Janelle Asselin, who has edited lots of comic books, writes an article criticizing this comic book cover:
She notes:
Let's start with the elephant in the room: Wonder Girl's rack. Perhaps I'm alone in having an issue with an underaged teen girl being drawn with breasts the size of her head (seriously, line that stuff up, each breast is the same size as her face) popping out of her top. Anatomy-wise, there are other issues -- her thigh is bigger around than her waist, for one -- but let's be real. The worst part of this image, by far, are her breasts. The problem is not that she's a teen girl with large breasts, because those certainly exist. The main problem is that this is not the natural chest of a large-breasted woman. Those are implants. On a teenaged superheroine. Natural breasts don't have that round shape (sorry, boys). If you don't believe me, check out this excellent tutorial from artist Meghan Hetrick.
And what happens next? Debate about her criticisms, sure. But also:
We all knew this would happen. As Asselin explains on her blog: “I was called a whiny bitch, a feminazi, a feminist bitch, a bitter cunt, and then the rape threats started rolling in.”
Those who do that are not the majority of people or the majority of men or boys, either. But even if they are a fairly small percentage, when everyone in that group aims their vitriol at the same writer at the same time that impact is considerable. It's like an extra fee one has to pay if one is to write about certain topics. Or write as a woman on almost any topic. And the abuse can be much worse for women of color who get smelly packages which combine misogyny with racism.
Tauriq Moosa makes a good point about what we can all do to affect this:
Yet you should recognize the digital harassment environment of women is one that is maintained through its consistency and unrelenting nature. Similarly, so should the response: unrelenting, shouted from the highest and most respectable platforms and people. What you should want to create is a culture or community that immediately does not tolerate bigotry, harassment, and abuse.
As many, including Asselin, note, a powerful reason some men feel no hesitation when sending horrible messages to women is they believe they’re operating within a space that accepts it as the norm. But you should not have “acceptance” fed by feelings of futility; your response should be intolerance of intolerance. Silence and apathy are key ingredients to a tasty helping of bigotry. Though only specific groups are served, everyone in the community must endure the smell. And smell and taste are not so different.
What about the original Asselin piece and the points it makes? I'm not a comics reader but she is certainly correct when she states that natural breasts are not that particular shape but pear-shaped. Wonder Girl wears very large implants.
Whether something like that matters when we are talking about drawn characters of something called superheroes is an interesting question. The answer depends on who it is that is the intended reader of the comic book and what that person wishes to see in it. It also depends on what a female superhero is expected to embody. Finally, it depends very much on whose cheese it is that is imagines as pulled away, whose comic books someone is trying to change and whose "entitlements" are threatened.
My guess is that the incoherence of the misogynistic anger comes from those perceived threats. Or, rather, the vitriol expresses those underlying fears.