Saturday, March 04, 2006

Supergirl's scary bits made safe for public viewing

I've seen posts in both Dave's Long Box and Tom The Dog on the subject of what Tom gives the delightful name of Editorial Swimwear so my bullshit detector was primed for when I saw this picture in Supergirl #5.



Now this story doesn't strictly require a double page nudie shot of Supergirl, and obviously for the intended market they couldn't ever have considered doing one that didn't have that clumsy old device of hiding her scary parts by placing objects in front of them, and if you look close it is possible to see that the artist has drawn threads of very lumpy looking smoke and cunningly hung drapery to protect us from the terrifying sight of female bits. So what's with the heavy airbrush on top of this, so clumsily obvious because it is seen nowhere else on the page and doesn't fit the style of the rest of the art?

I can only guess that editorial saw the original version and panicked that you could almost see some of the wrong sort of skin and opted for some last minute butchery of the artwork.

And yet somehow they left in the dodgy explanation Zor-El gives his teenage daughter for why she needs to get naked, that odd expression on his face as he stares down at her breasts while removing the last of her clothing, and her delighted response.


Is anyone else seeing a mixed message here?

4 comments:

Ragnell said...

I see a very clear message that misogyny and incest are present even in advanced societies like Krypton.

CalvinPitt said...

You're probably right about that, although Zor-El's look doesn't seem quite as weird as it probably could be.

Really though, I didn't even notice that. I was too busy gawking at how damn thin her lower legs are. Does she even have bones? Are they the size of an ordinary house cats? How do those legs not break trying support all 63 pounds of Kara those three feet to the shuttle?

Walaka said...

Okay, a few things from someone out of the loop:

1. Ick. Things like this convince me I am not missing much these days, at least not much I don't want to miss.

2. Is Krypton still crystalline and all? I never liked that.

3. Why does Zor-el have an "S" on his, uh, shoulder pad / oversized epaulet / arm-thingie? Has Marlon Brando's unreasonable request from a decades-old movie made it into what (I hear) passes for continuity these days?

4. Ick.

Anonymous said...

Forget the shoulderpads and the incest. Why is Zor-el so stubbly? Has Krypton not yet discovered Mach-3 technology?