Ms. Fanservice/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Pick a superheroine. Any superheroine over 18 at least.
    • Jubilee wasn't an example when she was younger, but thanks to growing up and becoming Progressively Prettier, she is now.
    • Shadowcat, on the other hand, yet remains perhaps the only female character in Marvel over the age of twelve to retain her petiteness. Although that's partly due to every writer at Marvel except Joss Whedon having forgotten she existed.
    • Wolfsbane and (usually) Moonstar are usually given petite frames. The few exceptions have either been by bad artists (*cough*robliefeld*cough*) and/or just look ridiculous because all the past art has them slender.
    • Emma Frost, on the other hand, is the epitome of this trope. Especially in the infamous Greg Horn covers. She seems to be fully Genre Savvy about this. Doctor Nemesis recently lampshades this by finding new ways to non-stop insult Frost about this during an entire story, culminating in telling her that if she doesn't immediately follow his orders he will personally destroy every fetish wear store on the planet.
    • Also, Psylocke. Not so much with the Most Common Superpower, but her costume is still Stripperiffic, giving her what might possibly be the worst wedgie in the entire Marvel Universe.
    • Not a heroine, but Madelyne Pryor, when she became the Goblin Queen, achieved the supreme level of accomplishment in this trope. Her tattered costume featured an open middle that left only the tops of her breasts covered. Only the cosmic power of the Phoenix Force stood between her and a Wardrobe Malfunction of such epic proportions that it would have almost certainly led to a revival of the Comics Code.
    • Usually an aversion is the minor X-Men character Dust, who is Muslim and observes hijab, wearing a loose outfit that covers everything but her eyes. Even so, some artists draw it skintight.
    • X-23 initially doesn't strike one as this, until you realize that just about every uniform she has (give or take a couple) as well as the majority of her civilian clothes show off her navel.
    • Rachel Summers was this during her Excalibur days. When she was in the X-Men initially, she was a stick thin tomboy wearing very conservative clothes and costumes. Then she got abducted into the Mojoverse, and when she got back her body had become a lot curvier. Her costume was now a red, one piece leather catsuit with integrated heels and adorned with spikes. Her off duty clothes were not as risque, but only just.
    • Squirrel Girl (an aversion) and Big Bertha (a subversion).
      • Squirrel Girl does play it straight when she's seen at a beach in her fur bikini, but unfortunately she went with Bertha (a female The Blob) and Deadpool (whose skin is continuously being mangled by cancer) who are also wearing revealing outfits.
    • Tigra is a twofer, being a Catgirl who walks around wearing naught but a bikini. Later books have tried to justify this with Tigra saying wearing anything else over a full coat of fur would result in heatstroke, and the bikini is pretty much for modesty's sake.
  • Red Sonja.
  • Recently subverted with Power Girl in Justice Society of America: her body hasn't changed, but she's finally come into her own as a successful warrior and leader, to the point that she is now chairwoman of the JSA. She still provides plenty of fanservice though.
  • Empowered herself is arguably a deconstruction of this trope, being a Faux Action Girl whose suit tends to rip up at the worst possible moment and being tied up and gagged, and thus the center of many people's attention left her in a neurotic mess of self-esteem and body-image issues, and yes -- she does provide most of the fanservice in the series, and is fully aware of that, making her an even bigger neurotic mess.
    • Ocelotina on the other hand intentionally plays to this trope, pretending to be a superheroine and getting into the same situtations Emp does for profit.
  • Archie Comics: Cheryl Blossom defined this in the 1980s (where it got her written out of the books) and '90s, where she was basically red hair on Pamela Anderson's face and body (the ones she had in the 1990s). Melody was this for Josie and the Pussy Cats, wearing the skimpiest outfits and drawing all the male attention.
  • Cythea in Necrophim, a beautiful succubus who never wears any clothes.
  • Averted in the DC series Manhunter: Street Justice, with protagonist Kate wearing a full-coverage bodysuit when she fights crime. Granted, she stole it from an evidence locker, but kudos to the author for making her different.
  • Vikki Vale in All Star Batman and Robin spent the first few pages dressed in nothing but a pink bra and undies talking about how Superman is the "Man of Steel" for other reasons and all they had was a flying bat. When she found out that she had a date with Bruce Wayne, she ended up in very revealing dress.
    • Frank Miller's script for that part reads less like Dark Knight Returns and more along the lines of Jay Naylor.
  • Durham Red in Strontium Dog generally wears a low-cut uniform and stands in a manner that emphasises her legs.
  • Thorn from Bone, not so much in early chapters, though. In later chapters, you get to see her bare legs quite a bit, and almost a little boobage due to Clothing Damage. There's even a gag (that actually is in an early chapter) where Fone Bone is nervous enough to accidentally eat a bar of soap because he's taking a bath with Thorn. (And before that, he watches a bird that seems to be there for the sole purpose of averting Fone's gaze away from Thorn while she's getting nude, before she goes into the water.) Needless to say, Fone Bone takes an instant liking to her.
  • Panda Delgado from Body Bags. She's only 14, but she sports a serious pair of breasts and wears a super-short cheerleader skirt and skintight sweater set. The skirt is so short the reader gets panty shots when she's standing still.
  • Parodied and subverted in The Boys where all the superheroines working for Vought American are turned into Ms. Fanservice as part of their image for merchandising. Takes a considerably darker turn when VA give Starlight a makeover consisting of high heels and a costume composed of about three grams of fabric due to them wanting her character to have been raped as a child and turn into a sex-crazed slut as a result. It doesn't go down well with her, especially when she reveals she was indeed sexually assaulted.
  • For the most part, Anderson in Judge Dredd doesn't provide much fanservice other than being hot in general. Her own spinoff, however, is a different story. In the first collected volume alone, she spends half a story naked in a coma (she is mostly covered by a sheet, but still), has another judge walk in on her in a shower, and goes clubbing in a low-cut, tight minidress.
  • Druuna, from the Italian graphic novel series of the same name, is either naked or wearing a skimpy tank-top-and-thong combo roughly ninety percent of the time.
  • Red Monika from Battlechasers: Huge boobs, ridiculous figure, big red hair and stripperific outfits? She's pure Ms. Fanservice.
  • Spider-Man's love interests are, usually, shown like this. Back when Steve Ditko drew the book, not so much since the Comics Code was in effect and they all wore modest dresses, and most of them were in high school. By college, however, characters like Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson were introduced. Gwen, however, stopped being this par for the course of her Character Development. Mary Jane, however, kept the revealing clothes and flighty personality even after maturing, though in her case its justified: She's an actress/model, it's literally her job to be hot. Still, while most superheroines have an Impossible Hourglass Figure, MJ is almost always a Buxom Is Better crossed with Male Gaze and She's Got Legs, and doesn't have the superpowers to justify it. This has, however, since they once made a statuette of MJ that got flak because of this (and because she looked like she was washing Spider-Man's suit for him).
    • Black Cat, being basically the Fetish Fuel Station Attendant, had a suit designed for Absolute Cleavage, made out of black PVC, and had a build that would require lots of surgery to get in real life, even more so that a lot of other heroes.
    • In a very weird way, Marvel has been trying to turn Carlie Cooper into this, most likely to increase her popularity. Low cut jeans, bared midriff, a tattoo that's near her lady bits but still visible in order to increase the midriff, and was probably the only girl in Spider-Island shown during the 'Naked New York' scene. However, because people just can't stand her, its been rather ignored.