Life the Dog

Earlier this summer, Marvel could do no wrong. In the span of a week, the company announced that it was turning Thor, one of its iconic heroes, into a woman and that it would be turning Captain America into a black man. These moves were signals that the company wanted to reflect the non-white and female readers who read its books and give non-white and female characters the spotlight usually enjoyed by straight white men.

This week, the company appears to have made a misstep. In an exclusive to Comic Book Resources, Marvel revealed one of the covers to Spider-Woman #1 — a solo series featuring one of the strongest, most loved women in the Avengers universe.  And, well, this is not what readers were expecting from a company that has made the effort to show that it's being thoughtful about its female readership and female characters:

To be clear, that is not how Spider-Man poses or is drawn when he climbs buildings:

 

The cover was drawn by Milo Manara, a comic book artist who is known for his erotic takes. Manara's Spider-Woman cover is a variant — a special cover commissioned for the series — and resembles his work in a comic called Click! Another cover (the one which most people will see in stores when the comic drops in November), by regular series artist Greg Land, was also issued: