Mandalorians are trained in many forms of combat, such as the battle bikini rubber spine style.
(Cover of Escape From Monster Island #1, Zenescope Entertainment)
Okay, now we’ve all recovered from the psychic damage caused by this… not-anatomy, I’d like to make matters worse. This is the “cosplay variant” cover which I guess means its “inspired” by a cosplayer… possibly in the same creepy manner J Scott Campbell was with some of his personal artworks.
In order to find out who they did this to, I had to do a worrying amount of searching: It’s Leeana Vamp (who I have met in person and can confirm, she is very lovely) cosplay of Boba Fett, lingerie version specifically:
Now that may not be all of it – because early in the searches my first thought was that based on the face and hair, it was inspired this is the cosplay by Lauren Browne and was very confused why they’d altered her outfit so much and removed her tattoos.
That’s because in a lot of Vamp’s cosplay pics, she’s wearing pants (conventions are usually family friend events) and the helmet… because Boba Fett; and Lauren just happens to look a little more like Generic J Scott Campbell Paul Green Babe.
It’s almost impossible to match a “likeness” with in individual using this “style” typical of companies like Zenescope, which take objectifying women to new levels. Neither Zenescope, nor the artist himself gives any vague credit to any cosplayer.
And he has a whole calendar of this shit that Zenescope is selling (note, this artwork was from 2016 ):ites, he doesn’t follow groups run by cosplayers – he looks at those creepy as fuck “sexy cosplay girls” sites/groups that don’t credit the models and are avoided by cosplayers because of the comments sections.
And he has a whole calendar of this shit that Zenescope is selling (note, this artwork was from 2016 and the current year is 2021):
So what I’m saying is: Fuck Zenescope
– wincenworks
Posted on
I feel ya, Dorothy, I am also appalled at what passes for clothing in Zenescope’s Oz. Are clothes taxed per inch of fabric in the West?
Have you ever looked at L. Frank Baum’s books about a land ruled and influenced by strong, complicated women, and thought “man, I wish these characters were drawn like plastic dolls by J. Scott Campbell so I could masturbate to them”? Well then, do we have the series for you!
(We also recommend you find actual people to interact with, we’re worried.)
Not technically armor, but I know 0 people who would wear this fabric scrap in real life. I guess J. Scott Campbell* knows more people than me… who are imaginary. At least Dorothy over there is wearing what might pass for clothes. I don’t even know what to call the Wicked Witch’s…. bodily coverings.
At least the series doesn’t fall into the Evil is Sexy trope, since everyone is barely allowed clothes? Yay?? ?
-Icy
My eyes, upon seeing Zenescope’s idea of what “Kansas Farmgirl” and “Powerful Evil Witch” look like:
~Ozzie
* I realize Campbell may not have had any input on these character designs, but it’s just the sort of thing he would design, so he still gets 0 points.
So this rumor has been circulating wildly and creating a lot of discussion, and we weren’t really jumping on it simply for the fact that the gold bikini of Leia the Huttslayer is not even vaguely armor.
However, this happened:
Yes, J Scott Campbell is deeply concerned that he will no longer get paid to draw sexy Leia. Why?
Because despite being an artist in the comics industry for nearly as long as Daisy Ridley (who’ll be playing the female lead in the upcoming movie) has been alive, he still can’t draw any woman any way that’s not hypersexualized. That’s it, his whole bag of tricks he’s acquired from twenty-two years of working as a professional artist in comics and merchandise.
So I’m not going to shed any tears for yet another tacky statue of Leia in a deliberately degrading costumes that she was forced into against her will (yet so often depicted as posing like a pinup model).
I’m going to first cry for all the great comic projects that might have been but were cast aside in favor of yet another J Scott Campbell pin-up. That and all the comics that were never read because the editor hired J Scott Campbell to present them as softcore porn (especially in cover art).
If the rumor is true and Disney is stopping this kind of production, it’s worth celebrating simply because it signals a decades overdue change: Companies considering that maybe tacky hypersexualized imagery doesn’t sell everything.
Maybe compelling plots, great storytelling and interesting characters do.
– wincenworks
As a side note, even if Disney officially announces “ban” on licensing Slave Leia merch, it won’t all be gone overnight. Let’s not act as if we didn’t have a surplus of official Star Wars bikini products for over 30 years.
Maybe, just maybe, realize for once that it’s time that demand for different depictions of Leia was met. Because many of her fans can testify how hard to get that sort of merch always was compared to slave-themed ones. Disney’s push to restore Leia’s image as something else than sexual object should be welcomed.
So this rumor has been circulating wildly and creating a lot of discussion, and we weren’t really jumping on it simply for the fact that the gold bikini of Leia the Huttslayer is not even vaguely armor.
However, this happened:
Yes, J Scott Campbell is deeply concerned that he will no longer get paid to draw sexy Leia. Why?
Because despite being an artist in the comics industry for nearly as long as Daisy Ridley (who’ll be playing the female lead in the upcoming movie) has been alive, he still can’t draw any woman any way that’s not hypersexualized. That’s it, his whole bag of tricks he’s acquired from twenty-two years of working as a professional artist in comics and merchandise.
So I’m not going to shed any tears for yet another tacky statue of Leia in a deliberately degrading costumes that she was forced into against her will (yet so often depicted as posing like a pinup model).
I’m going to first cry for all the great comic projects that might have been but were cast aside in favor of yet another J Scott Campbell pin-up. That and all the comics that were never read because the editor hired J Scott Campbell to present them as softcore porn (especially in cover art).
If the rumor is true and Disney is stopping this kind of production, it’s worth celebrating simply because it signals a decades overdue change: Companies considering that maybe tacky hypersexualized imagery doesn’t sell everything.
Maybe compelling plots, great storytelling and interesting characters do.
– wincenworks
As a side note, even if Disney officially announces “ban” on licensing Slave Leia merch, it won’t all be gone overnight. Let’s not act as if we didn’t have a surplus of official Star Wars bikini products for over 30 years.
Maybe, just maybe, realize for once that it’s time that demand for different depictions of Leia was met. Because many of her fans can testify how hard to get that sort of merch always was compared to slave-themed ones. Disney’s push to restore Leia’s image as something else than sexual object should be welcomed.
Hint: a responsible satire doesn’t straight-up reproduce the satirized thing, but puts some sort of twist on it. And I don’t mean a torsotwist. Also no, using the Disney font for the author’s credit doesn’t yet make the whole artwork “ironic”.
Saw this cover from a post by my local comic store. This comes out on May 6th and has the description: “featuring Vampirella, Dejah Thoris, Red Sonja, Kato, Jungle Girl, and many, many more! Villains and heroes from a dozen worlds and eras face off against a legendary evil that threatens all their homelands.”
Funny how not a single woman from this various eras and worlds has ever considered wearing more than lingerie into battle. The one ladies sword has more metal than her entire set of metal “armor”!
Combined, these women almost fulfill the entire bingo card! Wow!
I was really hoping that this cover would not summarize the content of the book, which is the combining of many great heroines from the Golden Age of comics – but sadly the contents of the book do seem to send a clear message from Dynamite Entertainment: Women are only worth putting in comics if they visually coded as sex objects first:
Nostalgia has a massive influence on comics, largely because only a few creative people are involved in making them (compared with video games and movies) and most of them are specialist skill sets. This combined with general risk aversion, means that sadly none of the “big” titles are prone to challenging their old conventions.
I mean you want to know how generic this cover is? Let’s compare it to another heroine based book J Scott Campbell was recruited to do the cover for:
So, while I want to be really excited about having a big story that is a lot of Golden Age heroines getting together, it’s really hard to do that when the art is basically reduces them all down to the same Barbie dolls with the same “How do we dodge the censors?” costume design ideas.
I love nostalgia as much as the next comic book fan – but at some point we have to ask what is the point of continuing the art if we don’t really advance it? And what is the point of doing a girl power comic if the introduction to it could be used as a textbook example of male gaze in comics?
Rob Liefeld is shocked and outraged that apparently there are people who will openly speak out against the casual objectification of women in media (particularly the Frank Cho “parody” of the infamous Milo Manara Spider Woman cover). Naturally, the totally unbiased fellow artist J Scott Campbell is right behind him!
Rob, you remember your most celebrated contribution to comics is a guy right? One who is celebrated for his personality over his aesthetic design. Your opinion is actually less relevant than Erik Larsen’s (who at least still works on his property). Seriously Rob, you’re not exactly celebrated as an artist and trying to value artists by “commercial success” is not exactly high brow.
Please brodudes, tell me again how there is no problem here and we’re just reading way too much into things and there’s never been misogynistic attitudes being perpetuated by big names in the industries. Tell me how it’s about the artistry. I am fascinated by this enlightening view, verily.
Rob Liefeld is shocked and outraged that apparently there are people who will openly speak out against the casual objectification of women in media (particularly the Frank Cho “parody” of the infamous Milo Manara Spider Woman cover). Naturally, the totally unbiased fellow artist J Scott Campbell is right behind him!
Rob, you remember your most celebrated contribution to comics is a guy right? One who is celebrated for his personality over his aesthetic design. Your opinion is actually less relevant than Erik Larsen’s (who at least still works on his property). Seriously Rob, you’re not exactly celebrated as an artist and trying to value artists by “commercial success” is not exactly high brow.
Please brodudes, tell me again how there is no problem here and we’re just reading way too much into things and there’s never been misogynistic attitudes being perpetuated by big names in the industries. Tell me how it’s about the artistry. I am fascinated by this enlightening view, verily.
