Note the baggy, character-defining clothes.
Dear Brian,
Let me just first say that I’m aware that many people will say that I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but this is something that’s important to me. As you are no doubt aware, female characters in comics published by Marvel and DC get a rough time of it. The status quo for many female characters at Marvel is “constantly victimized while wearing very little.”
This was a big reason why I loved your series Alias. Finally there was a female character in the Marvel universe that, while damaged, was smart about it and — most of all — was wearing sensible clothing.
She was aware of her body image, and she was drawn with a realistic body type. Her body could actually exist in the real world. It was scientifically possible. Michael Gaydos did a great job in rendering her as someone who with facial ticks, patterns, and the rest — like a real person.
Then when Alias became The Pulse, the artists you picked (or Marvel did, either way) continued what was established in Alias. Brent Anderson and Michael Lark did a fine job drawing Jessica. (Particularly Lark, who did a great match to Jessica’s distinctive face).
Good thing that Luke Cage has unbreakable skin, because those look like they could cut glass.
However, as her importance in the Marvel Universe has grown and more and more artists have tackled her, she’s lost this specialness. Your collaborators on New Avengers have consistently drawn her with missile tits and a tiny, tiny waist. Francis Yu is the worst offender. I mean, look at that shit to the left. You want your daughter to read stuff where women are drawn so inaccurately?
Now that Jessica is being drawn as any random woman in the Marvel Universe and Gert from Runaways is dead, the only woman in the Marvel Universe that isn’t drawn as a total hottie is Aunt May. And that just doesn’t seem right to me.
I think you have a responsibility as her creator, and a human being, to see that she’s drawn in a more realistic fashion. I mean, the same woman who once thought via captions, while reading a women’s magazine, “‘How to keep your man’s eyes from wandering…’ Damn! Fuck you!!! ‘Dressing for success — more cleavage and leg.’ Fuckers. Fucking dammit — no wonder I feel like shit about myself all the time” would not be flying around wearing belly shirts while searching for her missing daughter. She’d have a shirt that at least covered her fucking belly button for that.
Please, this is a seriously important issue if you’re ever going to grow your audience. More and more women are reading comics, so why not try to get some of those readers on your books by ensuring your characters don’t have insulting body types?
It’s the right thing to do, man.
Yours in fandom,
Miles Baker
I hear what you’re saying Miles, and I totally agree.
They need to draw Aunt May hotter.
Go ahead and forget I said this terrible, terrible joke.