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Male Gaze / Comic Books

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Writer

  • Comic artists who draw this way will often show a female character facing away from the camera, but twisting her back (sometimes improbably) towards the 'camera' so that the viewer can get a good look at her breasts as well as her behind.
    • Rob Liefeld is probably the most infamous artist here; see, for instance, here.
    • Ed Benes has a reputation for this too, though his knowledge of human anatomy at least allows him to make them look human when they do such unlikely poses.
    • Jim Lee as an iconic artist as he is, still employs this trope regularly in regards to the voluptuous poses of Marvel, DC and Image female characters.
    • Artist Mike Choi drew a cover that showed a character in this pose. He got called out for this in a review that was so critical and apparently so painful to read that Choi has stopped reading reviews about his work, period. Even the good ones. Interestingly, he stated nothing about whether or not he stopped drawing women in the Boobs-and-Butt Pose.
    • Near anything by Frank Cho. It's actually led to some burnt bridges between him and both Marvel and DC, due to the studio's attempts to appeal to a female demographic and his refusal to compromise. Frank Cho's solo work, "Liberty Meadows", amps up his tendency towards this trope but also includes a fair number of fourth-wall-breaking and highly self-deprecating remarks about the pervy, sexually frustrated artist.
    • Greg Land’s art is very notorious for this, exacerbated by the fact he very clearly traces over pornography while drawing female characters.
    • There's everyone's favorite, J. Scott Campbell.
    • Mike Dedato while undeniably a fantastic artist and penciler, is still guilty of this trope when it comes to drawing Marvel’s super women. It’s easily quite noticeable in Dark Avengers, Secret Avengers and Fear Itself where even Squirrel Girl is ridiculously curvaceous.
    • Subverted with the phenomenon called The Hawkeye Initiative where the sexy poses of female comic book characters are redrawn featuring Hawkeye.

Other Comics

  • Atom Eve from Invincible isn't the only female character who gets the Male Gaze she's just the one who gets it the most. Lampshaded at one point after using her powers to recreate her body, her boyfriend the protagonist Mark notices her breasts are slightly bigger.
  • For generations, even after the Comics Code, there have been a lot of fanservice-y drawings of the teenage Betty and Veronica, their friends, Katy Keene, and other women in Archie Comics. There have been a lot of jokes using the gaze whenever Archie is gazing at pretty girls and commenting on their figures while another friend is waxing lyrically about nature or math. Cheryl Blossom's second appearance. Of course, Jughead couldn't care less.
  • Sin City, Frank Miller's love letter to the pulp/noir genre. Any female characters who aren't gun-toting self-regulating prostitutes tend to fall at either extreme end of the Innocent Angel-Cold-Hearted Femme Fatale spectrum, and in striking contrast to Miller's diverse, interesting and strikingly designed male characters, are virtually identical from the neck down and drawn with sex appeal as forethought
  • A lot of it in Empowered, which is parodying the entire concept. One example, Emp comes home from a successful mission still wearing the Hot Librarian outfit she was using. Thug Boy's POV panels focus on Emp so much that they are forcing her talk bubbles out of the frame.
  • In the Blacksad album Arctic Nation, Blacksad takes a good look at Dinah through his left-side mirror when she walks away from his car at the drive-in theater. Later she changes her clothes in front of him and he notices that she has a patch of white fur on her chest, which actually becomes a plot point later on.
  • Italian comic (eventually imported to America) Route de Maisons Rouge. This page says it all. Though since the comic is about feuding brothels, it is perhaps to be expected.
  • Druuna by Italian artist Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri is all over this trope with the titular heroine being a voluptuous Mediterranean woman whose breasts, buttocks, vulva and curves are given loving attention and detail. It's often lampshaded In-Universe (note even that page is one of the tamer ones).
  • Satan's Hollow: Sandra is rather easy on the eyes, with panels often surreptitiously focusing on her figure.

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