think it's too much to expect the sexualization of women to disappear completely from comics. It has been an integral part of the medium forever. However, the fact that it is only women and not men is kind of one sided. People wonder why women don't buy more comics. If everything I see ties into this, it makes me less interested in buying. If I want to look at breasts I have a mirror. Frankly, too many comics I see seem to mostly be about sexy pics of women.

I think it would be nice if people were more aware of what they were doing. I think a lot of it is just wallpaper. I also think that, if you're going to do it, it would be nice if there were "equal opportunity porn."

Also, what did you think I was defending? Just asking.

Actually, I was wrong about what I was saying being tangential. I should have referred to the the actual text in the original post, which was this:

"Depicting [women] as an ass, a pair of tits, some gorgeous thighs is doing them a disservice. Distilling them into nothing but their sexual attributes is objectifying. And that's exactly what this cover does.

Random Fanboy:
And notice that Superman's chest is OFTEN a whole panel unto itself. Not Superman fighting the bad guy. Not Superman standing full figure. Superman's chest. Just his chest. His huge, massive, S-draped, extraterrestrially muscular chest. Is Superman being objectified? Is he being used? Should I cry for Superman?

So Maelithil made the same point I was asking. An abstracted image of a woman's parts distills her into nothing more than a nice butt or pair of boobs. Could you say that an isolated view of Superman's chest distills him into nothing more than a well-muscled chest? Could you state that in a general, gender-neutral way and still have it be a correct statement, as in "An image of a person's body parts distills that person into nothing more than that physical attribute"? I got hung up on the "distillation" part of the logic, not on whether or not both images were equally sexual in nature. I was asking if you could apply the "distillation process" theory to images of men, even if what they're being distilled into is not considered offensive in itself. Or if you'd even consider the question at all.

Again, I already agreed that the Wonder Woman image is pornographic, as are the Batbutt and Supercrotch shots, while the Superman chest shot is not. And I know what pornography is for, and why you may or may not want it in your comics, depending.

The quick reply:
Could you say that an isolated view of Superman's chest distills him into nothing more than a well-muscled chest?
Nope. The intent is to focus on the iconic "S" symbol, which is without fail the purpose of those shots - and, indeed, why we get so many more Superman-chest shots than of most other heroes. (For the argument - Linda occasionally got similar treatment in PAD's Supergirl run, and the effect was the same. It didn't come off as "Boob shot! Woot!")

The question of whether you can distill Superman down into that symbol is a more complicated (and, IMO, very interesting) question, and there are essays and storylines out there dedicated to it.

I must agree--in those iconic shots, you don't even get the edges of Superman's body. Yes, it's all his chest, but it's not ALL of his chest.

It's kind of like saying [ ] look, between those brackets back there there I have a segment of Wonder Woman's bare bosom drawn! What? Not erotic? Why not? It's part of... you know... her chest!

The way in which something is drawn and what is included and disincluded has a large effect on impact that you must take into account.

This would have been easier if I could draw.

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