Since panel 3 features a close-up on Emp’s bare foot, time out for a long rant—or a counter-rant, technically—about the way I (mis)draw feet!

Even though one of my more important (recent-ish) artistic influences is mangaka Hiroaki Samura of Blade of the Immortal fame, I’ve never been able to emulate the long, graceful bare feet that he draws so often. (Not that I’ve actually tried to emulate Hiroaki-drawn feet more than once or twice, but still…) Instead, the feet I draw—especially the female ones—often end up peculiarly shortened and truncated to a degree that I didn’t consciously intend. 

Understand, folks, feet are weirdly difficult to draw—for me, they’re actually harder to draw than the notoriously challenging human hand. (Fingers may be tricky to depict, but toes are far odder and bizarre, IMHO.) Even working from photoreference, I simply cannot draw a convincing human foot from certain camera angles, which is why I tend to repeat the same few views of the foot that I can pull off semi-adequately.

So, yeahp, from the early days of Empowered through the present day, I’ve tended to accidentally draw Emp or Ninjette’s feet a bit small—cartoonishly small, one might say. What puzzles me, though, is the intensely negative response that I occasionally—well, more like rarely—receive to this very specific bit of artistic stylization. Some dudes—and the critics have generally been male, as far as I can tell—freak the hell out over the feet I draw being—direct quote, here—“unrealistically small.” One fella rather obsessively analyzed Ninjette’s too-short feet on one Empowered cover as looking like the results of “Chinese foot binding,” which creeped me the hell out.

If you’re a foot fetishist, your scorn would be entirely understandable—I’m botching a depiction of a part of the human body that you find intensely appealing, so why wouldn’t you be upset? If you’re not a foot fetishist, though, I’m rather bemused by your concern over this very particular bit of supposed “unrealism” in my work, given that I draw in a consciously cartoony style that is already profoundly detached from reality. “Chinese foot binding” dude was clearly applying the Withering Gaze of Realistic Art Criticism to Ninjette’s feet, while blithely and inexplicably ignoring the far more extreme excesses inherent to, say, her entire g-d head, the wildly “unrealistic” elements of which make her too-small feet look hyperrealistic by comparison. Why the focus on this stylistic foible, though, as opposed to the dozens—upon dozens, upon dozens—of other fanciful quirks inherent to how I (mis)draw the human body? 

Keep in mind that two of my key artistic influences were Jack Kirby and Rumiko Takahashi, both of whose art styles were very, very far removed from anything remotely resembling so-called “realism.” I’ve never been particularly concerned about drawing realistic human anatomy—and especially not realistic human faces—throughout my career, as I’m far more concerned about cranking out drawings that function well enough—just barely well enough, at times—to help convey the stories I want to tell. If you’re looking for painstakingly accurate, scrupulously true-to-life depictions of the human face and body, you are definitely looking at the wrong g-d artist, friends. 

My view is, hey, if you wanna bash Emp’s too-short feet as a stylistic excess that annoys you—much like, say, Emp’s cartoonishly Big, Pouty Lips from early Empowered—well, that's fair enough. (Gotta love the phrase “fair enough,” since it’s such a polite way to say, “Yeah, whatever, dumbass.”) To a degree I even sympathize with such criticism, as many artists whose work I otherwise enjoy are nonetheless prone to idiosyncrasies and eccentric stylistic flourishes that rub me the wrong way, too.  Ah, but don’t hand me this bullsh**t that small feet in Empowered bug you because they’re supposedly “unrealistic,” folks. If you dislike the way I draw, no need to hide behind feigned solicitude about “realism” to justify your opinion. Being irked by comics art for aesthetic or sociopolitical reasons—or for no specific reason you can articulate—doesn’t require any such excuse or rationalization, despite what some seem to think.

No one really cares a whit about “realism” in comics art, save when opportunistically—and hypocritically—invoking it as a weapon to bash work they don’t like. Gotta love how some folks assert heartbreaking concern about artistic realism—or the lack thereof—when attacking cartoony and exaggeratedly stylized artwork that displeases them, yet remain mysteriously silent about equally “unrealistic” excesses by artists they do like. If you genuinely cared as deeply about “realism” as much as you claim you do, fellow geeks, then you wouldn’t be consuming fantasy media in the first place. For the record, I’m just as prone as any other geek to this disingenuous bit of posturing—and given that I should know better, that makes me even more of a jackass than anyone else professing worries about artistic implausibility. (Then again, this paragraph is just the start of a much longer and wider-ranging rant about the entire dubious concept of “realism” in fictional media, so I’ll cut this blather short for the time being.)

I’m often reminded that normal humans—that is, people who don’t draw for a living— sometimes can’t grasp that most artists of middling talent and/or skill level such as yours truly aren’t always making deliberate and purposeful choices in their artwork. Many or most of us are just muddling through with whatever meager form of artwork we’re able to put on paper or screen in a semi-timely manner, rather than engaging in conscious premeditation to aggravate or outrage. Not that this should shield artists from criticism, by the way, but I’m still taken aback at times by how much meticulous intentionality and shadowy, calculated motivation is read into the work of artists who, alas, just can’t draw as well as they might like. Comics artwork isn’t always an elaborate, micromanaged, carefully planned conspiracy to annoy you, much as it might seem that way at times—and believe me, that’s I how I feel about American comics on many occasions. “Are you just doing this to bug me, American comics field? Are you? ARE YOU?” 

No, sometimes comic artists are just a bunch of semi-skilled dumbasses who can’t draw feet worth a crap. Doesn’t mean they—or I, in this case—shouldn’t try to do better, though.

-Adam Warren