New Work: Mary Jane by Hughes & Yoakum

Another Adam Hughes ink job!

Love trying to get that Jazzy Johnny Romita hair sheen on MJ. Adam does interesting faces, not stereotypical women's faces, and I'm noticing it more now inking a few of these pieces than I ever did just looking at the work.

These are fun!

Feminist Controversy or A Subtle Dig at Marvel:The Steel Cage Match

Lisa over at Sequentially Speaking has a blog post about this page on Thunder-
bolts, and takes it as either a) a slap in the face to feminist bloggers, or b) a sign that all the uproar over the MJ statue was exactly the sort of publicity that they want. I have to say, without even reading the rest of the book, that I respectfully disagree.

As much as I believe that Joe and the gang over at Marvel probably do get a good laugh over the majority of the internet posts on their work, this page looks a hell of a lot more like the writer getting the opportunity to make fun of Marvel itself, within one of their own books.

Think about it, Moonstone here, not the nicest character, is being exploited by the big bad government with a tasteless statue, and Songbird, the book's sole moral core, is getting the chance to laugh at the whole thing. In fact, Songbird is even being told in the first panel that she has the more selective fanbase, and won't be exploited as crassly.

Get it? Harry Osborne is taking the place of Marvel, Marvel that OK'd the MJ statue. Rather than a slap at feminists, I think that this is an acknowledgment that occasionally Marvel does do rather crass stuff, knowing that they have the fans to sell it. Or, at least, the subset of fans.

I'd be the first to call them on this, if it really was a stick in the eye to all the very reasonably worded objections to the original MJ statue, but I think it is anything but.

Sane Comments on the Mary Jane Statue

I stayed far, far, farrrrrrrrrrr away from the whole Mary Jane statue when it hit, and even farther away when the ensuing firestorm hit the blog world. So imagine my surprise when I follow a Journalista link over to Phillopos live journal, and find actual discussion with nary a flaming post in sight about that same Mary Jane.

In the blog-eat-blog world of internet time, there clearly have been enough days to allow for the cooling of passions about the statue, and for there to be a good, general agreement about the whole debacle.

rachel edidin puts it succinctly:

Y'know what? I actually dug Adam Hughes's original sketch for the comiquette statue. MJ *did* look feisty, and while she was hella sexy, she also had a lot of spirit. I could buy that MJ discovering and being amused by Spidey's costume in the laundry. It was a cute pin-up, and it worked as a pin-up. The problem with the statue was that it had little or none of the charm of Hughes's version, and he was stupidly defending it as a direct translation of that art--and the intention behind it.

And with that, you pretty much have, word for word, my feelings on it. Men like the Hughes, they're sexy babes without looking like idiots, prostitutes or whores, and women like the Hughes, for many of the same reasons: sexy without being sexist. (Personal favorite: the Wanda in the Sentinel hand. Wow.) And none of that made it to the statue.

I never quite got the superheroes as sexy thing, to be honest, even when I was younger, until we get to the John Byrne Jean Grey, who had this "real" body. Yes, she was curvy and sexy, but John was a good enough artist to make her move, to make have have breasts that would actually flatten down if she was lying down, to have hips that would turn properly when she was surprised by Magneto. The John Buscema Sif didn't have that, the Herb Trimpe Betty Ross didn't, neither did the Sal Buscema Valkyrie. And I thought that Jean was pretty wow. All the art books that I had said to try to actully observe people, how they move, and John's moved a lot more like women than anyone else back then. Michael Golden's did as well when he came along.

And somehow, from there, we progressed to Michael Turner. sigh.

But I digress. Mary Jane, we know that you're a hottie, and if Marvel does break you and Peter up, it'll be a shame, but know that we loved you. Not for your thong, but for your spirit.