#the comixologist

When discussing comic art, I like to remember the audience for the scene as crucial context for whether something skeeves me out or not. Let’s use Dick Grayson as an example. In BATGIRL #45, there’s this amazing full page of him entering a window looking foxy as heck in a tight outfit showing off his abs, but the context is you’re seeing him from Batgirl’s point of view, and he looks at her with a flirty expression and you know that’s because of those two characters’ romantic histories together. In MIDNIGHTER #4, the one where Grayson and Midnighter are shirtless in a sauna to beat up bad guys, they’re not making exaggerated poses, and yeah, they’re probably shirtless just to be shirtless for us, the readers, but it’s not like every other page is like this, so it’s a fun one-off and allows Midnighter a couple chances to get flirty one-liners in.

The art in Gotham City Sirens I was referencing is different because the ‘camerawork’ that consistently follows the characters is clearly for the readers and not for other characters in the scene. For example, a low shot of Catwoman’s butt that also shows Ivy and Harley talking to her with her facing them is not for any of the characters’ gratification but for the readers’, and the consistency of this kind of shot throughout the book/series tells me that these characters are here to provide gratification for the readers, but this is separate from the characters’ own agency. It’s like those upskirt shots some people insist on trying to take at comic conventions of women: they’re not consensual and they don’t value the subject as an actual person, merely as a sexual object. The characters in Sirens are also portrayed in “sexy” poses for no reason beyond audience titillation—if a character is in a pose that seems inorganically T&A focused, I feel uncomfortable because it shows me that this character is not totally themselves; they’re there to be decoration, and I hate that. It’s like when I’m walking down the street and a rando guy says “smile, beautiful” and I’m terrified and angry because that phrase tells me that he thinks I’m there to decorate his world as opposed to being my own person with my own thoughts and feelings and agency. To quote Mad Max: Fury Road: “We are not things.”

When I’m talking about relationships between characters that I either jokingly or earnestly endorse, I’m talking about that from a place where I think that genuinely those two characters would work together in a relationship, whether it’s romantic or sexual. It is NOT because I think they would look sexy together having sex for no other reason than the audience’s (my) enjoyment. So when I talk about SPIDEYPOOL, it’s because I think they’ve had some CANON INTERACTIONS that I can view as flirty, and I think they’d have a cute relationship where Spidey is constantly trying to make Deadpool make better choices, and Deadpool is constantly proposing indecent ideas to Spidey in public to make him blush, and they have hilarious banter while beating up bad guys and have dramatic tension when Deadpool goes too far and Spidey has to bring him in, and all the character development that would happen as a result of all of this would be amazing.

It boils down to “is this attractive, or is this objectification?” Context is everything. For a more common example, in almost every strip club scene in any visual medium ever, the female strippers are there as props for generally male characters to look at or interact with in a superficial, fleeting way, and seldom do these strippers have an actual role in the story beyond titillation. Contrast this with Magic Mike XXL, where the male strippers are the main characters who drive the plot, and they view their profession as a way to make women happy, and we see the women they perform for responding positively to the various ways the men are interacting with them. Objectification vs. involvement and characterization is important!