Action Comics #843 Realizations

This comic taught me something very important about the Phantom Lady.

She is made entirely of plastic.



Shiny, shiny plastic.

I wouldn't have been looking at it if not for Kalinara's post (my problem with Phantom Lady is not her cup size or the lighting, but the hideous and improbable pose she struck in the Brave New World Preview Art -- Yes, there is something for everyone to hate in that picture!), but there it is, the explanation for all of our woes. Plastic. As a plot point.

The Wizard: Basic Training scans don't completely shoot down this theory. I saw them in the magazine when I was a teenager and tried to learn to draw from them. They've been drawing off that advice for years and while they've produced some truly, truly awful parodies of the female form, there's rarely been something quite this bad.

And it's hard to believe that this is owed entirely to lack of talent of the designer, because the above image was drawn by an artist with a different style and a different inker, in a different book.

As much as we may hate to admit it, Phantom Lady could very, very easily be on purpose.

The option is intriguing. Not nearly intriguing enough for me to pick up Freedom Fighters and brave Acuna's faux-to-realistic art, but intriguing nonetheless. The whole senator's daughter thing could just be a good cover, and she's actually a plastic android built by Ivo, Morrow, or Magnus, and therefore sentient. That would be pretty cool.

Shame it doesn't make for pretty art.

Speaking of pretty, though, on the very same page of the very issue, we see Green Lantern:



I am not imagining this.

That character is posed so that we see both his butt and his face.

I'm prepared to throw out all previous theories. This can't be some attempt at equal objectification. There's no way its actually a running in-joke at DC over the last 45 years. And there is absolutely no chance that this is an accident.

Hal Jordan is purposefully trying to moon us.

He is consciously aware that he is being read, and he's been mooning us. There's no other explanation. And whoever told him, told the other Lanterns. They know too, that is how they always position themselves in such a way as to display their rumps. Collectively, the Green Lantern Corps has been breaking the Fourth Wall just to show us their hindquarters.

I'm sorry to end this post on such an abrupt and awe-inspiring revelation, but I think I need to sit down after this one.

Phantom Lady Breastrospective

(Thanks to Chris Sims for coining the term Breastrospective)

Enter the Hall of Objectification, If You Dare!!!

I'm sure you all remember the Monstrosity pictured below, where we all discovered that artist Daniel Acuna had no idea what a real woman looked like. It caused quite a stink.



Freedom Fighters #1 (as previewed on Newsarama), is not quite so bad, but still -- They're very round, bouncy and shiny, aren't they?



Granted, Grant Morrison created this lastest incarnation, there may yet be a reason for her appearance. Maybe's she's a plastic person like we saw in Seven Soldiers: Mr. Miracle. That would be fun. If that's the case, I may give the series a shot despite disliking Acuna's art (as so many of his people look plastic) even though it's not actually Morrison writing.

Nevertheless, I still find them freaky. In all of my comics-reading time, I don't think I've ever seen anything so freaky. The freakiest thing, however, is that people find them necessary to the character.

For example, the inimitable Erik Larsen seems to believe that "Phantom Lady's whole claim to fame was looking like a porn star with her impossibly perky Triple-D breasts as the star attractions to her book."


Later in the same article, he asserts "The Phantom Lady's only distinguishing characteristics are her ample cans. That's pretty much all she has going for her. Ditto Power Girl. To tone them down is to strip them of their identities." (Emphasis Mine)

Wow, all the years I've been following these characters and I've before never realized that the only likeable thing about them is their breasts. I guess Power Girl's brassy attitude, unapologetic honesty and feminist aspirations were fabricated by my own sick imagination. And here I didn't realize that there were dozens of women running around with invisibility powers, a Golden Age legacy, a socialite background, in a political backdrop with a patriotic superteam and the only thing that distinguished our Phantom Lady was her humongous bazongas! Thank you, Mr Larsen, for enlightening this foolishly idealistic woman!

I'd have to say that the above quotes are what really pissed me off about Larsen's column. The assumption that neither character had a personality or a usefulness to the story, and that without hooters to ogle they would be a pointless addition to the cast.


Sadly, he was not smart enough to shut up after that stunningly idiotic statement. He continues to insist "And frankly, that's what they're supposed to look like! It's not a situation where an artist took Catwoman and distorted her to fit his fetishes -- these characters started out busty as all hell -- drawing them that way is drawing them right. If you don't want the Barbi twins to look like the Barbi twins, don't use the Barbi twins."

Really? Phantom Lady is supposed to look like that? With such massive mammaries that her head is dwarfed by them?

I beg demand to differ. I've seen this image on a number of pages, including her profile on the International Catalogue of Superheroes website. It's one of her earliest appearances in Police Comics.



And here, from her own series, the cover to Phantom Lady #2.



Her Silver Age costume, with the added window for a convenient peek at the cleavage, as seen in Justice League of America #107.



Oh course, the most incriminating picture I've found, after the Peek-A-Boo window morphed into the Dental Floss-tume, still features a woman with human proportions, albeit human proportions on display.



And finally, a peek inside Action Comics Weekly #640 for a little more perspective, see the Dog's Paw vs. the Breast in question?



Looks like Larsen's Beloved Twins are a more recent addition than previously believed.