10 Comic Book Cover Gimmicks That Cheapened Great Characters

7. Swimsuit Issues

Swimsuit issues are the most unabashed form of fan-service in comics. This distasteful trope began mostly in the 80's, especially in team comics. Some comics would settle for just having characters at the beach in the context of a plot, but then some didn't even have the pretense of story and just had a bunch of characters lounging around in swimsuits. And this wasn't just the slightly tarty heroines, even sacred characters like Storm from the X-Men put on breasty holster at one point. Even the ladies might get to see a few man-cakes as well (looking at you, Howard The Duck ). Example: Grimm Fairy Tales Grimm Fairy Tales is a series of "mature" fairy tale adaptations, which would probably have the Grimms spinning in their graves (if they weren't pretty dark themselves anyway.) And by mature, obviously I mean there's lots of mostly uncovered boobs, in every issue. So you can imagine that when they do a swimsuit issue, they go hard. So hard that they often forget the women are supposed to be fairy tale characters and now Penthouse pets, to the extent that some of the titillators make no attempt to make it clear which beloved fairy tale character they are objectifying, as above. Unless we've all just forgotten about the classic fable of Little Pink Flossin' Boobs .