Comics Darth Vader (Marvel) #1: Vader, part 1 (of 6)

I think as far as Palpy is concerned Padme and Anakin are both dead. He just said that Vader killed her just so he knew that Vader would always belong to him.

 

I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of this cover.

 

I was going to suggest that Vader built E-3PO, but then I noticed that the protocal droid has red eyes.

 

I like that cover, showing off new characters that will probably be in the book. I doubt every single issue is going to be only Vader for 22 pages. Also the whole mention months ago that Vader will be building his own droids (so he made Evil Artoo and Evil Threepio, his buddies from the Clone Wars. Neat!)

I hope he slips up and calls the chick "Padme". And then chokes her. And there's a new "Padme" every 3 issues or so.

 

I actually like this cover. Out of all Marvel SW titles announced so far, I find this the most interesting, with the Kanan comic a close second.

 

I'm really not credentialed to criticize art. However, to me it is the standard 'background Vader' in the background ajd a woman who is apparently having an extremely difficult time standing in the foreground. The droids are interesting though.

 

Any word yet on who that girl is?

 

IIRC, her name is "Aphra".

 

I'd like the cover a lot better if what's-her-face wasn't in such an... odd pose. It's not bad art-wise, nothing wrong with the anatomy, the colors are good and the pencils are excellent. She just... doesn't look natural, it's more a "I'm a teenage girl, look at me" pose than a "I'm the GFFA's Indiana Jones" pose. Coop said on twitter that he's sold based on the character's similarities to things Gillen's written in the past, but... meh?

 

Yeah it's an unnecessarily sexualized pose for someone who's otherwise very reasonably dressed. I like the droids, though.

 

It's Space Kate Bishop.

 

True. But that is probably the most common way to try to catch the eye of a passer by though. If you go through a bookstore half the books will have nice looking girls in sexualized poses on the cover. Just the world we live in.

I am surprised they gave her such a significant tattoo. It's got to be a pain in the rear having to draw a tattoo for a comic character each time she is on screen and make sure that tattoo looks exactly right each time they draw her.

 

Yah, I wasn't sure if I was the only one who felt that way. Compared to other depictions of women in comic books it's far from egregious, but it's still an unfortunate pose.

 

Just have her shooting a gun. Pictures of young ladies shooting guns is just as eye catching as pictures of young ladies trying to show off their body parts.

 

"Sexualized" isn't a problem... only oversexualized. Women are sexual creatures too. A female Indiana Jones type character has good reason to be sexy... because high holy ****, I don't care who you are, you're crazy if you don't want to kiss 1981 Harrison Ford square on the mouth. I have a wife and kid, but even I would jump them bones. Seems to me a sexually-realistic but dignified character is precisely the right way to go.

And I feel I should point out: The other thing here is, it can be equally offensive for us as men to dig too deeply into this issue either way. Yes, it may be created by men, but that doesn't mean it's created without respect.

Source: My wife is a successful artist who photographs and paints naked girls.

 

Who's up for discussing the droids? Might the protocal droid be E-3PO?

 

I wonder if that really is a tatoo, and not markings of cyborg implants.

The Tarkin novel contains an interesting scene in which Palpatine speaks about how Vader's past on Tatooine has formed him and Vader outright rejects it on bases that Anakin Skywalker is dead. It is not Palpatine who hates Anakin Skywalker, he probably even remembers him fondly, it is Vader.

 

Certainly there's nothing wrong with female characters as sexual beings, but it's ill-employed here. Everything about the posture looks uncomfortable--would anyone actually stand this way?--with a weird come-hither head-tilt to top it off. We're certainly not in Escher Girl territory, but I can see it from here.

As much as it pains to me to agree with darkchrono, there are plenty of action poses for the female figure that are sexy without being so artificial.

 

I'm not fond of putting tats all over Star Wars characters just because its hip and mainstream in western culture. It's gross.

 

I would think they would shy away from putting tats on characters simply because it would be a pain in the arse to draw it. I would imagine if this particular character gets much screen time they will find ways to position her to where they won't have to show the tats very often.

 

Longer jacket sleeves will already do in that case

 

I tried standing that way. Didn't feel good at all.

But I have asked thrice for Corellia Antilles, so I bid her thrice welcome.

 

FFG already answered your call.

 

The "evil droids" I like, the solicit sounds ok, Gillen is pretty good (his Journey into Mystery Kid Loki arc is very, very good), but the new girl is... um, yeah, I thought it looked a bit odd. The pose, the expression, its kind of disturbing in a way. Leia in her series looks more natural, this looks odd. Not quite as blatant or weird or bad as some other things comics or Marvel has done (there was that Spider-woman cover a while back, and the Spider-woman worship in New Avengers a few years back was ridiculous, even by that sub-par series' standards), but still, for Star Wars... well, this ain't up to Dark Horse's level of standards, but that's no surprise. If we didn't know the artist, for a second I would suspect Land, but its not as bad as that, but still, its off-putting whereas the rest of the info doesn't sound too bad.

 

What you see as a "come hither" look is to me just more intimidating/postured confidence/stylized/taunting. It's an action pose; to me, that just seems like conflating the matters of practicality and sexualization into one big "blaaaaaah there's still something wrong with ladies!"

No offense intended here, but my wife and I talk about this all the time: I just can't help but think it's a weird insight into a lot of dudes' opinions of women that they see something like this and either get protective or desperately have to find some grounds on which to criticize it. In the end it's all still criticizing the way a woman looks---that's certainly alright when an artist breaks all notions of reality and paints his own male sexuality onto a female character, sort of "pose verite" (as you mentioned about "escher girl" or the whole Milo Manara controversy)---but there's a certain critical mass that we reach with protecting against badly-sexualized comic art that we start to see it everywhere and we just start overcompensating. I'm not saying it's absolutely going on in this case, as it remains to be seen if it's indicative of the character, but I'd only ask folks to consider one thing: if one is too quick to criticize, at a certain point, it goes back around and becomes sexist again.