Check out either the poster or the video cover for “Return of the Living Dead.”

Die, Superhero comics, DIE!!

Can somebody tell me what happened in World War Hulk #1?
I just hope Black Bolt is okay.

Its a homage to an old cover, done with zombies. LIKE EVERY OTHER MARVEL ZOMBIES COVER!

Oh, and MJ a sex symbol? I’m reminded of the first time you see her. That wildcat was a sex symbol for a good 40 years before they started aiming at younger children.

“I didn’t even think of him as a “black man” when I suggested the image to Steve, I thought of him as a superhero whose costume we wanted to get rid of.”

=/=

“I’m colorblind, so there is no racist imagry here!”

?

o_O

That wasn’t his only argument, but it was an argument used. If he didn’t think it was a valid argument, why use it?

Racism and sexism and all that fun stuff depend on context. And part of the that is the context of what else is going on or has gone on, not just immediate context.

Especially when it comes to covers because the point is to take a theme or iconic image out of the context of the story and present it as a reason why someone might find the story itself appealing.

After all, it’s not like images of black people eating watermelon are insulting because the idea of black people eating watermelon is, in and of itself, insulting.

And showing harmed women as sexy is hardly “an unexpected pairing.”

(now lets pray all those links work)

Superheroes as zombies:

Ironic?

Maybe. Smells a little desperate to me, under the circumstances, which kinda takes the edge off of the irony, but I wouldn’t exactly cal it expected.

Women with gaping holes portrayed as still sexy:

Ironic?

Most definitely not.

Not really.

I think it’s funny, and a lot of “iconic” covers are getting the same treatment. If others weren’t, then I’d be upset, but…they are, so I’m not.

Also, the cover it’s parodying is over two years old. A lot of its original target audience are old enough for the new target audience.

I enjoy it. ::shrug::

The cover is a joke. I’d think the cover of Spiderman marrying corpse Mary Jane would offend you much worse. If Heroes for Hire didn’t pull the crap it did recently, wouldn’t most of us let this go?

Look, I’m female, I don’t read Marvel Zombie because I don’t see the point (I have no interest for zombies and zombie movies in general).
And I do read MJ on occasion, though I’m way too old for it, but it’s cute and everybody needs light fun sometimes.

Yet when I saw that cover, I was just impressed with how well the concept had been executed.
In fact, I saved it on my hard drive, because I found it that good.

There are a lot of things you can criticize about Marvel, and I certainly don’t buy a lot of their comics any more, because there’s a lot that they publish that I don’t agree with.
But…
The reactions look disproportionate here.

Are you outraged because you actually feel horny at the sight of this picture and it makes you feel like a creep, or what?

-Because it takes a familiar comic book cover and turns the character in it into a zombie. As has happened with every single previous Marvel Zombies cover.

It’s not like Mary Jane has been singled out to become a subject of this “violence” (speaking of not using a word correctly…), she’s just another character in a series that has zombified men and women – and mutants and monsters – alike.

What’s particularly frustrating is that there are LOADS of EXTREMELY dubious covers and comics coming out from Marvel, DC and god knows how many other companies – the Heroes for Hire tentacle one, yes, and plenty more. But when people like Chris take something like this and compare it to (of all things) the trade in diamonds, it makes it so much easier for people to write off any feminist critique of comic books as hyperbolic, overly sensitive rubbish. Which, in a lot of cases, it is not.

““I’m colorblind, so there is no racist imagry here!” has got to be one of the stupider arguments out there.”

-Stupider than “setting a black hero on fire is racist”? As Brubaker says, if the character had been lynched or something you might have a point. But violence against a black character is not necessarily racism and violence against a female character is not necessarily sexism. These things have to be looked at within the wider context of the line as a whole. And in both of these cases, people are getting their knickers in a twist without cause.

Additionally, Brubaker’s got a solid history of comics starring strong black characters, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that it was not made with any racist intent.

i mean, she’s just standing with her arm behind her head, that’s automatically sexy now?

they’ve made like hundreds of other marvel characters into zombies, why is it all of a sudden wrong now?

Er, except that isn’t what he said. He said a black man on fire is not a racist image. It’s only an image of a man on fire. And he’s right. Pretty sucky to rope him in with the rest of the garbage going on.

You mean like the exact same way they took a bite out of her side, but left her breasts intact?

And how this is very much a pattern with the zombie covers?

Um, nope. Definitely not the only one.

But I do find the fact that so few people do notice this to be even scarier than the covers themselves.

To Igaf and everyone else making comments similar to:

“Its a joke, and the fact that one half is ’sexy’ is part of it.”

I shall simply quote myself, (with clarification) because I’m egotistical enough to think that I’m worth quoting:

“And if violence against women wasn’t already an overused punchline, it might actually be funny in that ironic way. But since we do have this whole persistent conflation of “woman in physical danger” with “sexy” the whole “not being unusual” bit kinda makes the irony part of the joke not so ironic.”

And really, at this point? The Sexy Zombie all by itself is overused. Like everything else, it seems the only way to show women in comics is to show them as sexy. Even when they are dropping body parts. Which, I point out again, kinda makes it not all that ironic to combine sexy with just about anything.

In other words, “you keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means….”

….because if the idea of mutilated women portrayed as sexy is unexpected to you, you haven’t been paying attention.

(and if I wasn’t so tired that last line would include lots of links to things like “Top Model’s” death shoot, Shakes’s recents posts about rape jokes, my post reviewing all the covers on display Marvel’s website on a random day, Jill’s various posts about the “joksters” at AutoAdmit…and yeah, the list pretty much goes on and on. I’d have to write pages just to have enough words to use as links.)

******

“I didn’t even think of him as a “black man” when I suggested the image to Steve, I thought of him as a superhero whose costume we wanted to get rid of.”

“I’m colorblind, so there is no racist imagry here!” has got to be one of the stupider arguments out there.

Besides, from what I’ve seen… Most of the people who read MJ/MJ:HC/SMLMJ/BLSM are… Well… Not teenage girls. Or kids, for that matter.

I’m surprised anyone is getting upset over Zombie MJ, and not the fact that Marvel seems to be REALLY reaching with the Zombie covers now.

Last time, too, douchebag.

I didn’t even think of him as a “black man” when I suggested the image to Steve, I thought of him as a superhero whose costume we wanted to get rid of.

I generally like your posts and agree with a lot of what you have to say, but I resent the idea that I’m somehow a racist for treating The Falcon the same as I would treat any other superhero in one of my books. To me, treating different races and genders and sexual orientations differently than I would a white male character is the definition of racism.