One effect of living within the ideological bubble of the Men’s Rights movement is what you might call ideological inflation: MRAs start off believing, for example, that women don’t face discrimination today, in the developed world — an idea that’s wrong enough to start with. But then, surrounded by other delusional MRAs who reinforce their every wrong notion, the denizens of the Men’s Rights bubble come to believe that women haven’t ever been discriminated against anywhere and at any time in the history of the world. (You may recall those evil cavewomen who sat around eating prehistoric bon bons while the men hunted the mammoth to feed them.)
And that leads to things like the following video, in which the FeMRA video maker who calls herself The Wooly Bumblebee declares war on a pair of “Misandric Pants” she bought for her daughter by accident.
Yep, that’s right, she’s furious because one fucking percent of the proceeds made from selling these pants goes to a charity fighting against the very real discrimination and oppression that girls face all over the globe. You know, like being denied educations because they’re girls. Like being forced into child marriages with adult men. Like being forced into prostitution as children. That sort of thing.
Apparently girls don’t suffer from being repeatedly raped as children. But boys are totally oppressed because a tiny portion of the profits from a pair of pants goes to a charity that talks about, and tries to do something about, the shit girls have to endure because they are girls.
Too late! It’s like looking into the Ark of the Covenant!
I’m all like… look, abs! So wrong! Then I notice the women have boobs that start at their neck. Then I notice that everybody’s muscles are trying to explode. And then I notice the heads aren’t connected to the spines. Then, and then, and then…
[POP]
I’m breaking out the emergency Neal Adams!
Except this bit.
I don’t want that bit.Dear god.Wonky anatomy can be a stylistic choice. But Liefeld is just genuinely bad.
Oh my god the faces! Have they realized that their faces are completly lacking in conective tissue and are sagging down to their jaws?
And boobs…unless she got elective surgery for triple h cups and has steel girders for a bra, you should be able to see other parts of her chest!
And what’s with the grind it in your face crotch shots featuring the anatomy of a ken doll? And can’t these folks find a little more spray paint so their “clothes” aren’t under that much stress?
The picture of stryfe? Crawling..um dude no mans back does that, not even contortionists.
I’m confused by the two distorted warrior ladies who appear to be kneeling on water. Are they SexyJesus?
WHY ARE THE HEADS SO TINY!!
And I just want to stress that even when Mignola’s work is stylized so heavily that you have trouble telling a face from an explosion, the basic anatomy is all hooked together and seems to basically exist in the same plane of existence as the rest of the picture.
What I am basically saying is that Liefeld is Cthulu.
Speaking of boobs, there’s one pic where I think he forgot which direction he was drawing in and the left breast is a double breast or a very poor surgical job.
And dude, I know certain liberties are taken with drawing superheros. But no one is gonna believe a hero that’s ten heads tall at the top of their leg or that has feet proportional to the length of their hand and not their forearm. NO ONE, especially not men, stand with their legs a car length apart when preparing to fight.
I’m not a superhero fan at all so I’ll shut up about the giant bulging muscles, but he also has some serious issues with perspective. One foot will be normal sized…well for him…and then the other foot will be 1/10th the size of the first one even though it’s only about 10 inches or so behind the more-normal-size foot. It’s like he had a traumatic encounter with a funhouse mirror as a child and never quite recovered.
Yeah the feet issue is kinda why I figured that the characters spread a car length apart.
Also, that one weird character whose head looks like a snowball balanced precariously on a garbage pile. Even really biult up men still have a bone structure you can see. And well, pecs don’t go from the top of the rib cage straight up to the neckless head.
Seriously, these are things I would expect from a first year drawing anatomy student, or someone who has no idea what perspective is in drawing. Foreshortening a human body is not easy, but draw some god damned guidelines in!
When he draws people flying the perspective issue gets really really bad. From a baroque anatomy perspective my favorite was the one where the dude appeared to have a 30-pack rather than a 6-pack.
Cassandra, I see what you mean. Have you noticed that he also draws mens hips way too wide? Typically if your looking at cis men, their hips are not nearly as wide as the shoulders, and that won’t change no matter how the guy stands.
These heros could give birth to a volkswagon and not notice.
I can’t think of any part of the human body that he gets right, actually. It’s like he’s never seen people before.
When I was into drawing comics, I actually spent money buying different health and body building magazines. I spent money to go to workshops to draw nude human beings.
I may not have drawn a person in two decades, but I can still make them look like they are sitting in a chair rather than straining over a toilet.
And this man…
Was the poster child for the nineties.
Just remember! Abnoy loves the Liefeldian 90s because he’s a ‘Heterosexual’!
….DON’T IMAGINE ANY OF THOSE CHARACTERS HAVING SEX DON’T DO IT YOUR POOR MIND AGH
Yeah and that waas right around the time I stopped collecting them…
Think I dodged a bullet!
Oh my god… I think I have to go through my old sketchbooks tonight and identify any Liefeldian traits.
I’ll … survive…. maybe.
Liefeld is the worst of the worst, but almost all super hero artists compulsively draw muscular men, even when the script says otherwise. Cyclops, for instance, is supposed to be fairly slender, hence the nickname “Slim”, but he’s usually drawn like a bulging bodybuilder like the rest of the gang. And Bruce Banner is supposed to be down-right skinny. It gets really bizarre when another character actually looks at him and comments that he’s skinny with no muscle, and he’s standing there looking super buff.
If you’ve ever watched Linkara’s “atop the 4th wall” on That Guy With The Glasses, you’ve seen one of Liefeld’s worst in the intro… When one character is supposed to throw himself at another character and hit him with his fists, but it just looks as if he bangs his crotch into him.
Which was the comics writer who actually threw a lampshade on Cyclops–having him say, ‘I haven’t been that skinny little kid in a long time’? I forget, but it’s, yeah, pretty obvious.
Liefeld’s biggest sin, though, becomes apparent when you look at the action sequences. When the chracters are just posing, it’s almost–ALMOST–non-horrific. But the action consists of quick cuts between worse and worse poses. (I’ve not seen the Linkara piece you mention, but I beleive it….)
Speaking of Linkara, I was amused by ANNOY’s insistence that “I AM A MAN!!”
I’m pretty sure there’s an invisible boner on that page.
But at least all the anatomy makes sense and looks good in perspective (except the breasts. Dear god, the breasts).
Liefeld definitely draws like he was self-taught, which I read he was. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but he’s just held onto bad habits that good teacher could have corrected.
Falconer — no problem, and thanks for clarifying your preferred pronoun 🙂 (I use ze/zir myself, but don’t really care much)