ComicsAlliance Takes On: Gender-Swapped Fan-Art [Girl Week]
One of the time-honored "Rules of the Internet" is that for every male character, there's a female version out there somewhere, and that's a lesson that the ComicsAlliance staff learned firsthand when our Girl Week research led us to the completely NSFW PortalComic.com. For the past few years, they've been producing monthly calendars featuring comic book characters. The twist? Since 2007, each of their sexy calendar girls has been a gender-swapped version of a male super-hero.
So today, in honor of Girl Week, ComicsAlliance staffers Chris Sims, David Uzumeri and Laura Hudson (recovering from a concussion) take on the strangest ladied-up versions of our favorite super-heroes!
CS: Can I just say real quick that on a completely unironic level, I think these things are hilarious and kind of awesome? Like, I can't even pretend that if I could draw, which I can't, I would not be doing this exact same thing.
LH: Man, if they'd made Apollo and Midnighter ladies, they could have gotten acceptance for them a lot faster. HOT LESBIAN ACTION always magically decreases homophobia.
CS: I like how Lady Apollo has a Power Girl-ish cleavage window, but in order to complete the logo, the artist totally put a Mego sticker on her chest.
LH: You never see dude cleavage windows. Chest hair all spilling out in curly waves.
DU: Power Boy. His entire gimmick was basically "creepy dude with a boob window." And it was all chest hair.
LH: You're right. I sit corrected.
CS: What about Rebel? Remember him?
CS: That dude has a cleavage window that is also a gigantic arrow pointing at his junk.
LH: That's amazing. That's AMAZING.
DU: Holy crap, that's not just a flesh-colored patch on his costume? And he actually has that awful tattoo?
CS: Yep. A tattoo of his own logo, that also appears four times on his costume. It's like if Shawn Michaels got super-powers in 1992.
LH: And stole Cyclops's sunglasses.
CS: Maybe they were Bret Hart's?
CS: This next one is the most amazing image I have ever seen:
CS: REPULSOR NIPPLES.
DU: . . .
CS: There's a Captain America one where she has a star over each breast, but this takes it to the next level.
DU: In a tragic Iraqi landmine accident, Antonia Stark lost both of her nipples to her father's own weapons! Held in a cave by terrorists, she ... I don't even know where to go with this, why would anyone have repulsor nipples?
LH: It's the latest in chikan defense technology.
CS: "I'm telling you, Hank, there isn't a single aspect of science repulsor technology can't benefit!" "Oh yeah? What about, I don't know, breast implants?"
LH: Have you seen that Lady Gaga video where she just has straight up fireworks shooting out of her boobs?
CS: No, but now I know who they're going to get to replace Robert Downey Jr. when they reboot the Iron Man franchise.
LH: Also I've always thought that the primary drawback to the Iron Man armor was that it didn't permit ass shots. How are you supposed to distract your enemy in battle?
DU: The New Iron Man Armor: With Chaps.
CS: Here's that Captain America one I was talking about:
DU: Stargirl? Is that you?
CS: The thing about this one is that I can't look at it without thinking that Lady Cap was created to fight Adolfina Hitler.
LH: There are some interesting issues with scale here.
CS: Care to elaborate? I'm still hung up on Adolfina and Evan Braun.
LH: I mean, why is Captain America a giant towering a head above Lady Bucky? Her torso is practically the size of Bucky's whole body. And her breasts are the size of Bucky's head, although I guess that's kind of normal.
CS: Well, Cap IS tall. And stacked, apparently.
LH: Is he a foot taller than Bucky?
CS: Probably, yeah. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Unvierse lists Cap as 6'4". And the Official Handbook of Marvel Universe Fanart lists Cap as 38DD.
LH: Bucky is 5'3? He tops out around the same height as Jubilee?
CS: Well, he was pretty short in the Golden Age. And this is officially the weirdest conversation we have ever had.
LH: Chris, you know I have brain damage, right?
LH: Man, Booster would be a great lady. He would love the attention.
CS: I can only assume that LiveJournal has not see this, as LiveJournal has not yet exploded in joy.
DU: I do love how they use Tedette's goggles to mimic that "nerdy brunette's round glasses" effect.
CS: I have to say though, I'm a little upset that we don't get to see Skeets with a little bow.
DU: Now I'm imagining it being controlled by Ms. Mind and laughing uncontrollably.
LH: The thigh-highs are a nice touch.
CS: Thigh-highs are always a nice touch. Even on dudes. Have you seen Vartox?
LH: I like the black band on them. I kind of want to own those. I'm such a GIRL, you guys.
CS: Well, I think we know what Laura's going to be wearing to San Diego this year.
LH: POUCHES!
CS: Sometimes I'm mystified by the fact that fish-women in comics still have mammal secondary sex characteristics, and then I think about how super-nerdy it is to be critiquing the dubious biology of gender-swapped calendar super-hero calendar girls.
LH: Listen, Chris: IT'S YOUR JOB. Now I f***ing demand to know what is in those tiny f***ing pouches.
CS: Man, Laura, those pouches are totally Hellboy canon! They've got charms, amulets, ground up bones of saints, all that stuff! Plus it's hilarious to imagine her trying to get stuff out of them with those giant stone fingers.
LH: I mean, this is a general pouch complaint. You cannot put f***ing anything in pouches that small. Carry a f***ing backpack, okay?
CS: Backpacks do not accentuate the sway of the hips, Laura. Even the real Hellboy knows that he has to accessorize to play up his best features.
LH: See, this is something women can relate to. You carry tiny little purses and have tiny little pockets in jeans and you can put exactly nothing in them. I appreciate that they're trying to channel that real life experience into similarly impractical super-hero costume design.
CS: That's why I've been trying to get girls to wear utility belts. And domino masks. I'm a fashion-forward thinker.
LH: OK, Batman has just proved me super wrong.
DU: When I was a kid, I really thought little microcapsules would be the future of storage.
CS: Well how else would you carry your micro-laser torch or silken Hud-line?
CS: Okay, again: This is FANTASTIC.
LH: Wow. I really like this.
DU: Wow, I have absolutely zero culture, since my immediate thought was Thor and Volstagg.
CS: Nope. For our readers who might not know, these are French comic strip characters Asterix and Obelix:
CS: The best part of this one is that Obelix totally has those bows in his hair already. I actually do wish there was a Warriors Three one, although on the bright side, the fact that one doesn't exist means I don't have to pay whatever the asking price for the original art would be.
CS: So, any guesses as to where she keeps her machine gun?
CS: I genuinely think this was where Osamu Tezuka was going with this. He just didn't want his creation confused with Roxxxy the Sex Robot.
LH: Has there been real gender swapping at Marvel and DC? In the comics, I mean.
CS: A couple of times. There was that issue of the Authority where they met the Meritocracy, which was their counterpart from a gender-swapped world. And an old Superman where Mxyzptlk switched the genders around on everyone, so that Clara Kent worked with Louis Lane and Jenny Olsen, which came back in Loeb and McGuinness's "Superman/Batman." And that time that Martian Manhunter was turned into a lady, but as he's a shapeshifter, I'm pretty sure he just bopped right back to normal.
DU: Loki's the most recent example.
LH: Well, that's historical. Well, "historical." Mythological. He originally turned female to distract this giant horse, so he had to become a lady horse, then he got knocked up and gave birth to an 8-legged horse baby. Mythology is full of that stuff. Like Tiresias who ran across two snakes in the woods having sex and hit them with a stick to break it up, and Hera got pissed because he wasn't being sex-positive and turned him into a lady as punishment. He later got turned back into a man, but then the gods had some argument over whether men or women enjoy sex more so they were like, "time to be a woman again, guy, go have some sex. Report back."
LH: Incidentally, he said the answer was ladies.
LH: Hey, it's Butterfly.
LH: They do say that most women wear the wrong size bra.
CS: I like how they didn't have to change He-Man's haircut at all.
LH: I don't think I'd ever really reflected on the redundancy of his name until now. Also, maybe NOT making the crotch area look like it was made out of fur would have been a better move.
CS: I just hope he fights Skeleta and Evil-Lenny. Is it wrong that I'm a little disappointed that we don't get to see what a sexy girl version of Orko would be like? I mean, purely out of academic curiosity.
LH: Is there a way to give a floating sheet an hourglass figure? I bet there is.
CS: If there is, the Internet will find it.