Not to start a "gender wars" controversy, but it's always going to be more economically feasible for any medium to play to the straight community, as against that of any other paraphilia-community, because there are more straights out there to pony up their centavos-- and yes, I think the term applies even if one admits that "straight" is not always a fixed quality. The best compromise a business can make is to allow for material that piques the interest of other communities, but total equity on all levels is a pipe-dream.

Commercial comics can be criticized for offering too little to the straight female community, but even that situation came about because of specific economic factors, all of which led to the demise of the mass-distribution comic book. One interesting thing is that one survey, reprinted on THE BEAT, claimed that girl readers outnumbered boy readers in the 40s-- I *think* before the rise of romance comics.  But most of the material being produced in early Golden Age comics was male-oriented, because the makers were imitating the business model of the pulp magazines. So did all those female readers-- probably also dominantly straight-- buy the comics because the comics were ultra-cheap, or were they grooving on all those guy heroes in leotards?

My post never addressed publishers and representation in comics at all. It's well understood that, right or wrong, savvy or foolish, mainstream comics have always catered primarily to heterosexual men. My point was that I'd like to hear from heterosexual women and homosexual men in this conversation, regardless of this. There are plenty of beefcake covers out there, some intentionally sexy and some otherwise.

I bought this one to complete a set. Yeah, That's right . To complete a set...



Gen 13 # 36

Well, for me there's a right way to do it and a wrong way. I generally agree with you - I find covers that are overtly "sexy" by sexualizing a character to be uncouth and often downright offensive. On the other hand, there are some characters that are sexy, and if they are drawn respectfully, who doesn't like a nice drawing of a sexy character?

As I mentioned, I like classic "good girl" art, but I hated the "bad girl" craze of the 90's. I loathe a lot of the recent exploitative crap that the big two have been putting out, like Catwoman #1 or that revoked cover for Spider-Woman #1.

Using Sheena as an example, since she came up earlier. This is a sexy character, but sexuality is not a major part of her character like it is for, say, White Queen.

So this I think is a cool cover where she is very sexy but it's not exploitative (spoiler tags just to keep this uncluttered):





Whereas I think this is crap:




I would consider buying the first just for the cover (well, I wouldn't, but that's because I find jungle stories to be tremendously tedious), but I would never consider buying the second.

I guess you could say it just boils down to what you find sexy, but there's a difference in artistic intent to me, one that respects the character and one that does not. I have this struggle a lot when considering buying Red Sonja comics, because I love the character but loathe her chainmail bikini outfit and hate the "sexy" poses she is often drawn in, as I find both to be completely antithetical to her character. Those are comics where I buy them despite the "sexy" covers, rather than because of them.

I love the Dawn covers, but I wish she was still just an anthology host.  None of the stories I've read with her as a character have worked.  Plus, who the hell would wear a zipper there?  That kills any sexiness the picture has, for me.

Dawn is one of those cases (but not with Linder's other character covers) where his great pin up art abilities outweigh his sequential art or writing talents. I was really under whelmed reading the Dawn series.