SPOILER Marvel's Star Wars Shattered Empire #1

I just felt she never had any dimension, the book was more about the plot and less about Leia. Also, there's a lot more to a strong female lead than picking up a blaster and kicking the bad guys' ass while doing flips in the air. While I'm not sexist and think women look great in action scenes, I find it more inspiring when women take charge with strong personality, conviction, faith.

Let's see, good examples would be:

Aliens - Ripley
Terminator - Sarah Conner
X-Men: First Class/DOFP - Mystique

 

The portrayal of women is definitely better than in a lot of superhero comics for sure. It should be noted however, that he tends to portray all of his main characters in what some might consider a more attractive almost pretty boyesque manner. If you look at Luke on the first page for instance, I'd say he looks a bit more like a pretty boy than Mark Hamill does in real life. Kes also receives the same treatment. This holds true of his Marvel comics work as well. For example,

this is the way the Punisher is generally portrayed in the comics,

but this is how Checchetto draws the Punisher. Not that he makes him look like a wimp, but his version of Punisher is definitely prettier/more handsome than how the character is usually drawn. Matt Murdock(Daredevil) is also in that picture, however being attractive to the ladies has always been one of his qualities, not so much a character trait of the Punisher . Having read a number of other comics that were drawn by Checchetto, I can honestly say that his characters always tend to look a little more attractive than normal, despite whatever situation they may be in, or how badly they get beaten up. However that same criticism can also be leveled at just about any action movie, now matter how much action the male and female lead have been through, they still look sexy, even if they are dirty and sweaty it is presented in an attractive manner. Heck, even if they get beaten up, its in a way that still lets you see how attractive they are. You know crap has gotten real when they get a minor cut on their cheek or the bridge of their nose .

The description of this image on Google image search actually says "Angry beat up Tony is a sexy hot Tony!" (additionally we know the fact that he has both a cut on his nose and cheek, plus a forehead scrape lets us know that crap has gotten really real)

All of that being said though, there is definitely a problem with the way that women have traditionally been portrayed in comics, but I could go on about that endlessly, so for brevity's sake I wont discuss that to much here.

It is nice to see that they aren't objectifying Shara in the comic at this point. Thankfully Star Wars has always been pretty good about its treatment of women. Sure, you had the sexy Slave Leia look in RotJ, however that at least made sense in the context of the story. It makes perfect sense that a disgusting gangster like Jabba the Hutt would treat women the way he does in the film, yet Leia ends up using the vary chains she was subdued with to kill the repulsive mobster, a very appropriate moment for all the characters involved. There was also the part in AotC where Padme's midriff is exposed as well, which was definitely done purposefully to give the movie a little bit more sex appeal, but still pretty tame when compared to the norm in big budget Hollywood movies.

Since the folks at Marvel are very conscious of trying to emulate the feel of the movies, I doubt that we will see to much objectifying of women in their Star Wars comics.

Edit: right after I posted this I realized that Padme was actually objectified a bit more than I initially remembered from the movie. Here is an exaggerated Robot Chicken clip for humorous context .

Checchetto and Maleev are probably my favorites as well. Larroca is honestly handling things about how I expected. He drew the Iron Man comic for quite a while, and while the armor always looks great when he draws it(probably the main reason he got the Vader gig), the actual faces of his human characters can get a little wonky sometimes. I will say that his Vader always looks flawless, the other human characters are sometimes a bit odd looking though.