The way they draw women's feet in comics has always been a mystery to me. they look like plaster casts of the insides of high-heeled shoes. Here's a couple of typical examples from way back in the 1940s:


We might conclude that these renditions are the product of a culture in which men only ever see women's feet encased in shoes, and that the bare foot is forever unknown. But I once read an American book on anatomy that recommended a falsification of the evidence, that the female foot should be reduced in size as much as one can get away with. I wish I'd scanned the page. Even when faced with actual photographic evidence, somebody like Milt Caniff still chooses falsehood over truth.


To my eyes, Summer Canyon looks deformed in that Steve Canyon promotional picture from the mid-1950s (scanned from RC Harvey's excellent biography). I won't even try to get into the psychology of reducing the female to such a flimsy thing. Frank Frazetta on the other hand was a fifties man. He knows how to get that big and bold style of footwear down confidently. His girls look strong and vigorous, with their feet planted firmly on the floor:


Today, Craig Thompson is the man who draws feet right. They are muscular appendages that can conceivably do the work that is normally asked of feet.


In getting them down he may occasionally give them more space than they are entitled to, but that's okay with me. It's such a relief to see them done correctly. In an online interview somewhere a few years back, he mentioned that James Sturm had criticized this, the size of them, and I felt very annoyed with James Sturm. 'Mind your own business!,' I shouted at the computer.

ps. I apologise to James Sturm, who has done only great things, for using him as the punch-line in my balonious rant about feet. (smiley face, etc.)