Deadly Troubadour

So, I m going to do that truly stupid thing and post to the blog after having more cups than I should of box wine. But after getting home after a drinking party I read yet another article about something that got stuck in my head.

Why am I writing this? Because of Frank Cho. Sometime between last night and this morning I learned that, apparently, Frank Cho is a woman hating, jerk. Okay, I tacked on the jerk. And maybe it was less “woman-hating” and more phrases such as misogynist, dehumanizing, sexist, objectifying, etc.

Basically the point was Cho drew Spider-Gwen in a pose that parodied the Milo Manara Spider Woman butt in the air pose. And apparently people got upset. which is something the internet excels at, giving people an innocuous reason to be upset at. I should know. I get upset over the internet fairly often. And people were upset over Cho’s art. People at Comics Alliance and Mary-Sue. I don’t often go to those sites. That isn’t any real commentary other than I visit other sites. But it seems people over at those sights took objection to the Spider-Gwen art because she was a teenager. And I understood. Because I don’t like the sexualizing of teenagers. I work in an all girls’ private school in a country that I feel needs to give more thought and respect to women. Teenagers shouldn’t be thought of as sexual prizes. And they are. All the $#%””! time.

I liked X-23. But there are a lot of comics were she is shown as a piece of meant to ogle at. I never really got into Scott Pilgrim because the first volumes were about an adult fantasizing about a teenager named Knives. I never heard an outcry about that though. What’s worse a one off pin-up (which is what the Cho piece essentially is) with a character in an ambiguous time-;in based after another ambiguously aged character or a whole series that basically nods at the idea of an adult pursuing a sexual relationship with a teenager. I shouldn’t point fingers. But there are a lot of fingers being pointed.

The first article I read was on Comics alliance. I remember the authors name was Janelle. She called accused Cho of dehumanizing and objectifying women. Maybe she had a point. I’ve read Frank’s comics. There is a common them. His women tend to be of a type. Statuesque. Buxom. Fine. Pretty with large breasts and ample posteriors. They also tend to be the most capable characters in what he writes and draws. And apparently that means he has a problem with women. Personally, I’d rather look at his body of body of work, but hey that’s just tipsy old me. And, to be fair, there is a lot of cheesecake art in the Frank Cho collection. After that, it really just is a matter of taste.

And if it was left at that, I’d understand. If Janelle said something akin to “I did not appreciate this art and thought this piece overly sexualizes a character currently portrayed as a teenager” all i would say is “she has a point.” and then have some coffee. But that isn’t what I saw. I read an article where she spent the first half doing the “polite” version of calling him everything but a child of God. And for the internet even that would be okay. But in the second half she went on to talk about the jerks calling people names not eh internet. Except these jerks were supporters of Cho. Or maybe Cho himself. The point is, there was a high degree of hypocrisy floating around.

I find myself politely known as opinionated. This means I either need to take great pains to speak reasonable and hope that will be returned in kind, or that I need unload and know others will do the same to me. I cannot snipe targets and then act softhearted at how I am treated, Yet, this is how I feel negative commentators, on much more prestigious websites than my own, are reacting to Frank Cho’s art.

At the end of the day I think most media present teenagers as objects to be sexualized at a higher rate than I would like and I don’t think Frank Cho’s art is the best example of this. I think people who point fingers should be prepared to have fingers pointed back by those who disagree.

I also eagerly look forward to the posts by those decrying Cho’d dehumanizing, objectifying art that turn their attention to the sins committed by Russell Dauterman. In all his issues of the relaunched Thor his depictions of the Odinson have been in skintight leggings and with a physique as equally objectifying of men as Cho is to women. Get on that.