MYTHCOMICS: "SINS OF THE FLESH" (SPIDER-WOMAN #18, 1979)

As I said in the previous essay, Jessica/Spider-Woman breaks up with her boyfriend Jerry in issue #16. Issue #17 in part concerns the "Dark Angel" trying to get back into the dating scene by attending a disco. She meets a guy named Eric and allows him to drive her home, though he ends up parking with her on a lonely knoll. The issue ends with Eric hiding his face from Jessica as his very flesh starts to dissolve. At the beginning of "Sins," he bolts from the car into a nearby forest. Jessica, concerned that her pheromones might be having a bad influence on an innocent man, follows. When she overtakes him, he seems totally fine again. He leans for a friendly kiss, and...

 "I can't hold it anymore," indeed! I'm rather surprised that in the early 2000s, when snarky comics fans entertained themselves trying to find panels that put pop-fiction characters in compromising positions, none of them apparently came across this oddball gem.

Of course, my interest isn't mere snark, but the ongoing psychology underlying the War Between Men and Women. Instead of acting like an imperturbable superhero, Jessica is quite naturally freaked out by having "worms of flesh" crawl over her after coming off the face of a melting man. She copes somewhat through her ability to zap away the flesh-threads with her venom-powers.

In her Spider-Woman guise, the heroine tails Eric to another disco, but fails to see him leave his car, considering the likelihood that the strange man may be "able to mold his face like putty and change his appearance." She stakes out the disco and sees a different-looking man drive away in the car, accompanied by a pickup. Spider-Woman surveils the house where the suspect takes the young woman, but when nothing happens for a bit, the heroine flies away, wondering if she could have hallucinated the episode. But she gets no surcease of trepidation when she goes home, haunted by the experience of "having flesh crawl on me that is not my own."

To no reader's surprise, the young woman Spider-Woman watched the previous night is a corpse in the morning. Angry at her own negligence, the Dark Angel begins hitting the discos again, trying to look for anyone who behaves analogously to the mysterious Eric. She finally meets a likely candidate, but instead of taking the man to her own domicile, she conducts the fellow to the unoccupied house of her former landlord Mrs. Dolly. Jessica leaves the man alone, steals out of the house and changes into her super-identity. As she confronts the man whom the captions call "The Waxman," he has a flashback as to how he mutated to his melting-man form. Then he hits the heroine with a gob of loose flesh and flees upstairs.

The final two pages, while not a "fight" in the usual Marvel sense, plays merry hob with the nature of identity. Waxman alters his appearance to that of Jessica herself, poleaxing her long enough to unleash a flesh-trap. But this time Spider-Woman zaps the killer and his flesh-worms with her venom, and all of his "sinful flesh" apparently collapses from his denuded skeleton.

The ambiguous ending allowed a later writer to revive the Waxman further down the road, but thankfully Gruenwald "lets the dead lie," so to speak. Despite the presence of a superhero, "Sins of the Flesh" is a better example of "body horror" than most comparable stories from later comics-generations.

ADDENDUM: Carmine Infantino only penciled one more issue of SPIDER-WOMAN after #18, while Gruenwald finished up his run the issue after that. I will probably reread the other thirty issues, but I doubt there will be much worth commenting on, since Wolfman and Gruenwald had provided the groundwork for the Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman mythos. As noted earlier, Roger Stern would weave that mythos and several other loose ends into an overarching continuity. But in the SPIDER-WOMAN title, I don't believe there were any major developments, particularly eliminating the "weirdie" vibe seen in the first twenty issues. Michael Fleischer wrote some rather pedestrian tales, Chris Claremont rendered various strong formula-stories (most often with artist Steve Leialoha), and Ann Nocenti finished up the last four issues with a controversial narrative in which Spider-Woman was erased from Marvel history. Naturally, this was soon reversed, for the essence of Marvel Comics was the potential interfusion of every element with every other element. It's my loose impression, though, that even though the SPIDER-WOMAN series was not a great sales success, few if any later iterations have eclipsed its accomplishments.

SPIDER-FEMME, SPIDER-FEMME PART 2

 As I said earlier, I'm working my way to my second mythcomic, which happens to be the eighteenth issue of SPIDER-WOMAN. I don't propose to go over each of the seventeen previous issues, but to give some flavor of the feature's early history, I want to touch on the high points.

#1-- I don't want to overstate the importance of Marv Wolfman having the insight to recycle Goodwin's idea that the starring heroine seemed to repel people, though not for Goodwin's original reason. It was typical for all Marvel heroes to have some sort of trauma or character flaw that would make them sympathetic to the audience. Yet Wolfman's treatment of his costumed champion was far more interesting than his uninventive treatment of his superhero "Nova" around the same time, and in some ways she's one of Marvel's first truly "feminine" superheroines. On the fifth page of the first issue, she's still in London, trying to make a living, but frozen out by many citizens, *especially* other women. She gets a new costume, new name Jessica Drew, a fuller origin and a potential new boyfriend, SHIELD agent Jerry Hunt.

#2-- Though I said elsewhere that Jessica's only connection with knights-in-armor were the demi-human Knights of Wundagore, here she has a Close Encounter of the Medieval Kind. While visiting a museum she finds she has a strange intuitive knowledge of Matters Arthurian. At the same time, the sorceress Morgan Le Fay-- only seen in a non-magical iteration back in the BLACK KNIGHT comic book of 1955-- projects her spirit to 1978. She uses a magic sword that's on display to take control of a petty thief, changing him into a super-knight to achieve her ends. The false knight seeks out an old, Merlin-like sorcerer, Charles Magnus, because Morgan wants Magnus's copy of the Book of the Darkhold. Spider-Woman befriends Magnus, defeats the pawn and banishes Morgan for the time being.

#3-6-- In a smorgasbord of storylines, Magnus accompanies Jessica to Los Angeles. In swift succession she meets a new villain called Brother Grimm (later revealed to be two villains in one, the Brothers Grimm), the Hangman (a WEREWOLF BY NIGHT foe created by Wolfman), the Werewolf himself, and Morgan LeFay again. The Morgan plotline links her desire for the Darkhold to the past history of the Werewolf, which is a more mainstream exposure for the evil tome than its appearances in the monster-books. Agent Jerry Hunt tracks Jessica to L.A. and the two become lovers.

#9-- After two more Wolfman issues, he departed the book. (A podcast quoted him as saying he didn't know what he was doing on the feature.) Mark Gruenwald assumed writing duties, and he, in tandem with artist Carmine Infantino, amped up the eerie qualities of the book. Infantino had been on the title since issue #1 but his arabesque artwork seemed pent-up in his work with Wolfman. Gruenwald's weird menaces gave Infantino lots of weirdness to illustrate-- the Needle, the Gypsy Moth, Madame Doll (admittedly set up for her role by Wolfman), the Cult of Kali and the albino mutant Nekra (originally from the short-lived SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL title). I felt during this period that Gruenwald showed a strong predilection for sussing out the feminine nature of Jessica Drew-- particularly when she learns that her inability to make friends is the result of her giving off "allure or alarm" pheromones as a result of the spider-serum that mutated Jessica as a child.  

Not that the title was foreign to the sort of hard-hitting action that male readers tend to prefer. Even allowing for the fact that Marvel Comics almost never showed bloodshed, the battle between Spider-Woman and the near-invulnerable Nekra is one of the most brutal fights seen in Marvel Comics up to 1978. Curiously, it's also at this point that Gruenwald, who had slowly built up tensions between Jessica and Jerry, has Jerry take his leave, so that Jessica must deal with being the odd woman out again. That leads Jessica to the world of the L.A. dating scene-- and by the end of #17, she makes her first contact with the perfidious Waxman, the subject of my review in the forthcoming essay.

Parenthetically, the main reason Infantino was available to draw SPIDER-WOMAN was because he had been ousted from his position of editorial director at DC Comics. Since he's been responsible for the "Gothicization" of DC Comics beginning in the mid-sixties-- as I described here-- it's appropriate that one of Infantino's first assignments at Marvel was one of its few "Gothic" serials.

 ADDENDUM 7-13-2024: Since I commented above on Wolfman's rewriting of Goodwin, I may as well follow up with quick comments on Chris Claremont's rewriting of both previous SPIDER-WOMAN writers during his run, particularly in issue #41 (December 1981). This story has the heroine tilt once more with the sorceress Morgan LeFay, whom Wolfman introduced into the feature-- and into mainstream Marvel-- in issue #2 (1978). Claremont has LeFay put Jessica Drew through an Arthurian illusion, which is part of a complicated plot to make Spider-Woman serve her. Wolfman had Jessica experience some unusual psychic knowledge of Matters Arthurian in his issue #2 story, but Claremont does not follow up on this never developed plot-thread. 

Whereas Wolfman's Morgan simply tried to use the heroine to acquire the book of the Darkhold, in issue #41 Claremont's Morgan believes Spider-Woman to be an embodiment of the Darkhold powers. This concept was unquestionably a response to the 1979 "Yesterday Quest" story in AVENGERS #185-187, which tied together the story-threads of Morgan, the Darkhold, Wundagore and Modred the Mystic far more intimately. Claremont also brought up the Darkhold again in SPIDER-WOMAN #42-44 (1982). Yet Claremont made the odd statement that Spider-Woman remained in stasis at Wundagore for thirty years. Since Little Jessica looks to be about five before she succumbs to radiation poisoning, that would make her thirty-five as soon as she finally emerges from stasis, feels rejected by the New Men, leaves Wundagore, finds love in some European village, and then gets recruited by Hydra. All very well, but no artist ever rendered Jessica Drew as anything but a young woman in her twenties.

These minor ruminations on the AVENGERS retcon, some of which were reversed by later Marvel raconteurs, sum up Claremont's only significant additions to the "Spider-Woman myth." I will also note, though, that Claremont largely dropped the idea that the heroine had to regularly cope with repelling certain humans with her pheromones, which was one of the more interesting tropes of the character. 

SPIDER-FEMME, SPIDER-FEMME PART 1

 Though Spider-Woman is hardly the worst character to debut during the chaos of the early Bronze Age of Comics, her initial origin is certainly one of the least prepossessing.

Most Marvel fans know that Spider-Woman was born from an attempted trademark violation. Sometime in 1976, the year after Modred the Mystic made his two appearances, Filmation Animation Studios contemplated a new set of superheroes for Saturday morning television. One of those superheroes was going to be named Spider-Woman. Marvel Comics, who held the trademark on Spider-Man, may have made some legal protest to Filmation. The upshot of the conflict seems to have been that in order for the company to claim "Spider-Woman" as a Marvel trademark, the company needed to publish a Spider-Woman. Thus, in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #32-- dated February 1977 and thus actually issued in late 1976-- a Spider-Woman was introduced. Presumably Marvel so informed Filmation, for when the studio debuted its cartoon lineup in late 1978, their arachnid-character had assumed the new name "Web Woman." The lineup failed so quickly that had Filmation done their own Spider-femme, few would have remembered her.

The debut of Marvel's heroine was not much better. Archie Goodwin cobbled together a loose story in which an amnesiac woman named "Arachne" was captured somewhere in Europe when agents of the organization Hydra observed that she had strange powers. Hydra's leader Count Vermis formulated a plan to turn Arachne into an assassin to kill Hydra's foremost enemy, Nick Fury of SHIELD. Hydra apparently makes Arachne's costume for her and gives her the Spider-Woman name (though Arachne never uses that cognomen). Rather than taking time to devise some brainwashing device, the evildoers command a handsome blonde Hydra agent, one Jared, to make love to Arachne. Then the schemers arrange for Jared to be captured by SHIELD's European division while Nick Fury happens to be present.

 Arachne attacks SHIELD, apparently willing to kill Fury even though Jared is still a living prisoner. Arachne herself accidentally wounds Jared fatally, after which Fury reveals how Hydra tricked the heroine, and Jared dies expressing revulsion for having even touched his super-pawn. Arachne then speeds to Hydra's base and decimates it, chasing down Vermis. The master villain then reveals that he knows that Arachne was the creation of the mad scientist The High Evolutionary, who mutated animals to become the demi-human Knights of Wundagore. Arachne was ostracized by the other creatures there, and thanks to Vermis' prodding, she breaks through her memory blocks and remembers that the reason for her outsider status was her heritage of being a mutated spider, given a human body.

Perhaps Arachne would have retained that status had she never been revived. But for whatever reasons, those of good SPOTLIGHT sales or of long-term trademark protection, Marvel decided to launch Spider-Woman in her own title. However, to give her some early exposure, the heroine became entangled in a very messy five-issue arc by Marv Wolfman in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #29-33 (July-November 1977).

Though the spider-femme's origin is only incidentally touched upon, the sequence does end with the revelation that she's actually a human mutated by exposure to a spider-serum, which story would be expanded upon in the series proper. It isn't necessary to go over every beat of Wolfman's five-part story. It's only relevant that Spider-Woman is recaptured by Hydra, that she becomes part of a whole world-conquering scheme, and that, though it's revealed that she's not repugnant because she's a reborn spider, Wolfman loosely repurposes Goodwin's idea that she somehow repulses people for an unknown reason.

The only other interesting point is that all five issues are confined to England-- and I theorize that Wolfman chose that setting so that he could revive Modred the Mystic, in whose creation Wolfman was loosely implicated. True, one of the other guest-stars who teams with the series-star The Thing is also Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu, and his character was based in England. But Shang Chi vanishes from the sequence after issue #29, while other, more important aspects of the story evolve from the release of four elemental demons who are trying to capture Modred, who's still a resident of Old Blighty. At the story's conclusion, Modred is actually the individual who divines that Spider-Woman is a human being. Wolfman would later seek to explicate this facet of the character's nature in the first eight issues of SPIDER-WOMAN.

I don't know if Wolfman cherished some hope that Modred would accrue some strong repute from the story. But what happened was that roughly two years later, Roger Stern made Modred one of the puzzle-pieces of the aforementioned AVENGERS arc, "The Yesterday Quest"-- and for the most part, Modred did not come off looking good in said arc and the character remained a minor figure for several years after.

As for Spider-Woman, neither her SPOTLIGHT debut nor her TWO-IN-ONE appearances cast her in a very strong light. Yet as Modred declined, she advanced-- and the early issues of her own title show that she had more staying-power than the trademark-swipe that led to her creation.

LITERARY EQUITY, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

As I've noted before, because I've made calculated defenses of the literary usages of sex and violence, some of my opponents in various arguments have tried to paint me as indifferent to the principle of equity, of fairness in-- for instance-- the depiction of women in popular fiction. I've argued here that "pure equity" of the type desired by many pundits is not feasible. That does not mean that one should never strive for equity in particular circumstances, though.

In finance the word "equity" transmuted from connoting a principle of social fairness to something closer to a properly modulated exchange of capital.  The financial term has also begotten the offspring "positive equity" and "negative equity." On this site I found a felicitously simple definition of these secondary terms: from the point of view of a bank, "positive equity adds value to the bank, while negative equity takes value away."  

If one attempts to transfer these basic concepts to the domain of literary studies-- which patently I intend to do here-- then "positive equity" would add value to the "bank"-- essentially, a particular culture or subculture-- by instilling it with greater value, while "negative equity" would take that value away. But here the 'value" of which I speak is not financial, but one that goes back to the principle of social fairness. 

In short, "positive equity" is achieved when someone points out a genuine abuse of fairness, while "negative equity" is achieved when someone uses the concept of fairness incorrectly, to be unfair to someone else.

As stated here I consider the controversy about Milo Manara's SPIDER-WOMAN cover to be a false one, grounded in unrealistic expectations and bad logic. One of the most egregious displays of poor logic appears on the site known as THE MARY SUE, from which I take this side-by-side comparison.

It would be a legitimate observation, to assert that an artist had recycled some of the elements of an explicitly erotic drawing into one whose erotic content was, at the very least, far more subdued.

It is not a legitimate observation to place two such illustrations side-by-side, ignoring the strong differences in the visual elements and the overall context, and to claim-- fallaciously-- that "this [Spider-Woman's butt] is what our 'hero' is showing the city."

This, therefore, is "negative equity:" the author has started out claiming to call attention to Milo Manara's alleged inequity in his drawing of a female superhero-- presumably as against whatever male superheroes he has drawn-- and does Manara a far greater injustice than anything Manara *might* have done.

In contrast, a far more thorough logical attack on male privilege was made way back in 1980, in the fanzine LOC #1. The cover asserts that I myself have something in the issue as well, but I'm damned if I can remember what it was. And though I'm as egocentric as the next fan-writer, I feel it's demonstrable that Carol A. Strickland's essay "The Rape of Ms. Marvel" is the standout for this magazine.

Fortunately, one need not comb through dusty stacks of zines to reread the essay: for some years Ms. Strickland has kept the original essay online, here.

In Strickland's opening statements, she makes the sort of statement that I've frequently called into question on this blog:

I realize that females are only a small part of comics readers and fandom, but it should not just be the women who raise the roof over such a story. It should be everyone. Isn't everyone entitled to respect as a human being? Shouldn't they be against something that so self-consciously seeks to destroy that respect and degrade women in general by destroying the symbol of womankind?

I've often maintained that fictional characters are not inherently deserving of "respect." I may like or dislike what a given author perpetrates upon a particular fictional character, but I've maintained that "a character rooted in sensationalistic adventures [is] also vulnerable to receiving a sensationalistic demise."  But I also maintain that each author's rendition of a particular character, or set of characters, should display its own internal logic, apart from any other renditions.

Strickland's essay shows relentless good logic in explaining all the myriad ways in which AVENGERS #200, written by David Micheline and edited by Jim Shooter, violates the probity of the Ms. Marvel character. She asserts that Jim Shooter-- who wrote the series prior to Micheline-- allowed Ms. Marvel to develop "a pushy, intimidating quirk." Though in contrast to Strickland I have more positive memories of Jim Shooter's treatment of female characters in his early LEGION stories, I have no compunction about stating that his Marvel work of this period was indeed marked by the imposition of illogical "quirks" upon various characters, both male and female. (I really ought to reprint my own barn-burning review of Jim Shooter's SECRET WARS on this blog someday.)

Strickland does not comment on the fact that the original concept-- that Ms. Marvel would be impregnated by the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree-- was at least in line with the basic concept of the character, once it was established in Roy Thomas' "Kree-Skrull War" narrative that the Kree had a need to tap the essence of the younger, more vital human race.  Shooter's veto of this concept thus forced writer Micheline to attempt a patch-job in order to save the storyline. This is something any professional writer might do, and thus Micheline cannot be faulted for the attempt, only for the execution.

Strickland points out the psychological avoidance-rituals in the culmination of Ms. Marvel's unwanted pregnancy, a key example of violating internal logic:

In a male-fairytale version of birth, Ms. Marvel delivers in a non-birthing sort of way (I don't understand it either. Let's look at the physical processes involved--!) There is no pain, no labor, no logic... All the while Ms. Marvel is exposed to the other Avengers without shred number one of privacy during the non-birth birth.

And finally, we have the improbable reactions of the other Avengers to the entire situation. Their blase acceptance of a bizarre situation, their lack of empathy to their fellow hero, and their weak-willed consent to a dubious solution-- all of these are hallmarks of a writer attempting to force a foregone conclusion, rather than making it cohere properly on its own terms.

Now, can one prove that Shooter and Micheline concocted the "Ms. Marvel rape" out of hostility to women generally? Not really, especially since both of them can be shown to have depicted certain female characters in an empowering manner at given times during their respective professional histories.  But it's entirely appropriate to state that their handling of the character was clumsy and counter-productive to good storytelling.

Now, given my quasi-defense of "fake-rape" in this series of essays, it should be clear that I'm not asserting anything along the lines of, "Ms. Marvel should never be raped because it's disempowering."  I still believe, as I said, that "a great part of fiction's appeal is its ability to conjure forth fantasies of supremacy, with or without sexual content."

At the same time, the best fantasies are usually-- though not invariably-- the ones that create their own sense of internal logic, be it the logic of J.R.R. Tolkien or of Mickey Spillane.

And that's how the Strickland essay took a bad story, held up a light to it, and created the value of "positive equity" by so doing, enriching in a small way the subculture of comics fandom.

MANARA-RAMA

I am impressed-- but hardly surprised-- at the incredible superficiality of the objections recently raised by Milo Manara's "variant cover" to SPIDER-WOMAN #1. Here's the much critiqued cover:

This BEAT post happily reprints a translation of Manara's response.  Since I've been recently expounding on theories regarding the evolution of female homo sapiens, particularly in this essay, readers of this blog may anticipate that these Manara comments would get my equivalent of a "high-five:"

it’s not my fault if women are like that. I’m only drawing them. It’s not me who made women that way: is an author much more “important”, for those who believe … For evolutionists, including me, on the other hand, women’s bodies have taken this form over the millennia in order to avoid the ‘extinction of the species, in fact. If women were made exactly as men, with the same shape, I think we would have already been extinct for a long time.

Most ultra-feminist posters will not deal with weighty questions of the extent to which "biology is destiny."  For most of them, the matter is purely one of marketing to a male demographic, and so offends against the injunction: Thou Shalt Bow Down Before the Buying-Power of the Female Fan. THE MARY SUE comments:

The series is being written by Dennis Hopeless with art by Greg Land, and although it appears Marvel is attempting to draw in women with a slew of new female-led titles, this does not instill confidence. Nor does it tell women this is a comic they should consider spending money on. In fact, what the variant cover actually says is “Run away. Run far, far away and don’t ever come back.”

Manara-- who claims that his regular work doesn't seem to make his clique of female fans run away-- goes on to situate the question as one that cannot be reduced to simple ideology, by virtue of his observation that women's bodies evolved to exhibit sexual attractiveness.

I don’t know if this character will also become a movie, but it does, I think they would have their sweet problems to make her do what Spider-Man does (frame her in the same vicissitudes and athletic performance and so on) without her becoming seductive. If she’s played by an actress endowed with an ass, it is clear that her ass will be seen. I0m reminded that her tights are “painted on” … I also noticed that some website says that more than a suit, what you see in my drawing, it’s body painting. It’s true. Sure it is. But because it is so in all the superhero comics: These tights are painted on them. You don’t see a crease, a wrinkle. You read the muscles perfectly.

Now, I've stated that I don't think any human being is defined entirely by biology. But suppose we begin with the postulate-- as I believe even Kelly Thompson has admitted-- that most audiences prefer to read about good-looking heroes.  If one also grants the previous postulate that women's bodies evolved to spotlight their sexual nature, then it would seem all but inevitable that women's bodies, in the midst of the frenetic activity characteristic of the superhero genre, will display feminine sexual features with greater emphasis-- unless, of course, you could convince producers to cloak all the female characters in burkas.

A few years ago, illustrator Kevin Bolk produced this spoof of superhero art, in which the male heroes show off their butts the way their female kindred do:

What no one (to my knowledge) noticed was that the spoof is funny not purely because the butt-spotlighting practices of the comics industry are grievously inequitable, but also because male heroes look stupid showing off their butts.  This isn't to say that hetero females don't like to see real shapely male butts. But tt's very unlikely that comics-producers can expect to sell a lot of funny-books appealing to the demographic that will buy CAPTAIN AMERICA for butt-shots.  It should come as news to no one that hetero males will buy sexy photos or drawings of sexy women in far greater quantity than hetero women will buy pictures of sexy males.  If there is any ideological truth to the many ultra-feminist rants about "objectification," it's a truth that is entirely secondary to the differing ways in which each gender displays sexuality.

A less insightful set of Tumblr "faux covers" were reproduced on this BEAT post. In response I wrote:

I can think of a number of commercial “non-erotica” comics that treat ripped male heroes rather neutrally– which is what people are thinking of, and incorrectly labeling as, “idealization.” But I can also think of a number of comics in the same category that show off ripped guys as being attractive to women within the diegesis, which in my book is still “sexualization,” even if it’s not as blatant as it is with women. (Okay, no Morbius butt-shots, but it used to be very popular with Nightwing–)

But supposing feminists who advocate “absolute equality” got what they wanted. What then? A ceaseless quest to monitor the balance at all times, to make sure no one steps over the sacred line?

Good luck with that.

For example, here's the Tumblr version of "sexy Sub-Mariner."

Now, to follow up on my remarks above, here's an equally "full-frontal" John Buscema rendering of the character from the cover of 1968's SUB-MARINER #1:

Is one drawing inherently "sexier" than the other? Of course not. All one can say is that the Tumblr cover makes greater use of visual tropes that suggest male sexuality. That does not mean, however, that the Buscema cover is devoid of sexual representation.  The hero is not merely "idealized," as Kelly Thompson and others have claimed. He's drawn bodybuilder-style in part to suggest immense strength-- a factor that speaks to the combative mode of the series-- but he's also ripped to represent a level of male sexuality that is at least *believed* to be intrinsically appealing to the female of the species.

At the same time, it should be expected that whenever one has male characters drawn by hetero male artists, one should also expect to see some of the "neutrality" I mentioned above.  Just as Manara says in his response, he draws sexy women because that's how he sees women. Putting aside the old "everyone's-subconciously-homosexual" canard for now, it's also logical that some full-frontal depictions of a given hero will be somewhat neutral to the question of attractiveness.  Here's another "full-frontal" pose of Prince Namor, in which male sexuality has, for whatever reason, been played down. The effect of this John Romita Sr. cover is not unlike some of Kelly Thompson's "cover-up" tactics for feminine superheroes.

And then there's Jae Lee's version of Namor, from SUB-MARINER #26 (1992). I for one hardly see much difference between this savage sea-man and the one from Tumblr:

To follow up my point about idealization in more detail, I find it presumptuous that certain feminists should expect that artists should draw males and females with equal sexuality, or lack of same.  John Romita Sr's work showed an unquestionable talent for drawing glamorous women, while his male characters tended to be more "neutral."  Would modern feminists be satisfied if all hetero male artists drew both sexes with equal neutrality (or "idealization," as Thompson calls it)? I assume that is the goal, since I don't see any feminists demanding an equal level of over-the-top sexuality, except in a satirical context. While I can't agree with Milo Manara that these American cultural developments have anything to do with the influence of Islam, the "equity proposition" is devoted to an ideal of sameness that I deem deadly to any form of creativity, and is therefore not that far in basic sympathies from any ideology of conservative religiosity.