Lisa Lyon

Robert Mapplethorpe

Someone deeply influential in a subterranean way to comic book culture passed without comment this week: female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, who was 70. Even if you've never heard of her, I guarantee you've seen her image, or a takeoff of one of her images.

If she seems familiar in some way, there's a reason.

You see, every single artist in the world has it drilled into them that an art swipe (tracing from figure studies or other artists) is unethical, but here’s the thing:

Every single working comic artist does it!

Is it really cheating if everyone does it? Artists love to mock Rob Liefeld for his art swaps, but it is possible to do the same if you dig into the art catalogue of nearly any comic artist, even today. Nowhere else can I find a better example of the old quote that "hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."

In any case, there’s no better figure at the center of this than Lisa Lyon, who in the 1980s, was a female bodybuilder who was the center of an enormously influential series of sophisticated physique study photographs by superstar photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It sounds almost quaint to remember now, but Mapplethorpe was so influential that he was the first photographer to be called to congress for obscenity in the 1980s, based on his male nudes and study of the gay BDSM scene, in a moral panic that sounds extremely familiar. He was also the first photographer to get a video game, the Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe on CD-I, which was essentially just an image gallery set to muzak, famously reviewed by a completely baffled Angry Video Game Nerd and his sidekick.

Mapplethorpe’s favorite subject was Lisa Lyon, and his photographs were so widespread that they were essentially traced and used for art swipes over and over by comic artists that need a study of a muscular female physique.

So at different points, photograph swipes of Lisa Lyon were the model used for Wonder Woman, She-Hulk, tons of fighting game characters....it's impossible to list all the times a Lisa Lyon photograph was swiped. We may never find them all. Most importantly of all, she was not only swiped but was the physical inspiration for the appearance of Elektra.

Frank Miller always had a foot in the fine art world, and like his mentor, Philip Jose Farmer, was also interested in the theme of how violence is often a substitute for sexuality in the lives of adventure characters. Miller was always fascinated by BDSM (which to me, explains a lot of 300), and explicitly said in many interviews he based Elektra physically on Lisa Lyon and was a great fan of Mapplethorpe.

Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982.

Lisa Lyon, Frank Miller's visual inspiration for Elektra, 1953-2023

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE “LISA LYON” // NYC, 1981 [gelatin silver print | 15 1/16 × 14 7/8”]

Robert Mapplethorpe - Lisa Lyon. 1982

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐚 𝐋𝐲𝐨𝐧, 1981 𝐛𝐲 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐞

Lisa Lyon doing some heavy lifting for Arnold's Bodyshaping for Women, published 1979

“Lisa Lyon”, 1981

Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe

Lisa Lyon by Robert Mapplethorpe 1982

Lady Lisa Lyon photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe

Lisa Lyon, bodybuilding pioneer and playboy model who inspired Marvel's Elektra

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE “LISA LYON” // NYC, 1982 [gelatin silver print | 19 1/4 × 15 1/8“]

Robert Mapplethorpe - Lisa Lyon, 1982

Lisa Lyon

Photography by Robert Mapplethorpe

1982