There's a long tradition of cheesecake in comic books, for better or for worse. It's hard to avoid, as the countless covers, interior pages and merchandise featuring female characters either not wearing much clothing or striking seductive (and oftentimes anatomically impossible) poses will attest to. Despite their ubiquity, it's usually pretty easy to avoid: you fold the cover over, you don't let people read over your shoulder, you keep it your little secret. So what happens when a comic is all cheesecake? Well, then you have a problem. Witchblade was part of a spate of similar books released by Top Cow, a division of Image Comics, in the the late nineties/early noughties - along with Aphrodite IX and Fathom - whose premise, plot, and really anything that happened in the comic was just an excuse to have half-naked women cavorting all over the place. These were popular comics, too, which meant for a while, they were sorta synonymous with comics for a lot of people. How bad was Witchblade? Bad enough that the anime adaptation wasn't all that more pervy. Anime, people!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
