You don’t have to go back into the 19th Century to find those dark depths, you know. Marvel did swimsuit issues in the 90’s. Start here. Here is another set.
So, which page is your favorite and why? (Defend your answer.) I’m partial to the Escher-like quality of Thunderstrike’s – what is it? I guess you could describe what we are seeing here as a cross between a deltoid and a mobius strip. Or between a pectoral and a tesseract?
In short: where exactly is either his left shoulder or the left side of his chest? Did his shoulder just sort of give up on becoming an arm and then the arm tried again, launching itself out, a bit below, where the intercostals should be? I could stare for hours. It’s like a cross between a Japanese sand garden and a fancy butcher shop. But perhaps you prefer the Doctor Strange pin-up in which the good doctor is – well, how tall would you say he looks to be?
via War Rocket Ajax
{ 36 comments }
Alvis 10.28.09 at 1:52 am
Hmmm. To be fair, Marvel had a lot of terrible artists in the ’90s. Just be grateful Rob Liefeld wasn’t involved.
Me, I like page 42, because Scotty has a hand the size of a coconut crab.
John Holbo 10.28.09 at 2:31 am
“To be fair, Marvel had a lot of terrible artists in the ‘90s.”
As an excuse, this falls a bit short. As an explanation, it works rather better.
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 2:46 am
The swimsuit issue is just a less blatant example of what already existed. Mind you, the swimsuit issues might be better if they were all fighting…
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 2:47 am
Or “more blatant”. I do my crappiest writing here. You’re welcome.
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 3:29 am
Also page 15 is good because think of the expense of getting the artist up on the crane for that one.
giotto 10.28.09 at 4:11 am
After It’s like a cross between a Japanese sand garden and a fancy butcher shop. there is nothing left for the English language to express.
Hugh 10.28.09 at 4:47 am
“But perhaps you prefer the Doctor Strange pin-up in which the good doctor is – well, how tall would you say he looks to be?”
Doctor Strange is the Sorcerer Supreme. He is as tall as he damn well wants to be, thank you.
onymous 10.28.09 at 5:04 am
Just be grateful Rob Liefeld wasn’t involved.
But notice how the linked images follow his “obscure feet at all costs to avoid having to draw them” strategy.
Doctor Slack 10.28.09 at 5:11 am
I love the image with Captain America and Diamondback posed like gargantuan Aryan statuary from the ’36 Olympics in front of a group of diminutive African primitives. Subtle. Real subtle.
Doctor Slack 10.28.09 at 6:42 am
(And oh my freaking God. The Black Panther takes a golden shower. There are some images that can’t be un-seen.)
Richard J 10.28.09 at 10:50 am
Crikey. His femurs appear to meet about three inches in front of his pelvis.
Doug 10.28.09 at 11:05 am
“Or between a pectoral and a tesseract?”
That’s a pectoract? And the preceding combination must be a Dubious Strip.
Jacob T. Levy 10.28.09 at 12:13 pm
Everyone jokes about how certain comics artists appear never to have seen an actual female human. But they also appear never to have seen a muscle on an actual male human.
Just in case there’s anyone who hasn’t seen it: Liefeld’s Captain America.
rea 10.28.09 at 12:21 pm
Liefeld’s Captain America.
A tad overweight isn’t he? Artistic incompetence, or subtle political message?
Gareth Rees 10.28.09 at 2:23 pm
Liefeld’s Captain America is the result of merging two different perspectives into one picture: his shoulder is seen side-on, and his chest at an oblique angle. It’s the same kind of distortion used to get the buttocks and breasts of female characters visible at the same time. It’s a technique that goes back at least to the cubists.
(Still hideous though.)
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 2:30 pm
Be grateful he wasn’t smiling, thus revealing all 48 teeth.
Chris 10.28.09 at 3:37 pm
@15: It’s not just that, but part of his back is visible as part of the side-on angle, and his other shoulder is missing from where it should be given the chest angle. You’d have to tear his torso in half to force it into that pose.
Gareth Rees 10.28.09 at 3:55 pm
You’d have to tear his torso in half to force it into that pose.
That’s far less damage than you’d need to do to George Braque’s woman with a guitar.
Chris 10.28.09 at 5:23 pm
It’s the same kind of distortion used to get the buttocks and breasts of female characters visible at the same time.
Why do you need distortion for that? Aside from a simple profile view, it’s quite possible for humans of either sex to twist through fairly respectable angles at the waist, presenting (say) a 3/4 front view of the upper body and a 3/4 rear view of the lower body. (Actually, I’d bet that there are pinups that use the same kind of pose, for the same reason.)
Of course it’s going to look contrived if you do it too often.
Articulating the shoulders and the rib cage separately is not so possible.
stras 10.28.09 at 5:58 pm
His arm is clearly growing out of his stomach after lengthy exposure to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh.
Ex-PD 10.28.09 at 6:10 pm
Jesus, why did they even keep up the pretext of drawing “swimsuits?” Give the boys what they want.
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 6:51 pm
And the girls.
SusanC 10.28.09 at 6:56 pm
But … why have a special swimsuit issue when every issue has guys in lycra suits?
My vote is for “Black Bolt and Medusa” by George Perez. Medua’s hair wraps around her body in way reminiscent of Mucha, except that it looks wrong somehow, especially where the hair extensions join her head. Meanwhile, Black Bolt sits on a pile of rocks overlooking the sea that could have been lifted out of a Japanese print. His arms bulge unhealthily, as if he has a malignant tumour rather than muscles.
Gareth Rees 10.28.09 at 8:18 pm
Why do you need distortion for that?
I’m referring to this kind of drawing of a highly distorted figure in an anatomically impossible pose (found via the amusingly cruel 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings).
Pointing out that comic book characters are absurdly exaggerated is great fun, but if you say “this is bad because it’s unrealistic” then you’re making the same kind of complaint as someone who says that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon are bad because they don’t look like real women. You need a critique that’s a bit more sophisticated than that.
Substance McGravitas 10.28.09 at 9:03 pm
Nobody precisely said that. These characters represent idealized portraits of us, and few feel their ideal form is tumorous monster. Obviously there’s a degree of stylization involved in any comic book venture, but Liefeld’s Captain America is the alien monster everybody else’s Captain America fights.
Russell Arben Fox 10.29.09 at 2:33 am
Oh Gareth, thank you for that. Subjecting 40 examples of atrocious Liefeld art to mockery was exactly the laugh I needed this evening. I stopped collecting comics in the late 80s, just before Liefeld and other initiated the incoherent, over-the-top, ultra-violent, bigger-is-better madness which mainstream American comics still haven’t recovered from, and perhaps never will. I’m so glad I got out when I did.
Keir 10.29.09 at 2:49 am
Pointing out that comic book characters are absurdly exaggerated is great fun, but if you say “this is bad because it’s unrealistic†then you’re making the same kind of complaint as someone who says that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon are bad because they don’t look like real women. You need a critique that’s a bit more sophisticated than that.
But if I look at a 17xx entry in the Prix de Rome and say: he fucked the perspective up, that is a valid criticism. If I say the same about Klee, it is not. Clearly we use different standards to evaluate different art works.
It isn’t absurd exaggeration, it is incompetence.
Salient 10.29.09 at 3:51 am
So, which page is your favorite and why? (Defend your answer.)
Page 19. Why? Just let the costuming on the female character sink into your consciousness for a little while.
Gareth Rees 10.29.09 at 12:38 pm
But if I look at a 17xx entry in the Prix de Rome and say: he fucked the perspective up, that is a valid criticism
Yes, perhaps. But this rather depends on knowing that it’s a “fuck up”: that the artist intended to get the perspective right, and failed through incompetence. Usually the situation is a bit less clear than that: to take an example from a Prix de Rome winner, Ingres’ Grand Odalisque features a female figure with distorted proportions (a bit more subtly than Liefeld’s women, but still). Sheer incompetence or mannerist allusion?
Keir 10.29.09 at 1:35 pm
Well, in the context of the rest of Ingres work etc. etc. it clearly isn’t wrong; after all one can’t imagine that Ingres would have improved the work by shortening that back.
(But if you look at the Belisarius, David clearly Got It Wrong, because one can imagine it being improved were he to get the perspective right.)
So quite clearly if you look at the work sensibly there’s an obvious way to talk about mistakes: would the work be better if it were different? And quite obviously those works would be; the errors aren’t valid artistic choices, they’re incompetence.
Gareth Rees 10.29.09 at 2:24 pm
You’re referring to the paving slabs in the lower left of Jacques-Louis David’s Belisarius Begging for Alms, right? What makes it plausible that this could be a mistake is that it’s a minor element of the work. But in the case of Liefeld, the exaggerated figures and distorted poses are the centerpiece of his work: I don’t think it’s credible that he was trying to draw realistic figures in realistic poses and just happening to get them wrong through inability or haste. He was working in the context of the Marvel house style, which became more and more exaggerated over time. Here’s Adam Roberts arguing that this evolution in style can be considered a kind of aesthetic arms race (pun intended): when every male character in your comic universe is already heavily muscled, how do you make it clear that your hero is super? when every female character already has the proportions of a pin-up, how do you indicate the heroine’s sexiness?
there’s an obvious way to talk about mistakes: would the work be better if it were different?
Isn’t this just begging the question?
Sperry 10.29.09 at 4:52 pm
31: “I don’t think it’s credible that he was trying to draw realistic figures in realistic poses and just happening to get them wrong through inability or haste”
Actually, “inability and haste” is exactly what happening. I mean for chrissakes the man can’t draw feet (like at all). Or hands. Or guns/swords. He certainly can’t draw hands holding guns/swords. He lacks a basic understanding of scale and perspective. The exaggerated musculature and the pouch addiction might just be silly stylistic choices, but the 17 foot Doc and the mouth full of teeth indicate suggest he’s probably just incompetent.
Sperry 10.29.09 at 5:04 pm
Also, Jennifer getting frisky with a giant floating parasauropholus is without question my favorite. It raises so many important questions:
Why is the parasauropholus so enamored with her… erm… anatomy? Is the dino, in fact, prying her legs apart with his claws? Is he actually floating, or just balancing on his tail? Isn’t She-hulk afraid she is about to fall of that cliff? When did Wasp acquire her sense voyeurism? And what is with all of the pearl necklaces?
Keir 10.30.09 at 2:37 am
i mean the soldier, who’s clearly a bit off.
And yes, it may be that the artist thinks he is drawing something well, but he really isn’t. Intentional choices can be mistakes too.
lemuel pitkin 10.30.09 at 7:25 pm
Well, yeah, it’s Marvel.
Stick to DC, says me, especially Vertigo. Sandman, Hellblazer, Doom Patrol, Shade, 100 Bullets — what Marvel stuff comes even close?
Reinder Dijkhuis 10.31.09 at 11:10 pm
Well at least the guy looks like he has something in his pants. Amazing how many superhero artists can’t even get that right.
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