I just had to share...

[ratcreature]

This is a scan from Wizard How To Draw: Character Creation, from the chapter Super Women




WTF? That woman on the left looks freakishly disproportionate, not attractive, not even if you like larger breasts. And that thing with the ashamed body language of the normal woman left me speechless. To be fair to the book as a whole a few chapters onward in another section on female archetypes titled appropriately "Vixens" (sic!) the same approach to drawing breasts is actually mocked, so strangely enough the example "vixen" drawings have thus smaller breasts than usual for superhero comics. Go figure. Anyway, so it's not consistently advocating freakish balloon boobs.

However that in the archetype section the chapters are Super Men, Super Women, Acrobats, Costumed Vigilantes, Brutes, Vixens, Armored Villains and Sidekicks, and the only chapter with examples from both genders is the one about acrobats (by Adrian Alphona, who draws Runaways), is quite telling. I mean, talking about archetypes I kind of get why they wouldn't think of women as typical examples for brutes or even armored villains, but no sidekicks and costumed vigilantes either? *grumble*

Comments

late as well but wth

[(Anonymous)]

Hello there. I stumbled across this article somewhat by mistake while looking up for help to draw some stuff I can't. I could not read those comments without having a few questions raising in my head. While I agree with the sexism image that is spreaded as model for youngsters and young girls in particular, I think that some of the opinions go a little too far for nothing...Don't get me wrong, this is not what woman *should* look like but common...As I read as well the texts that are displayed on the pages for tips and such, more often than never, the artist states that this is not a real representation of what a woman should look like...I mean, let yout imaginations run wild! Those are comic books! All features of everything regarding the characters, the setups, the language, the events, EVERYTHING is exaggerated! I would point fingers to television channels displaying "women of low standards" as role models for younger woman, so-called fashion magazines determining what measurements a women should be, pop-culture icons that are no more than glitter and surgery! The comic book style is on its own with everything so much over the top it is blatant to be like that. Probably that the words that are used in descriptions are not the best chosen but they do not make a statement that their drawings are guidelines to what a real woman looks like. For my research, I was looking for "how to draw female comic characters" and...this guide is exactly what I was looking for...Most of everyone knows that this is not reality and far from it. I will probably get fried for this one but hey...what the heck. I feel that maybe you guys see problems or faults where there are not. Obviously, I am a man, I probably don't see this the way you guys do. But I can assure you that standards are not necessarely what you think they are...hell, I don't even know one person who has "standards" for how women should look like except tools and fools, juiced up roid-monkeys that you see on the Jersey Shore. Good night to all