I don't like Mundays » Supervillain Hotness

I realize I’ve posted most of these images in spot or another before, but given how much representation of female characters (as opposed to their male counterparts) is part of the current comics’ zeitgeist, I thought it would be nice to compile and collect the over two dozen male supervillain pin-ups illustrated (but never used) for Natalie Zina Walschots‘s poetry collection DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains, which deconstructs and rewires the notions of gaze and desire in the world of comics in very similar and astounding ways. (Check it out!)

My chronology may be wrong, but first came the ‘If Superheroes Posted like Wonder Woman‘ meme, then the similar Hawkeye Initiative, which asked illustrators to replace ridiculously posed female comic characters with Hawkeye. Then came the really wonderful ‘Little Girls R Better at Designing Superheroes Than You‘ project by Alex Law and Kate Leth’s amazing Spider-Man / Deadpool slash comics. Somewhere in the midst of that, I was drawing these super-hot beefcake portraits of everyone’s favourite supervillains (save Loki, who is now apparently everyone’s favourite supervillain, and is not portrayed here — sorry!). While I don’t think these illustrations are nearly as sharply satirical or utopian as some of the previously mentioned things, it follows along the same lines. (I can’t take credit for this; the work came direct from Natalie Zina Walschots‘s brainwaves.) But as I noted in one of the oddest interviews I’ve ever done, with Playboy‘s sort-of-safe-for-work site, comic readers are used to having their female characters overtly sexualized. Despite the spandex and bulging muscles, male characters just aren’t treated the same way by illustrators. So at conventions, a great number of the people who saw these illustrations become really uncomfortable.

The illustrations never appeared in the final book (which instead featured more generic, but still (I think) compelling artwork), and instead appeared only in very limited run calendars (for 2011 and 2012) and as rewards for some Indiegogo fundraisers at the Cultural Gutter. Purely for the sake of creating an online archive of the illustrations, they appear below, in alphabetical order, with minimal comments. Enjoy!