Less Tits n' Ass, More Kickin' Ass

eschergirls:

lesstitsnass:

Supergirl #1, huh?

[correction snipped]

That’s Ian Churchill… and unfortunately he has much experience drawing women (whether he draws them well however, is another question).  Also, that’s actually issue #0 not #1.  I was a HUGE HUGE HUGE Supergirl fan at the time and so psyched that they had brought Kara back to the DCU, and Ian Churchill (and the terrible writing by Loeb and Kelly) just ruined the entire thing for me.  If you look at my Supergirl comic reviews at the time you can read all about it. 

Churchill drew her REALLY thin (especially her arms and calves/ankles), and within the comic book, she was bra-less and underwear-less and her costume was vacuum sealed onto her breasts.  It was really annoying.  I avoid posting just every singe picture Churchill ever did of that series simply because a lot of the times the complaint would just be “Supergirl’s too thin and has muscles so therefore her bones must be pipe cleaners”.  He also can only draw one female face.

Ian Churchill’s art on Supergirl really is what started my realization about the ways artists were drawing women in comic books, and who they were drawing them for, that Supergirl, who, to me, is the heroic, female avatar representation of the Superman S symbol and all it represents, her reboot was not for me.  Having Turner and Churchill on the art and how they drew her made it pretty clear, it was meant for something else, and she wasn’t there to be heroic (and during the Turner/Loeb/Churchill/Kelly run, she wasn’t) she was there to be somebody’s blonde 16 year old fantasy girl. 

In many ways, you can thank Ian Churchill, more than any other artist (even Rob Liefeld) for starting the thought process which eventually led to me creating this blog. xD

 Anyway, sorry for the tangent, I just wanted to fill you in on the artist that you were re-drawing.  I agree with you that there’s nothing really “wrong” to redraw, but what you did made me smile huge because it’s Supergirl and I think you made her look awesome, so I wanted to reblog it and tell you. :)

Holy crap, and there I was thinking this was just a bad drawing due to inexperience… Well, I was partly right: it’s due to inexperience at drawing real women. 

And thanks Ami! I’m glad you like my (messy) redraw!

Part of me thought I should be looking up WHO drew the image before I decided whether this was a T&A case or not, but then I thought knowing who did the art (and whether they already have a history of liberally bending the rules of anatomy in order to cater to horny straight males) might make me biased against them. That, or it was so late in the evening and I was tired. Or something.

Knowing now what Churchill’s been up to (and recognising the art you’ve linked as things I’ve been shocked by before, eek, ow, and on my list of possible corrections), I’m definitely seeing the pattern here. This illustration above is weak, as I’d stated before, because of its poor construction, and because of the bad habits Churchill’s taken, like putting the belt on Supergirl pretty much at the pubic bone, if not lower, while the hem of the skirt barely covers the buttocks; like making the torso way too skinny and super long; like making the arms and legs unrealistically thin, likely because he has learned drawing from looking at other comics rather than drawing from life. It’s a pattern, it’s bad habits he would need to break. 

When I see patterns like that, it makes me wonder if anyone mentions these things (or make similar comments) to artists. I’m of the opinion that unless you are told there’s a problem., chances are you won’t know about it, or that you have to fix it. If no one’s edited Churchill’s work or told him, “Put some flesh on that woman, man, she’s too skinny to look good”, or even mentioned something like, “Are you sure this is right?”, how can he possibly change the way he works? If he’s getting hired to draw books, maybe he doesn’t see that he can up his game and how he can become better. Maybe doing the same old thing keeps him employed, and that’s enough for him. 

Too bad it’s not enough for us.