Marvel recalls a cover for overly sexualizing the underage Iron Man spinoff

Over sexualizing 15-year-old girls can get you in a heap of trouble. Marvel's latest screwup and recall is a lesson.

And since when do the comics have to depict 15-year-old girls in leading roles? We saw that earlier with Ms. Marvel, and now with Iron Heart. Is this where they think their audience has gone?

io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-pulls-variant-cov...incible-i-1788069288

shadar wrote: Over sexualizing 15-year-old girls can get you in a heap of trouble. Marvel's latest screwup and recall is a lesson.

And since when do the comics have to depict 15-year-old girls in leading roles? We saw that earlier with Ms. Marvel, and now with Iron Heart. Is this where they think their audience has gone?

io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-pulls-variant-cov...incible-i-1788069288

To answer your question " since when do the comics have to depict 15-year-old girls in leading roles?" -- A: for a long time now.

If we ignore the "girls", part, there is a long history of teenage heroes/comics, even just focusing on ones that had their own titles: Spider-Man (original, Ultimate, Morales), Original X-Men, Superboy, Supergirl, Teen Titans (and all the Robins and Wonder Girls), the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle, various Batgirls (Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain), Spider-Girl/Woman ( Maddie Franklin, Anya Corazón, May Parker), Spider-Gwen, Leave it to Chance, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Runaways, Power Pack (even younger!), Prez, Mazing Man, etc. If we stray from Super-heroes we get the entire Archie line notably Betty and Verionica, Sabrina, Josie and the Pussycats, and Cheryl. All of these characters had titles dedicated to them. (Not to mention characters that were major to their books and had mini-series appearances: Kitty Pryde, Valeria and Franklin Richards, Firestar, Justice, Bucky, Toro, etc.

A LOT of those were girls, going all the way back to Supergirl (and the Legion before that).

The fact that comic companies are trying to attract more female readers means more female heroes (and focus on them). But they're also trying to get more kids to read comics, which does results in some focus on young heroes. The cast of the new Champions for example, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man (morales), the Cho Hulk, vision's daughter, Nova). All those characters were mucking about, and four of them already had titles (Hulk, Ms. marvel, Nova, Spider-Man).

Admittedly, most of those characters don't make press releases and get covered in the major media outlets. But let's not confuse what people report on with what is actually be produced. Ironheart is only the spiritual successor of iron Man. The new Iron Man is Victor Von Doom. Of course that doesn't get covered in the non-comics media ....

But this is still a fraction of the total output for Marvel and is just a sign they are trying to diversify their titles (across multiple metrics for characters and creative teams). DC is doing the same.

TwiceOnThursdays wrote:

shadar wrote: Over sexualizing 15-year-old girls can get you in a heap of trouble. Marvel's latest screwup and recall is a lesson.

And since when do the comics have to depict 15-year-old girls in leading roles? We saw that earlier with Ms. Marvel, and now with Iron Heart. Is this where they think their audience has gone?

io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-pulls-variant-cov...incible-i-1788069288

To answer your question " since when do the comics have to depict 15-year-old girls in leading roles?" -- A: for a long time now.

If we ignore the "girls", part, there is a long history of teenage heroes/comics, even just focusing on ones that had their own titles: Spider-Man (original, Ultimate, Morales), Original X-Men, Superboy, Supergirl, Teen Titans (and all the Robins and Wonder Girls), the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle, various Batgirls (Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain), Spider-Girl/Woman ( Maddie Franklin, Anya Corazón, May Parker), Spider-Gwen, Leave it to Chance, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Runaways, Power Pack (even younger!), Prez, Mazing Man, etc. If we stray from Super-heroes we get the entire Archie line notably Betty and Verionica, Sabrina, Josie and the Pussycats, and Cheryl. All of these characters had titles dedicated to them. (Not to mention characters that were major to their books and had mini-series appearances: Kitty Pryde, Valeria and Franklin Richards, Firestar, Justice, Bucky, Toro, etc.

A LOT of those were girls, going all the way back to Supergirl (and the Legion before that).

The fact that comic companies are trying to attract more female readers means more female heroes (and focus on them). But they're also trying to get more kids to read comics, which does results in some focus on young heroes. The cast of the new Champions for example, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man (morales), the Cho Hulk, vision's daughter, Nova). All those characters were mucking about, and four of them already had titles (Hulk, Ms. marvel, Nova, Spider-Man).

Admittedly, most of those characters don't make press releases and get covered in the major media outlets. But let's not confuse what people report on with what is actually be produced. Ironheart is only the spiritual successor of iron Man. The new Iron Man is Victor Von Doom. Of course that doesn't get covered in the non-comics media ....

But this is still a fraction of the total output for Marvel and is just a sign they are trying to diversify their titles (across multiple metrics for characters and creative teams). DC is doing the same.

I now understand how many underage female superheroes there are. A lot. But that doesn't explain why Marvel is now having to recall all the issues with the referenced cover due to excessive sexuality. I do know that authors can get in trouble for sexual depictions of girls younger than 16 in many (most?) developed countries. Even here on SWM, the hard rule is no sexual depiction of anyone below 18 years of age.

It seems the problem here is that she has the body of a 25-year-old, even if she is wearing socially acceptable clothing for most of Europe and North America and a good part of Asia. Which I presume is the market for these comics.

It's also possible that given the rhetoric of the US election, and the candidates, that interpretations of acceptable sexual expression, not to mention greatly heightened sensitivity to overt sexism, is going to be a super-hot topic no matter who wins. That may limit expression in written fiction as well as media, at least in North America. Not sure how this plays in Europe. Clearly it's not been a problem in Japan forever.

I don't see nothing sexualized about that cover. It's just J. Scott Campbell's style of drawing. A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type. And people who complain about this shit don't even read comics. On twitter the idiots were complaining that she's not black enough in that cover, and they were sending threats to Campbell about it, not knowing that he wasn't the one who colored it

erikphandel wrote: I don't see nothing sexualized about that cover. It's just J. Scott Campbell's style of drawing. A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type. And people who complain about this shit don't even read comics. On twitter the idiots were complaining that she's not black enough in that cover, and they were sending threats to Campbell about it, not knowing that he wasn't the one who colored it

"A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type."

My god, what are you feeding them?

shadar wrote:

erikphandel wrote: I don't see nothing sexualized about that cover. It's just J. Scott Campbell's style of drawing. A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type. And people who complain about this shit don't even read comics. On twitter the idiots were complaining that she's not black enough in that cover, and they were sending threats to Campbell about it, not knowing that he wasn't the one who colored it

"A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type."

My god, what are you feeding them?

Brazilians dude. Women here mature somewhat early

erikphandel wrote:

shadar wrote:

erikphandel wrote: I don't see nothing sexualized about that cover. It's just J. Scott Campbell's style of drawing. A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type. And people who complain about this shit don't even read comics. On twitter the idiots were complaining that she's not black enough in that cover, and they were sending threats to Campbell about it, not knowing that he wasn't the one who colored it

"A lot of 15 year olds where I live has that body type."

My god, what are you feeding them?

Brazilians dude. Women here mature somewhat early

Silly me. I should have known. A place where the women make comic book heroines look a little "deflated". <grin>