Bounding Into Comics says the interior pages of the new Marvel Swimsuit special for 2025, most unsurprisingly, suffer from sexless art, proving PC wokeness is still a severe problem to a certain extent at Marvel, and even the cover variants by J. Scott Campbell obviously don’t provide enough alleviation:
In a disappointing but ultimately unsurprising result, Marvel Comics has fumbled its latest Marvel Swimsuit Special by filling its pages not with titillating beachwear artwork of various Marvel superheroes, but instead what is perhaps the most aggressively sexless collection of ‘pin-ups’ ever put to paper.
The first such special in 30 years, the newly-released Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes & Rivals one-shot was touted by its eponymous publisher as “continuing the tradition” of their early 90s swimsuit specials, which ran across the early 90s and were known for presenting readers with page after page of gratuitous Marvel-themed cheesecake, all wrapped in a very loose but fun narrative that served solely to give a passing excuse as to why the featured heroes and villains were hitting the beach instead of each other.
And while the narrative of the latest special, as presented by writers Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs with art from Nick Bradshaw and Rachelle Rosenberg, is admittedly enjoyable, the same cannot be said for a vast majority of its collected pin-ups.
Now, to be clear, this appraisal is not based on an vague idea of some generally accepted ‘sexiness threshold’. After all, as the old adage goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Nor is it rooted in a desire for said pin-ups to be more explicit, as Marvel Comics is still an all-ages publisher and thus it is understood that the content must err on the side of caution when it comes to such risqué materials.
Rather, it stems from the fact that while said pin-ups are all expertly illustrated, most of them are not only less enticing than any of the issue’s covers, but completely devoid of any energy, sexual or otherwise – which is the absolute last thing anyone wants from a swimsuit special.
On the subject of “all ages”, I’m sorry, but this misses how, since the turn of the century, Marvel’s become far less family friendly than before, if you take any jarringly violent content that’s turned up since as an example. Why, even before that, were Daredevil and the Punisher “all ages” by that time? Nope. Things began to incrementally change in the Bronze Age when the CCA was modified.
That said, I’ve been able to look over more of the 2025 special myself, and while the examples BIC presents are uninspired – especially the page with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman – there are at least a few more that’re somewhat better (such as one by Josuha Cassara and Marte Gracia), yet one can validly argue that what sinks the special is how it keeps getting interrupted with action style pages and panels (at least 16 of those) that we’d expect in a regular title, but have no business being here. Now that I recall, the original 5 specials from 1991-95, in addition to being something like almost 50 pages, also began with something like splash pages and caption narratives to explain the self-contained premises. It wasn’t like this new special at all, where the art quality of even the more comic-style panels is very mediocre and muted. Also, the whole 2025 special is probably less than 40 pages, and the aforementioned action-panels take up room that could’ve been dedicated to more artwork if the editors wanted to. It doesn’t help that some of the color palettes and backgrounds in 2025’s special look muted, in contrast to the more vibrant colors of the original specials, and some of the art isn’t as detailed as the originals were. Also, unlike the originals, there’s no narrative caption boxes here, humorous or otherwise.
And yes, 3 or 4 of the 2025 illustrations are reprints of stuff that was already previously published, so again, that’s hardly accomplishing much. After this, I think what I’d really like to see is a paperback/hardcover reprint of the original 5 specials, at least a handful of whose pages have seen reprints over the years in other compilations, but not as part of a dedicated reprint project for the 5 Swimsuit Specials. So, perhaps what everybody should really ask for is that the originals see their own reprint, and let’s hope they don’t price it too high for a paperback/hardcover. As for the new one, truly the only good thing is the variant covers by artists like Campbell, yet that just gives a new meaning to judging a book by its cover. And if in the end, only the covers are worthy, then what’s the use wasting money buying a special that in contrast to the original 5, could end up being forgotten soon enough? Time will tell if anybody’s excited enough about this 2025 swimsuit special to cherish more like it.
Originally published here
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