We’re coming into the home stretch for Avengers: Age of Ultron hype. Earlier today, Empire revealed their promotional covers featuring the movie’s characters, with a close-up of Ultron and the first shot of the Avengers…well, assembled.
The Ultron image is far more stern and emotive than the other pictures of ‘him’ than we’ve seen so far, but it’s really the team shot that caught my attention; the pose of one team member in particular really jumped out at me.
We need to talk about Hawkeye’s bottom.
In 2011 there was a rush of online articles about the anatomical impossibility of how female comic book characters have typically been drawn. This then extended to critiquing the promo material for The Avengers, when artist Kevin Bolk rerdew one of the film’s group-shot posters with the poses swapped from one gender to another. The result was striking.
Then, in late 2012, artist Noelle Stevenson suggested a way
to fix every Strong Female Character pose in superhero comics: replace the character with Hawkeye doing the same thing.
And so The Hawkeye Initiative was born.
Since then, numerous artists have used Clint Barton as their model in parodying the ridiculous poses more regularly inflicted upon female characters. It’s one of the best pieces of comics activism to emerge in the last few years, and the art that’s been produced has often been hilarious as well as driving home a necessary point.
And judging by that Empire cover, the message may have gone all the way to Marvel Studios and their marketing department.
On the far left, The Scarlet Witch is in something pretty close to the usual spine-twister. She’s turned at the waist, just about plausibly, but very much in the ‘here’s my bum’ pose that has been the default.
That being said, this is a mild a version of the pose as possible. She’s wearing loose fitting clothing and is largely obscured by Quicksilver. And if, for contractual reasons, she had to be on the outside edge, then perhaps she’s adding some symmetry to the composition.
But if there was going to be a case that she’s turning her back to reflect the character’s villainy, then Quicksilver would have to be turned too, the pair of them not acting with the group, and therefore not standing in line with them.
But over on the right hand side of the poster, with Black Widow, things are less ambiguous. She’s standing in much the same manner as Thor.
This not only means that her spine is getting some desperately needed relief, but also that she’s being allowed pose parity with the guys. The fact that her outfit is both fully done up and has a high collar is also significant. This presents Widow as an equal to the males, rather than a piece of eye candy.
But most importantly, there’s Hawkeye. Mr Barton is not only mirroring The Scarlet Witch’s position on the other end of the line-up, he’s in a pose and clothing that go much further down the line than hers does.
His skin-tight leather uniform leaves little to the imagination and he’s being blocked by nothing more than his skinny bow. The Hawkeye buttocks are present and in full effect.
His pose isn’t exactly impossible but it’s strong enough to call The Hawkeye Initiative to mind. Whether or not it’s deliberate we may never know, but it certainly looks to me like a tip of the hat – and not, for once, a twist of the superheroine’s spine.