When it comes to Spider-Man, I’ve never been a fan of big-time fan fave artists Todd McFarlane and Humberto Ramos for a very simple reason: Expressive, squinty spider-eyes. If there had been even one “Hey, I made these special mask lenses” scene, perhaps I’d have felt different, but it always seemed like an artistic cheat. Ever since ‘Captain America: Civil War’, though, it is clear that I’m in a minority, with multiple people praising the Spider-Man mask and its expressive eyes, leading to today’s bone-chilling query,,,
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) paradoxically likes Deadpool’s digital mask-eyes, and think they made the suit, asking: To squint or not to squint; that is the Spider-Eyes question?
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It’s an artistic representation of expression in a medium that is static in form. It’s not photography, unless the artist is Greg Land. So no issues here.
It depends on many things, but I’ve liked McFarlane Spidey since I first saw it. It was so different to what I was used to that it made a permanent impression to me as a kid.
I don’t mind it, but I do find it a bit lazy when Spidey doesn’t really need to make facial expressions when he could just use witty banter and other body language (even in the comic pages, the right picture, head cocked at an angle or his posture could convey just as much as facial expressions could).
If I had to say emotive spidey-eyes came from anywhere, it’d be all the animated series ever since the original. I think all the modern comic artist interpretations have been as influenced by the cartoons as much as anything else.
Body language is pretty complex and not everybody shares the same level of fluency. Most times, people probably don’t even fully grasp what they are seeing, unless they approach it while thinking critically, or otherwise study body language in some depth for whatever reason. (Artists, actors, behaviorists, high-level poker players, and police interrogators to name some examples of people that might study body language. Artists being the most applicable to the conversation.) The brain just makes the connection for them and then moves on to process other things.
Nuanced expressions are tough. That said, for a lot of people, the eyes are key.
Depending on the artist, Batman is another character that has emotive eyes. However, because his jaw and mouth are uncovered, (and he’s scowling most of the time anyway. because he’s Batman) it’s a lot less bothersome to think that maybe his mask’s eyes shouldn’t be moving to reflect his body language so closely. Also, having it otherwise would be… a little weird/ disturbing.
So, since emotive eyes are in service to the visual storytelling I’m personally fine with it, even if they might not make sense without a reason supplied by said story.