Newsarama asked Joe Quesada what he thought about the notorious Heroes for Hire cover, and here’s what he had to say:
First, I think people are reading way too much into that cover than was ever intended. I heard terms such as “tentacle rape” being thrown around when that in no way is what’s happening, nor does it happen in the book. Those tentacles are the arms of the Brood who appears in the issue and is a major story point, the Brood have tentacles, sorry about that.
Secondly, the concept for that cover, soup to nuts came from a female artist. Thirdly, not being a deep follower of manga, I have no idea what recurring theme people are referring to or concerned with. While I appreciate the sentiment and the feelings that some may have about this, I honestly feel that there is way too much being read into this cover.
Also, HFH is a book that features two strong, lead female protagonist who kick major ass; somehow folks have forgotten to focus on that.
Somehow, Joe managed to sound both clueless and weaselly. Let’s try this again:
Yeah, I can see where people are coming from. Sana Takeda, who’s a great artist, did a fun cover that parodied and homaged a relatively obscure and completely absurd genre.
And while it’s obviously a bit of artistic license, it does hint at the issue’s content – there are plenty of tentacled aliens inside! But rest assured, there’s far more butt kicking than tentacle rape. After all, no one would put rape in a superhero comic. That’s just silly.
We really didn’t set out to offend anyone, but offer our apologies if we did. From what I’ve seen, most of our fans don’t have a serious problem with it, and I’m sure our audience is going to dig it even more when they read the issue.
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? At least acknowledge there’s an issue, even if you don’t really care about it.