SPLICED COLUMN /
ISSUE 05
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
Boobs. That got your attention, right? Sadly, that's pretty much the
sum-total of the perceived role of female characters in comics, as
hideously proven by the internet a couple of months ago.
Underage boobs. How's that for context? It
concerns me greatly that people will get into a
violent furore in the defence of the sexualised
depiction of a 16-year-old girl on the cover of
a popular comic title. So violent in fact, that
people threatened to RAPE a female critic. That
female critic happens to be Janelle Asselin, a
former DC editor and well-respected member
of the comic fraternity. Well, respected until
she dared to make fair and valid points about
a recent New52 cover for Teen Titans, a wellloved DC title.
Asselin wrote an article for Comic Book
Resources entitled Anatomy Of A Bad Cover:
DC's New "Teen Titans" #1 in April this year, in
which she discussed her concerns over some of
the art direction choices for the book's facade.
Astute points were made, such as the fact that
the characters appeared disparate and unrelated
to each other, despite being a team of young
heroes; superfluous environmental details were
also called out. Asselin clearly mentioned that
this was not a slight at cover artist Kenneth
Rocafort, but rather at the decisions that
were made for the cover in general. "A good
comics cover alludes to the story within, yes,
but most importantly, it draws readers in... A
cover is often the project's first impression,
debuting online either in solicitations or other
promotional campaigns." Asselin's point here
was that the Teen Titans cover is dull, saturated
with too much visual information and says
nothing about the characters.
02
The biggest point of contention however,
was Wonder Girl, a character that takes up a
good two-thirds of the cover, mostly with her
breasts. She is 16-years old, Amazonian and
shares powers similar to Wonder Woman. And
she looks like she's had augmentation surgery.
Sorry to ruin this for some people, but breasts
are lumps of fat that have mass and volume - the
bigger they are, the less likely they'll conform to
the strange comic ideal of perky balloons that
look like torpedoes draped in wet cloth. The
costume design is your typical strapless 'boobsock' that makes it VERY obvious that there
ain't any bra action happening there, so the
argument that she could be wearing a push-up
bra is moot.
She gazes demurely at the reader, swivelling a
waist smaller than her thigh and displaying ladylumps the size of her head as the key focal point
of the cover. Asselin decried how unacceptable
it is that in these times, people still feel the need
to depict characters like this, but more so on
a TEENAGE girl. Her article was greeted with
swathes of support, but then the hate started
and escalated to threats of rape and violence.
"We're going to f**k you until you bleed,
feminazi b***h." and "let's see how feminist you
are when your [sic] begging me for more" are
some of the choicer threats. Is this in anyway
acceptable? No. And it never will be. I've been
told countless times that I'm making a big deal
out of nothing. What I ask though, is if this is
such a minor deal, why is it that some people
think that they are entitled to even DARE
to make threats of rape and physical harm
to someone that makes absolute sense as a
professional, simply because she is a woman
that questioned the depiction of content on a
comic cover?
It's time that we as a society grow up and
demand better.
LINKS:
CBR Article:
www.comicbookresources.
com/?page=article&id=52103
Janelle's Blog: www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/
janelle-asselin-comic-book-rape-threats
65