Naked between the Panels: Male Erotic Imagination and Closure in Bronze Age Superhero Comics
Hollis Cole Thompson
I once overheard a conversation between two older men about the evolution of cheerleader uniforms in professional sports. One was complaining about how revealing the current iterations were but not because of any moral objection. Rather, he bemoaned the fact that they “left nothing to the imagination,” in contrast to those the cheerleaders of his youth wore. He clearly enjoyed something being held back from his sight, something that inspired him to fill in gaps with his mind. Comic books, of course, have always been leaving things to the imagination. In the seminal Understanding Comics, comic theorist and practitioner Scott McCloud spends an entire chapter defining and demonstrating a function of the medium that he calls “closure.” This is his term for the dance between the comic creators and the reader that creates the story -- a nearly imperceptible connect-the-dots game wherein the artist provides the panels as a kind of outline of the action and the reader fills the blanks between them with their imagination. His term for these blanks is gutters. He explains, “comics [sic] panels fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality” (1994: 67). McCloud goes on to call closure the grammar of comics and argues that it is the most fundamental element of the medium: “in a very real sense, comics [sic] is closure” (67). McCloud catalogs many of the ways artists can use closure for various purposes. However, I have found that American superhero comics of the Bronze Age1 routinely use closure for a purpose he never discusses: eroticism. Although the Comics Code Authority forbade depictions of nudity and sexuality in comic books, artists discovered they could exploit closure in order to arouse their assumed heterosexual male readers without ever actually depicting a naked woman. In the present article, I will explain and categorize the two main methods these comics employ to eroticize female bodies without fully depicting them. Thus, the eroticization of female characters goes deeper than lingerie-like costumes and demeaning, irrational poses. It lies in the very heart of comics, oozing from the unseen space between the panels into the imaginations of the readers.
Throughout this article, I try to provide a wide enough variety of examples to not only illustrate these techniques but also expose how frequently they occur in the superhero genre. However, I intentionally avoid using any examples featuring She-Hulk or Starfire. Comics from the Bronze Age are notorious for excessively sexualizing these two characters, as other scholars (such as Mitchell and Cocca) have well documented. I also refrain from discussing any examples that were published outside of the normal comic book distribution system and, therefore, did not have CCA review or approval like Batman: The Killing Joke, limited series like the 1989 Catwoman, or Marvel’s black-and-white “magazines” like The Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu. These parameters avoid even the appearance of cherry-picking the most egregious instances of sexualization. My aim is to draw attention to the pervasiveness of these techniques; they are not limited to specific artists, characters, publishers, or series.
In order to fully understand this issue, we must reexamine McCloud’s ideas about closure and rethink some aspects of his understanding of the relationship between the panels and reader. He contends that the closure of comics is always voluntary on the part of the reader: “From the tossing of a baseball to the death of a planet, the reader’s deliberate, voluntary closure is comics’ primary means of simulating time and motion” (1994: 69). In his most famous example, McCloud presents the following two panels:
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Fig. 1 Famous closure example from McCloud’s Understanding Comics. The first panel shows a maniac raising an ax to kill a man, followed by a depiction of the cityscape and a scream. The third panel features McCloud explaining, “All of you participated in the murder.” (McCloud, 1994:93). ©Scott McCloud. |
Thus, it was the reader, not the ax-wielding maniac, who killed the man. McCloud sums this up in the conclusion of his discussion on closure by stating, “I can only point the way. I can’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go” (93). There is, however, room for doubt about this assertion, as his own example shows. Is it truly reasonable to think that anyone who has lived long enough to understand the danger of axes and madmen would fill in these two dots with anything but murder? Though he did not provide us with the fine details (location of the blow, et cetera), he cannot truly say that he left us with a space that our minds would not instantly fill with violent action. By McCloud’s own admission, most of the closure that occurs in our daily lives is the result of an unconscious (or, at least, subconscious) process of the mind. With such phenomena, one cannot be certain that the closure a reader’s mind performs while reading a comic like McCloud’s murder scene is truly voluntary. In fact, many readers probably get much more from the closure than they truly want -- gory images of ax wounds that they would rather not have entered their minds.
Another of McCloud’s examples further illustrates the power of the artist to control the meaning that arises from closure:
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Fig. 2. Another example from Understanding Comics. The first panel shows a sad man asking, “what else could go wrong?”, the second a woman happy to not have heard from someone named Jerry, and the final one a phone ringing. (McCloud, 1994:71). ©Scott McCloud. |
This is a brilliant illustration of the nature of comics as a medium. Each of the panels, in isolation, communicate a level of meaning: the first shows us a sad man having a bad day, the second a woman happy to not have heard from someone named Jerry and the final one a phone ringing. They function like individual phrases or sentences. When combined, the panels form a kind of paragraph where new meaning arises -- our characters’ day has gone from bad to worse. But McCloud has made the way in which it has gotten worse very clear. I have no doubt in my mind that Jerry is the one calling, even though I have no context for this story other than these three panels. This is because no rational reader, especially one who is familiar with the comic medium, would imagine that anyone other than the ominous Jerry is the one on the phone -- the relationship between the panels excludes any other meaning.
This fuzziness around the voluntary nature of closure is key to understanding how Bronze Age superhero comics exploit it for eroticism. As any aficionado of comic book history can explain, publishers changed the entire landscape of American comics in 1954 when, in the aftermath of Fredric Wertham’s controversial Seduction of the Innocent and the subsequent U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, they created the Comics Code Authority. This board censored all comics from participating publishers2 before publication, making them adhere to the CCA’s strict rules in an effort to make comics safe for children. Unsurprisingly, these regulations included prohibitions on depicting nudity and sexuality. The original version of the Code specifically states:
Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. . . Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable. . . All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society. . . Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions (n.pag).
However, the CCA later amended its policies in 1971 to read “Nudity in any form is prohibited. Suggestive and salacious illustration is unacceptable” (n.pag), removing the language forbidding “suggestive posture” and “indecent or undue exposure.” It also deleted the admonition to avoid stimulating the reader’s “baser emotions.” These edits, I contend, gave comic creators just enough leeway to begin introducing sensual elements -- not directly, but through a teasing use of closure.
This alteration of the code came very shortly before the beginning of the Bronze Age -- a time of massive upheaval in superhero comics. It began with a storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man #121-2 that saw Peter Parker’s longtime girlfriend Gwen Stacy murdered at the hands of the villain Green Goblin. The mature themes of violence, loss, and grief in this story reinvigorated the genre, which had become quite sanitized and juvenile in the Silver Age which preceded it. Comic creators across the entire industry realized that they, too, could tell stories primarily addressed to older teenagers and adults -- stories that presented and commented on the difficult realities of the ordinary world within the fantastic adventures of superheroes. Thus, the Bronze Age saw such celebrated works as Neil Adams and Denny O’Neil’s hard-hitting cultural fables in the Batman series, Chris Claremont’s revamped and diversified X-Men, and Frank Miller’s overtly political miniseries Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This new era of stories often reinvented established heroes, adding a level of depth and complexity never before seen in the genre. It also saw the creation of many new characters, such as the Punisher, Wolverine, and Venom, who reflected the changing interests of the creators and readers.
Among these new characters was a veritable Cambrian explosion of female superheroes. The Silver Age had seen the first appearances of powerful women like Supergirl, the Invisible Woman, Batgirl, the Wasp, Marvel Girl, and Black Widow, but such heroines were an extreme minority. Comics took a great leap forward in female representation during the Bronze Age. She-Hulk, Storm, Ms. Marvel, Starfire, Dazzler, Power Girl, Spider-Woman, Kitty Pryde, Gamora, Huntress, and Mockingbird all premiered during this period. A tension exists within these heroines, however. They are part of the creators’ general trend toward diversifying their fictional universes and also an expression of their male fantasies. These characters are more psychologically complex and narratively engaging than any of the super-women from previous times, but they also often wear skin-tight or revealing costumes. The designs of these costumes show the artists employing more titillating than tactical logic.
This combination of character depth and visual sensuality was likely a part of the comic creators’ attempt to add more eroticism into the genre. Anna F. Peppard, perhaps the most thorough scholar of superhero sexuality, contends that the potential for such was present from the creation of superheroes: “the extant that superhero stories always center around fantastic bodies whose incarnated exaggerations and embellishments are explicitly designed to excite and inspire, their erotic potential is inherent and inescapable” (2020: 3). Insomuch as comics invite the reader to gaze on their superhuman protagonists, it is always possible for this looking to become sexual. This is especially true of female superheroes, who (by nature of the prevailing Western conflation of the female body with sexuality) are more often the subjects of such a gaze during the Bronze Age. At the same time, comic creators knew that they must still appease the demands of the CCA designed to prevent comics from becoming a super Playboy. Thus, a character like She-Hulk, who routinely wears a glorified bathing suit or outright rags, could avoid the label of “eye-candy” because she also had a complex and defined personality. In addition to being a superhero, she also was a lawyer, struggled with self-confidence, and navigated significant mental health issues. The fact that these characters were not just super bodies, ironically, made bringing attention to their bodies more palatable. This attention was almost always erotic in nature, despite the strength and authenticity of the heroines.
While discussing closure, interestingly, McCloud mentions in passing that cinema, another visual mass medium, has a particular kind of erotic potential: “Participation is a powerful force in any medium. Filmmakers long ago realized the importance of letting viewers use their imaginations” (1994: 67). He does not, however, discuss the ways comic book creators can use closure for an even more deeply erotic purpose than the classic Hollywood cut-aways. A prime example of this technique appears in the panels below from X-Men #125 (art by John Byrne).
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Fig. 3 From X-Men #125. Phoenix works, fully costumed, in a laboratory, trying to better understand her new powers in the first two panels. The third panel features a close-up of her unclothed arm reaching for a robe. (Byrne, [1979] 2004:92). © Marvel Comics. |
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Fig. 4 X-Men #125 (cont.). Jean’s bare back as she puts on the robe. (Byrne, [1979] 2004:92). © Marvel Comics. |
In this page, Phoenix (Jean Grey)3 works, fully costumed, in a laboratory to try to better understand her new powers. The art shows that gloves are a part of the costume, but the panel after she stops working with her powers focuses on her hand, showing it without gloves or sleeves. Because the comic had already established that Phoenix can create clothing out of energy, this panel makes it clear that Jean was using those powers in this instance and, having stopped using them, is now naked. The next panel confirms this by showing her putting on a robe from behind. Though the artist never actually shows Jean’s body in its entirety, the closure leads readers to automatically fill in a picture of her in their minds.
Note that this act of closure is the sole purpose of these panels. There is no logical necessity for the nudity within the narrative; just because Jean can create her own clothing is no reason for her to be without any covering besides that which she creates while in the lab. Neither do Jean nor the other character acknowledge or comment upon the fact that she is naked. They give no explanation for it. The only purpose that it serves is to create erotic pleasure from the reader’s filling in the intimate details of her body however his/her personal tastes dictate. It is purely “exhibitionist,” even though nothing is actually exhibited. In this way, Byrne gives a new expression to the phenomenon that Song of Songs scholar Tremper Longman III also observes in that ancient text: “The glimpse of physical beauty is more evocative than seeing the whole. The view of the part arouses the desire to see the whole” (143). Thus, in this kind of closure, an artist panels a woman’s nude body like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces (namely, her breasts, buttocks, and genitals) in order to create erotic pleasure in the reader when he or she must supply those details.
This is a more sophisticated version of a semi-pornographic trend that goes back to “Good Girl Art” of the Golden Age of comic books. Comic historian Christopher J. Hayton defines this as art that “depicts, with a mildly erotic flavor, beautiful females scantily-clad or attired in shape-revealing clothes, while the suggestion exists that the character is innocently unaware of the sexuality that is apparent to the reader” (para. 7). As preeminent superhero scholar Richard Reynolds points out:
Good Girl art takes the signs of pornographic discourse (whips, chains, spiked heels, beautiful but blank faces) and integrates them into the context of non-pornographic story structures. In this way, the sign of pornography (never explicitly delivered) comes to stand in for an entire pornographic subtext, a series of blanks which readers remain free to fill in for themselves (1992: 34).
In other words, comics of the Golden Age used the set-dressing of porn as a way of prompting the reader’s erotic imagination, which could then create images and fantasies that no comic company of the time would have actually published. Decades later, Byrne’s art takes the same principle but uses closure instead of pornographic signs.
The X-Men extract is not the only instance of this kind of eroticism, and other artists combine closure with the trappings of porn to create comics which direct the reader’s imagination more specifically than anything in the Golden Age. Web of Spider-Man #42 (art by Alex Saviuk) contains such a use of closure in a more overtly sexual context:
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Fig. 5 Alex Saviuk Web of Spider-Man #42. MJ walks onto a photo shoot wearing a robe, drops it to the floor, and poses for the camera man with only a thin bra strap appearing on her back. (Saviuk, 1988:15). © Marvel Comics. |
Here, supermodel Mary Jane Watson Parker (the wife of Spider-Man) chooses to go all in on her first lingerie photoshoot (she does this after her husband blew her off when she tried to talk through the decision with him). The panel sequence portrays her walking in wearing a robe, dropping it to her feet, and posing for the camera man with her back to the reader (with only a thin bra strap on it). This sequence creates the same kind of closure striptease wherein the (presumably heterosexual male) reader fills in the undrawn details of MJ’s body. The comic intensifies this effect through the overtly pornographic context. Rather than depicting common pornographic signs, the characters are on a set creating erotic images. Additionally, the comic gives readers a proxy in the last panel -- the photographer. The panel features him looking at and photographing MJ while thinking, “I love this job” (15). This character can easily function as a stand-in for the reader because he actually looks at and creates a still image of the front of her body that the art does not show the reader. His looking at her exposed body, the knowledge that he is creating images of what he sees that are meant for consumption and the obvious pleasure that he is taking in looking at the unseen all push the reader to imagine the sight from his point of view. As we will see, comics frequently use this kind of in-story male observer to guide the reader toward erotically imagining nude female bodies.4 This occurs through the ease by which the reader can imagine this character’s perspective of the woman.
Paul Gulacy’s art for Batman #394 provides another example:
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Fig. 6 Paul Gulacy Batman #394. The first panel shows Katia’s foot, and the second is a wider shot of Katia in a bathtub with her knee and the soapy water covering her body. The subsequent panels show her legs rising out of the tub and her bare back shadowed as she pulls a towel up. (Gulacy, 1986:npag.). © DC Comics. |
This sequence of the Soviet agent Katia bathing functions like the other two examples. The first two panels establish a situation in which it is logical for her to be naked: they move from showing a small (but often fetishized) part of her body -- the foot -- to a wider shot of her in a bathtub with her knee and the soapy water covering her body. The subsequent panels intensify the eroticism through depicting her legs as she rises out of the tub and her bare back teasingly shadowed as she pulls a towel up. Once again, the panels cut up a female body and encourage the reader to reconstruct it. This scene lacks another character looking at her, unlike the previous examples, but the depiction of Katia bathing plays into a common male voyeuristic fantasy of getting to spy on a woman bathing. The fact that this scene lacks any crucial information for the narrative of the comic (even the inner dialogue of the character is minimal) further indicates that the sole purpose of this scene is to give a male reader a taste of what it would be like to be a peeping Tom.
One can see examples that function somewhat differently in the George Pérez’s Wonder Woman series. The following scene comes from the first issue and depicts the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, breaking herself out of prison:
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Fig. 7 George Pérez Wonder Woman #1. The guard walks into a cell, surprised to see Hippolyta naked and inviting his attention. Then, she uses the chains of her imprisonment to attack him. (Pérez, 1986:19). © DC Comics. |
As the guard walks in, the comic shows her from the back with her hair covering most of her but still revealing that she is naked. The shocked look on the guard’s face confirms this and, once again, provides the reader with a point-of-view proxy which is crucial to the scene’s erotic appeal. The next panel depicts what he sees: Hippolyta inviting his attention. The image fully shows the outline of her body and much skin with the shackles covering her chest and the guard’s shoulder covering her genitals -- leaving only the most intimate parts of her for the reader’s imagination. The very object that Pérez uses to cover her breasts ironically adds sexual charge to the scene through the connotation of shackles with male domination and control. The following close-up on the guard’s eyes portrays the haughty pleasure he takes in the sight, further tantalizing the reader to imagine it.
The key difference between this scene and the previous example of MJ’s lingerie shoot is the narrative context. Here, Hippolyta uses her body as a weapon -- she utilizes her beauty to lure the guard in, stupefy him, and destroy him. Thus, in the final panel, Hippolyta uses the chains of her imprisonment to attack him, with shadows and her own arm now covering her front from the reader. This is in keeping with the more female-empowering tone of Pérez’s Wonder Woman run. One could argue that this scene actually condemns the male gaze by portraying it as something that makes men vulnerable and even stupid. Nevertheless, it still offers the reader (not just the male character) erotic pleasure through closure even in the panel where she attacks him, which limits the scene’s usefulness as a condemnation of that visual pleasure. As feminist film theorists Laura Mulvey and Colin MacCabe point out, depicting “female nakedness carries associations of the exploitation of women that almost no degree of formal subversion can displace” (61). This is certainly applicable to a scene wherein the woman is bound in chains. Though Pérez clearly means to show both the chains and Hippolyta’s nakedness as signs of her oppression which she turns back on her enemies, his catering to that same oppressive male erotic imagination undermines that reversal. This sequence gives credence to Mulvey and MacCabe’s assessment that “the very image for the most visible exploitation that women endure in a sexist society cannot be used with impunity, cannot be used without a certain complicity” (52).
In #7 of this series, Wonder Woman receives healing from massive injuries through the intervention of supernatural oceanic forces:
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Fig. 8 George Pérez Wonder Woman #7. A series of sequentially smaller panels shows Diana nude as she goes deeper into water. Narrow streams of bubbles cover her chest, crotch, and buttocks as the water rolls her over and over. (Pérez, 1987:6). © DC Comics. |
Pérez depicts her nude as she goes down into the healing depths, with narrow streams of bubbles covering her chest, crotch, and buttocks but nothing else. He creates a sense of her plunge in the succession of panels through making the panels incrementally smaller, having the bubbles appear over different parts of her body (mimicking the way real streams of bubbles sporadically move through water) and showing Diana rolling into various positions. This also gives the reader the ability to mentally construct a three-hundred-sixty degree view of her body, since Pérez gives us a snapshot of it at every angle. The sequence does lack a character gazing at her, but (like the sequence from Batman) feeds into a male voyeuristic fantasy of having complete visual access to a woman’s body without her being aware. The fact that Wonder Woman is unconscious during this scene adds to its appeal as such.
This sequence illustrates the ways in which Bronze Age artists can turn what McCloud calls the “silent dance of seen and unseen” (1994: 92) into a tango. They tease and lead the reader with the seen, and the reader follows by stepping into the unseen gaps. And this is not a dance that the reader can easily opt out of. Contra McCloud, given these panels, readers cannot help but fill the gutters with mental pictures of these characters’ intimates. I am loath to argue that depicting a nude female body is inherently sexual; the problem is that this kind of closure functions like a striptease. On a fundamental level, it sensualizes female bodies by directing readers’ imaginations to focus on the breasts, buttocks, and genitals. Thus, these comics are an example of the various types of media depictions of women that encourage men to see them primarily for their ability to sexually arouse or fulfill them. Because a large portion of these readers were children and teenagers, this element of superhero comics could well have influenced how that generation of boys came to perceive the real women in their lives.
Additionally (as I have argued elsewhere5), closure can exist within a single panel when the art, through framing or mise en scène, leaves something of the scene for the reader’s mind to fill in. Once again, McCloud provides ingenious examples:
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| Fig. 9 McCloud Understanding Comics. Across three panels, McCloud looks down at his legs, which are outside of the frame. He says, “You can’t even see my legs, yet you assume that they’re there.” (McCloud, 1994:61). ©Scott McCloud. |
The reader, knowing people have legs, fills in that part of McCloud’s body, even though he does not depict them.
Thus, a second method that artists of this time use for code-dodging eroticism is to depict a fully nude woman with some object or shadow conveniently covering the areas the CCA would object to depicting. This occurs even more often than the previous technique. Take, for example, this art by Pérez from The Avengers #162:
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Fig. 10 Pérez The Avengers #162. Wasp strapped to a table that also holds a female robot. She is naked, and two restraints cover her breasts and crotch. (Pérez, 1977:n.pag.). © Marvel Comics.
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Fig. 11 Pérez The Avengers #162 (Cont.). Ant Man and Ultron look at Wasp and the robot as energy glows around Wasp’s body. (Pérez 1977:n.pag.). © Marvel Comics.
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Fig. 12 Pérez The Avengers #162 (Cont.). Wasp writhing in pain as the energy spreads to the robot. (Pérez 1977:n.pag.). © Marvel Comics. |
Here, the evil robot Ultron and his hostage, Ant Man, look over the captured Wasp (a member of the Avengers and wife of Ant Man). The villain is planning on transferring her consciousness into a robotic body to create a “bride” for himself. Note that Wasp is unconscious and nude with only two well-placed restraints obscuring her breasts and crotch from the reader’s view. It is clear that Wasp’s nakedness is gratuitous, rather than an essential element to the plot, since it is her consciousness that the villain wants. The fact that the scene depicts a male villain’s triumphant perspective of a woman he has captured, stripped, and reduced to a specimen in an experiment further establishes this moment as one of male domination and female objectification, encouraging the assumed male readers to join Ultron in this gaze. Ultron also posits her body as his property -- a kind of trophy he can show off -- by revealing her to another male. The panel portraying Wasp writhing in pain as the procedure begins adds a touch of sadism. All of this enhances the art’s ability to give the voyeuristic male reader a sense of power over her.
One of the most exhibitionist examples of this comes from Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #90. Here, Spider-Man’s villain-turned-girlfriend the Black Cat remembers the trauma she went through in obtaining her super-powers. This involved going to the Kingpin of crime for help and subjecting herself to various experimental procedures. This process included having to appear naked for an “examination.”6
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Fig. 13 Al Milgrom from Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #90. Black Cat appears naked, aside from her mask, for an examination by three male scientists. (Milgrom, 1984:3). © Marvel Comics. |
Artist Al Milgrom not only depicts a nude woman but presents her as an object of the male gaze. Once again, the panel contains people looking at her -- in this case, a group of exclusively male scientists. Milgrom’s depicting the Black Cat in a straight standing posture with a neutral (drugged?) expression on her face confirms that she is a passive entity fully available to their observation and waiting for them to act upon her. Pointedly, the mask is the only shred of cloth on her; her true identity that it conceals is of no importance to the scientists. Her only value to them lies in what is below the face. Thus, the art invites readers to join the men in “examining” her body and consider her an object.
This technique can also eroticize more mundane actions. The following panel from World’s Finest #245 depicts the Black Canary changing her clothes:
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Fig. 14 Michael Netzer World’s Finest #245. A sequence showing Black Canary undressing, including a panel where she arches her back and sticks out her chest, a close up of her face with a finger going to her mouth, and mid-action shot of her topless and peeling off her skin-tight suit. The thought bubbles feature Canary’s complaints about male chauvinism. (Netzer, 1977:4). © DC Comics.
In the first panel, artist Michael Netzer takes an everyday action for the character -- removing her blond wig -- into a sexually charged image by drawing her arching her back and sticking out her chest. This pose makes her breasts the center of attention. Netzer intensifies this fixation by making the outlines of her nipples just barely visible through the fabric. The next panel subtly alludes to oral sex through the close up on her face with eyes closed and a finger moving toward her mouth. Finally, the panel that depicts Canary topless is also overtly sexualized because it shows her in mid-action removing her clothes and poses her like a stripper -- chest forward and arms to her sides, peeling off her skin-tight suit with attitude. This is not a realistic depiction of how a typical woman changes clothes but a quite obvious attempt on the part of the artist at catering to the male gaze. Reynolds argues that, unlike the usually instantaneous or offstage quick changes wherein male heroes don their costumes, a superheroine changing into her costume “can (at least potentially) be viewed as the performance of an uncompleted striptease” (1992: 37). Netzer pushes this idea as far as the Code would possibly allow; he turns Black Canary changing out of her costume into a strip show by charging the art with sexual imagery. This show is also a completed one, despite the absence of explicit nudity -- the completion happens in the reader’s mind. The fact that the thought bubbles feature Canary’s complaints about male chauvinism creates a bizarre dichotomy within the sequence. It’s almost as if the creators are attempting to escape that very label by having Canary employ it against others -- a half-hearted salute to feminists within a decidedly non-feminist scene.
These two techniques are by no means mutually exclusive. The Incredible Hulk #168 contains an extended sequence by Herb Trimpe that uses both. Betty Ross (the love interest and future wife of Bruce Banner, the titular hero) becomes a pawn in the battle between Hulk and a villain -- the vile M.O.D.O.K. uses his mind control powers to make her come to his secret lab hidden in the woods and remove all her clothes as she does:
Fig. 15 Herb Trimpe The Incredible Hulk #168. Betty walks naked through a forest. In one panel, she covers her chest by crossing her arms. (Trimpe, 1973:8). © Marvel Comics.  |
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Fig. 16 Herb Trimpe The Incredible Hulk #168 (cont.). M.O.D.O.K. explains to Betty how he is controlling her mind. Shadows cover her chest in an otherwise completely lit room. (Trimpe, 1973:12). © Marvel Comics. |
Again, the scene features a male villain kidnapping Betty and reducing her to an object through taking away her will and clothing. The first sequence employs both techniques. Trimpe draws different angles of her body among separate panels, allowing for reader-reconstruction. He also uses (in a rather contrived way) convenient shadows, her arms and foliage to hide her chest and other inmates, especially in the second panel. Next, M.O.D.O.K.’s dominating gaze functions as proxy for the presumed male reader who shares in his dominance by gazing at her. This comic contains an even more extreme version of female subjugation, however. Not only does it show the man having power to control and expose the woman’s body, but it also portrays him transforming it.
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Fig. 17 Herb Trimpe The Incredible Hulk #168. Betty follows M.O.D.O.K.’s order to lie down on the center of a device. A shadow from a radio-tower-like device covers only her chest and crotch. (Trimpe, 1973:13). © Marvel Comics. |
The final panel gives the reader the most access to Betty’s body precisely when she is lying down to be experimented upon. This will result in Betty transforming into a green human-bird hybrid called the Harpy. By turning Betty into Harpy, M.O.D.O.K. completes one of the most sickening misogynist fantasies -- wielding such power over a woman that he can change her into anything he wants, even something hideous.7
It is imperative to understand that the issue is not simply that these comics portray nude women in ways that avoid breaking the code; my contention is that these artists exploit the medium of comics to eroticize and objectify the female body (thus affirming the “woman=sex” equation). This is perhaps more readily observable by contrast. In Pérez’s first issue of Wonder Woman, he depicts nude Amazons at other times, but those panels lack a male observer and usually do not depict the body cut up like a puzzle over different panels:
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Figure 18 Perez Wonder Woman #1. Multiple Amazons burst to life out of water, naked and joyful. (Perez, 1986:9). © DC Comics. |
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Figure 19 Perez Wonder Woman #1 (cont.). Nude Amazons interacting with each other and their paradisal environment. This includes a panel with Menalippe in a flower patch which hides her lower abdomen, inspecting a single flower which covers her chest. (Perez, 1986:10). © DC Comics. |
These panels show the Amazons all nude and interacting with each other and their environment in a paradisiacal state without any one of them displaying herself or gazing at another. Even the manner that Pérez uses objects to conceal their breasts and genitals from the reader differs from earlier examples. Those artists encourage erotic closure by employing objects that are obviously obtrusive to the logic of the environment or situation -- medical/scientific equipment, shadows, or bubbles obscure our view of their bodies in ways that would not be possible in reality. They, thus, slightly break the scene’s internal logic. Any such break calls attention to itself;8 these direct our attention to body parts they so obnoxiously cover. The objects in this sequence, however, serve a clear purpose within the scene apart from covering body parts. The flowers that obscure Menalippe, for example, are important for their own sake. By portraying the character's intense delight in the flower in her hand, Perez focuses our attention on the flower rather than her breasts. The bloom in Menalippe's hand and those at her crotch also symbolize what the narration states is her defining personality trait -- her love of nature. The flowers, thus, are a logical part of the scene, rather than a disruption to it. The cumulative result is that Pérez’s art does not code these female bodies as sexual; he simply shows the characters existing as women.
John Buscema and Tom Palmer provide a similar example in The Avengers #266 with the character Volcana:
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Figure 20 Buscema and Palmer The Avengers #266. Volcana battles the Avengers and Fantastic Four in three panels. The panels include a head-to-toe view of Volcana and one that shows Captain America and Wasp looking at her, obviously concerned. (Buscema and Palmer, 1986:n.pag.). © Marvel Comics. |
Volcana’s nudity makes narrative sense, in this instance; her powers enable her to shield herself with fire, which would certainly melt away clothing. The artists fully display her curves and figure but do not bring undue attention to her chest or crotch. They refrain from using strategically placed limbs or flames over her nipples or genitals to tease the reader and encourage imagination. She is also depicted in natural, non-sexual poses. The head-to-toe view of Volcana in the first panel ensures that closure will not invite eroticism, since there are no body parts left unseen. Additionally, the four characters looking at her include men and women, precluding a proxy gazer. No pleasure is visible in the facial expression of Captain America (the only male face we see in the sequence); rather, he is concerned about the danger she presents. Thus, the art emphasizes Volcana as a threat, not an inspiration for fantasy. Her nudity has a purpose in the sequence but is not the focus.
Finally, consider the following scene from David Larson’s The Emmaus Road Series: Creation and the Fall:
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Figure 21 Larson Creation and the Fall. Adam and Eve meeting for the first time and joining hands. The framing only shows the characters from the waist-up, and the woman’s hair covers her breasts. (Larson, 2018:35). © David Larson. |
Larson created this comic for a conservative Christian audience and, thus, has ample motivation not to sexualize female characters. Nonetheless, his depiction of the woman in this scene employs some of the techniques we have seen in Bronze Age superhero comics. Larson depicts the characters only from the waist-up, leaving the lower body to the reader’s imagination. The woman’s hair rather unnaturally covers her breasts, just as the World’s Finest comic depicted the topless Black Canary. Adam serves as the male point-of-view proxy, which Larson makes clear by portraying Adam with an astonished facial expression in the first panel and intensifying it with a close-up in the second panel, like Pérez did with the guard in Wonder Woman #1. However, there are also some clear distinctions between this scene and those. Though Adam is indeed a male observer of a naked woman, his look is nothing like the others. He stares into her eyes, not at her body. His focus is glued to her face -- directing the reader’s attention there, as well. Additionally, Larson does not cut up the female body over multiple panels, which means the comic does not encourage the reader to fill in the missing intimate details of her body. The fact that the male character here is also naked works against that kind of eroticism by putting him and the woman on a more equal footing than superhero comics typically feature.9 For these reasons, Larson’s art portrays nudity (and male-observed female nudity, at that) without eroticization through closure, either in or out of panel.
Examining the use of these techniques ultimately reveals a deep irony in comic book history. As Peppard notes, “Superhero sexuality is flagrantly present even when it is officially absent” (3). The CCA reviewed and approved every single one of the superhero comics we have examined. Technically, they do not contain any depictions of nudity. They do, however, “stimulate the lower and baser emotions” -- the prohibition that the CCA removed from its 1971 update. Probably unbeknownst to the editors, this deletion left enough of a crack to open up a floodgate. Thus, in this time of censorship, comic book creators used the very medium of the comic itself to obey the letter of the code while completely disregarding its spirit. The technique they created is perhaps the purest expression of “the always-evolving but ever-present play of sexual presence and absence . . . [that] is vital to” the appeal of superhero comics (Peppard, 2020: 17). In it, history, art, regulation, and sexuality collide, producing a sophisticated solution to the “problem” of readers’ restricted access to the nude bodies of their favorite female characters.
Erotic closure also reveals something about the sexuality of the male creators and readers. Like the two old men I began this discussion with, they enjoy using their imagination. These comics revel in showing enough to arouse and prompting the mind to supply the missing parts. This tango has proven very popular, as artists continue to use these techniques even after the death of the CCA. Why should comic creators still employ them, now that they can depict full nudity and whatever else they want? The answer lies in the fact that, at least for some people, “leaving things to the imagination” is more erotic than full exhibition.
In the case of these comics, this pleasure comes at the cost of dehumanizing female characters. This is because, firstly, the sensual closure trains/re-enforces readers to obsess over breasts, crotches, and buttocks. Because these are the only body parts the comics consistently do not show, the closure pushes them into the reader’s imagination, just like the action of murder in McCloud’s famous example. This continues the cultural obsession with seeing the female body as primarily an object of sexual pleasure. Feminist writer-activist Andrea Dworkin once said that “The photograph makes the woman dead; she’s two-dimensional, there’s nothing human left of her” (1989: 03:28-35). If so, these sequences mutilate the corpse by chopping her up like the Benjaminite’s concubine from the Book of Judges, leaving only a masturbatory shell of the famed complex characters.
However, there is another byproduct of these techniques that is perhaps more profoundly objectifying. It transforms the bodies of these characters into semi-blank canvases wherein readers can project their sexual preferences. The artists provide the CCA-approved parts, and the reader’s mind can insert the intimate details of breast size, body hair, etc. according to their inclination or preference. This is a high feat of erotic fantasy, allowing these comics to have broad appeal for those attracted to women, but it is a dangerous fantasy because of its self-centered nature. Whenever an art form caters to heterosexual male tastes in this way, it risks fostering an egotistical, opportunistic, consumption model for sexuality. These comics make the body of any female character into a Galatea that readers can mold to their liking and consume. Because we often learn patterns of interaction from fiction, such readers could learn to see the real women in their lives similarly, potentially leading them to use real life closure to mentally mold actual people into objects of fantasy.10 These comics, therefore, may eternally stunt the ability of Pygmalions to understand that real people do not magically conform to their preferences.11 For these reasons, those wanting to heal our sexually broken society must remain attentive to and critical of even populist mediums like comics when they ask us to leave things to our imaginations.
Endnotes
1 The dawn and setting of any of the comic book ages is, to some degree, fungible. No dates for the Bronze Age will satisfy all scholars. In this article, I consider the Bronze Age to begin in 1973, the year “The Night Gwen Stacey Died” was published, and continue until 1989, before the coming of the massive shifts in style, writing, and distribution that characterize the 90s.
2 Not every publisher submitted to the CCA. Companies like Dell who primarily published comics that were unambiguously written solely for children and based on cartoon characters never felt the need. Underground comics that were produced outside the corporate publishing world saw the CCA as the antithesis of everything they celebrated.
3 It is important to note that Jean is one of the most complex characters in the X-Men mythos. She was a member of the original team lineup and the only character aside from the leader, Cyclops, who remained a part of the X-Men after its revamp. At this point in the series, she had become Phoenix when a cosmic entity called “the Phoenix force” joined with her while she was sacrificing her life to save her teammates. This made her one of most powerful beings in the Marvel universe, at the time. All this is to say that Jean was not simply eye-candy in the series; she was a well-written, essential character in the stories.
4 I am indebted to Andrew Markus for pointing out that the X-Men example I previously used also features such an observer in its last panel.
5 This is in the article “Shadows Who Have Shadows: The Use of Color in Batman: The Long Halloween.”
6 It is worth noting that (like Jean) Black Cat is, by this point in comic history, an established heroine who has held her own against the likes of Spider-Man and many members of his rouges gallery. Therefore, another function of this art could be to neutralize the threat of a powerful woman by reducing her to an object of conquering male gaze. The idea that seeing a woman naked against her will gives one some kind of power over her is common in adolescent boys and men who act like them.
7 One can see other examples of this in things like Tattoo (1981) and other body horror films.
8 As, for example, in instances of breaking the fourth wall where the text directly acknowledges its artificial nature.
9 With the exception of depictions of outright sexual intercourse, where men are also depicted nude.
10 The explosion of non-consensual AI-generated porn featuring real women is a more extreme version of this way of seeing and imagining.
11 Likewise, they also contribute to the impossibly high standards of appearance that patriarchy forces on women.
References
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Hollis Cole Thompson is the artistic director of the Biblical Drama Institute in the Texarkana area, an English faculty member at the University of Arkansas at Hope and Texarkana, and the host of the Sunday Morning Superheroes and Comicstory podcasts. His main interests include Biblical literature, drama, and superheroes. His academic writing has appeared in Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal. He is also the author of the vampire novella Vivienne.
Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.
