Why is comic art sexist?

CBR just had an interview last week with Tony Daniel, where they asked him about drawing female characters, and I thought this was interesting:

Tony Daniel: That's a tough question, because I love all the characters, but I'd say Wonder Woman is probably my favorite to draw. She's always been a character I'd like to tackle, along with Superman and Green Lantern. She's strong, beautiful and I like trying to capture all that with my art. Plus, drawing women comes easier for me than men. I don't tinker as much and things just move faster for me. It makes my day easier when drawing female characters. After Wondy, I'd say Superman, for obvious reasons

That bolded bit is something I’ve believed about most artists for a while; when people talk about sexism in comics, they talk about how it’s a boys club, that these drawings of women are what guys like to see, that they can sell the original artwork for more money with skimpy outfits and pron poses, etc. but I think this is the main reason artists draw such sexist shots of women – it’s easier. For one, it requires less detail, second, there’s a lot of artists who’ve drawn these clichéd poses and what-not in in the past, so there’s a lot of reference material for drawing it. Porn-women require less detail, while Ross Campbell’s Glory probably has more detail to it than the average male character.

Also, we need to factor in internet porn – as Linkara has pointed out in several of his videos, people don’t buy comics for fan-service anymore. Maybe manga, because the largest demographic for that medium is like 10-15 year olds (or at least is was when I was that age reading manga), but look at the demographic for comics – it’s not only targeted at 18 year olds and older, but the majority of people buying them are 20-35 year olds. These are men who are old enough to own their own computers with their own privacy settings; they can walk into an adult movie store – they don’t need to get their jollies from superhero comics when they can find actual porn parodies online of their favorite comics.

Plus, I doubt the average artist makes all that much from selling their original art, considering how many pages they put out a year and the average price of a page. Besides, if you really need a sexy Tony Daniel-drawn shot of Catwoman, wouldn’t it just be easier to pay him to draw a commission where you can have him drawing her doing whatever you want? Not that I’d ever want something like that…

Basically, artists need to put just a little more effort into their craft instead of tracing the same damn Jim Lee Rogue scans every time the script requires them to draw a woman.

Here’s the rest of the article if you’re curious:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42197