When the PC People win over Artistic Freedom... in Comics!
It's simple, if you don't like something you see, and it's buyable, you just pass it by and don't drop your hard-earned coins! But for some people, that's not enough.
In 2015, Marvel Comics commisioned Milo Manara with the cover for the first issue of a new title then, Spider-Woman, written by Dennis Hopeless and art by Greg Land. That would be the end of it, if not because to some souls that thought that they were charged with the responsability to verify that no one tresspassed the limits they considered correct, decided that the cover, which woud be the regular one, was offensive to their tastes!
Not long after that, an internet campaign began, clamoring for Marvel to cancel said cover. Marvel relented and changed it to a 1:50 variant, which means that for every 50 copies of the regular cover, one had the chance to buy the Manara sinful one! Now it commands awfully high prices, of course.
But it doesn't end there this matter! Marvel had to publish it in a way that didn't offend this handful of people! This is the published version:
And just so you may be able to appreciate it in full, this is the original uncensored version:
Want something worse? OK.
Rafael Albuquerque made this cover for Batgirl # 41 to be published in June 2016, cover dated September, and it was announced in trade sites and Previews, the main distributor's catalog:
Many, many people clamored against it and objected to its being published, because it was a "gross sexualization of a trauma" and it was a continuation of the terrible event from 1988... Take into account the direction the gun points to, also.
A bit of backstory:
In 1988, Alan Moore wrote The Killing Joke, illustrated by Brian Bolland. Suppossedly an off-canon story, it was about the level the Joker would go to torment Batman and Commissioner Gordon (Batgirl/Barbara Gordon's father). The Joker kidnapped, and tormented Barbara Gordon, and then, left her crippled after shooting her in the spine. Also, he sent Gordon photos of her naked and mauled (also implying rape). A really mad and sick person, granted... But it was only a comic book, and the cover we talk about, just that, a cover!
DC obviously cancelled the cover after the artist requested it - there were also threats of violence and harassment to the people objecting to the cover. A terrible affair from beginning to end.
Well, not a happy post, and don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of acts like the ones depicted, but I'm also in favor of artsitic freedom and against censorship.
Thanks for reading my posts.
Cheers
Both of these cases of "outrage" were just bizarre. I remember people scoffing that Milo didn't know how to draw the female figure properly and it was exaggerated for sexual enticement. ...as is ANY female super hero in a skin tight outfit isn't drawn with that partially in mind. But Milo is unarguably a master of drawing female anatomy, and with a pose like this I sincerely doubt he didn't use a live model.
As for the filling Joke cover...the same people up in arms seem to gloss over West World and Game of Thrones for some reason. In the grand scheme of things, hardly anyone is going to see either of these covers in comparison to those two shows, and even less would have seen them if there wasn't the forced controversy.
These book weren't in grocery store comic book racks next to Casper and Archie. Like you said, just don't buy them if you don't like the "message they send"