Alas, how true it is that one should not judge a comic by its cover.
For example, look at this Illuminati #4 cover:
illuminati.jpg
You might think that the contents would concern the badass adventures of five badass Marvel women: Lilandra, Majestrix of the Shi’ar Empire; Susan Storm-Richards of the Fantastic Four; Clea, ruler of the Dark Dimension; Medusa, Queen of the Inhumans and… someone I immediately nicknamed Iron Woman, who actually turns out to be called Madam Masque.
My shocking ignorance aside, the point is, this cover is badass! No sexualized posing involved, just five women, armed and dangerous, staring you down. Only a hint of nipple – through plate armour, no less – diminishes the otherwise non-objectified awesome of this cover.
‘Yay! Clea!’ said I, and bought it without looking inside.
Oh, how foolish am I.
Inside the comic, with the exception of one page for Sue, the women do not actually appear. Instead, the men who love/loved/had sex with them complain about how women don’t understand that they need to work all the time and how you can never give enough of yourself to a woman to satisfy her and that women would rather rule the Dark Dimension than be married to them but that at least if you’re married you get sex on tap.
Amidst all this whining about how women done them wrong by wanting to be autonomous beings with their own needs and desires instead of ever-available helpmeets, the only good advice is given by Namor:
namor.jpg
Yes. NAMOR.
Anyway. As everyone knows, if C = Cover, c = contents and bW = badass women, one can thereby calculate the overall Awesome Index of any given comic. So for this one, we get:
C(bW) + c(-bW) = -AI
Science is on my side: Illuminati #4 is negative awesome.
P.S. Dear Doctor Strange,
You are my imaginary Marvel boyfriend, but I would also rather rule the Dark Dimension than be married to you. Being married to you, however nice it might be, is not an occupation. Moreover, it would be terribly irresponsible to get hitched instead of righteously kicking the crap out of demons.
With love,
Karen.
