Don't Blame the Comic Book Artist for Catering to the Audience!

As the Kinks would say, "Give the people what they want!" and apparently they want kinky!


Made this caption for the recently returned Jord, who is a fan of latex/rubber and yet still has fairly flexible preferences. I just so happened to have this picture flitting about in my photo galleries, and thought it would come to good use with Jord's reappearance.

Drawing female characters has always been an issue with comic book artists, and I can see both sides of the argument, but at its heart, comic books should be escapist stories for the relatively powerless in society, namely teenage boys. Whether that is the target audience for comic books anymore is a debate for another time, it was how the business was fueled since before I was born.

Comics were made to be over the top, realistic in ways that cartoons aren't, but still not grounded by any physical laws. Mortally wounded and back to normal in the next issue .. sure! Absorb more than lethal amounts of radiation in space ... sure, and it'll make your body invisible or very stretchy and bendy .. or green and buff when you get angry!

So superheroes should be almost invulnerable because they are powered by the sun or were born of Amazonian blood; and cat burglars should actually dress up like a feline, make puns, and have large heaving bosoms even though they most likely would get in the way of breaking into tight spaces. All the more better if all of them were in fetish gear or mostly exposed flesh. And they can see through your clothes, tie you up and make you tell the truth, or keep you at bay with the flick of a whip!

So, with all that said, and most people already knowing, I just turned my attention to this dichotomy once again. Hell, I'm pretty sure I've done this in a few other previous superhero captions. I don't even disagree with the fact that comic books probably lead to fetishes / beliefs that blossom into adulthood for both sexes. Lois Lane showed that you could be a capable, strong woman, but occasionally you wanted to be rescued by a strong, virile man who could take care of your needs, although he'll always ignore you other times when he's off saving everyone else in the world.

Back to my original point, these costumes show how different the hero/villains are from us regular folk, due to their over the top nature with resonates with us from childhood all the way to into our adult years. It isn't a shock that for most years, superheroes and villains are the top selling adult costumes for Halloween, and that almost everyone one of them has sexy/slutty AND plus size versions available for those who want to live the dream, for at least one night.

And when you dress like that, don't you FEEL like that character too? There's been a few Halloween's in my life where the girl I met / picked up at a party was NOTHING like the person she was portraying in costume. You want to say, "Babe, if you could seduce me in real life the way you did when you were dressed like Poison Ivy, I'd never want to leave the apartment." but only real super villains wear their costumes every day .. real people are willing to just break them out once a year .. and perhaps THAT is the real crime!