The title refers to the song by the all-male version of Fleetwood Mac, later popularized by Santana.

I think this issue has the Watermelon Boobs splash page that disgusted female fans & critics for years afterwards.

How on earth could something like this splash page get past one of the most detail-oriented editors in comics history?
The page in question: http://www.comicgoose.com/rfcomicart/artwork/show/98/dazzler-splash-page---frank-springer-art?gallery_id=24

I would assume it was his idea in the first place. Ali's head is out-of-proportion to the rest of her body. Springer and Colletta are better artists than that.

I actually did the, er, measuring, and her head is literally smaller than her breasts. It's not just that the breasts are so huge on that page - though there is that - but her head is very small.

I never read Dazzler back in the day. I assumed that what I had heard - that the title was part of an attempt to attract more women and young girls into comics - was true. I can see now they weren't going for the teenaged girl market, they were instead trying to attract teenage boys.

As to that splash page, my own pet theory (based upon nothing but whim), is that the page was originally delivered with a head in scale with the neck, shoulders, and the rest, but her face has cut off around the nose.

Theoretical Editor: Wait, why'd you cut off her head here?

Theoretical Artist: [Gives his reasoning - "You/Shooter/The writer told me to emphasize her chest", or whatever]

Editor: But you can't cut off her face! Redo it, but include her entire head this time!

[Artist goes away. Once it is too close to deadline to change things further, the above linked art is delivered.]

Editor: Dammit!

I wish I could think this was a momentary lapse of good taste from the EIC. But then you remember Avengers #200. Or Secret Wars II #3. And it becomes part of a larger pattern.

It could just be a mistake. In the previous Dazzler entry with Galactus, FNORD12 mentions Galactus' head is too small for his body. I've seen lots of occasions where artists who normally draw well get the proportions wrong or show the body at odd angles for one panel. As for the editor not catching it, I didn't immediately make the connection that the head was too small. I doubt the editor spent anything more than 3 seconds looking at each Dazzler page. This was not a series where they were insisting on high quality and thus spent lots of time making sure it was perfect. I know this goes against Shooter's reputation as an editor, but he was probably doing this on his lunch break as EIC.

What nobody seems to consider here is Frank Springer's rather long history of drawing naked ladies. He was first noted for this while drawing the "Phoebe Zeit-Geist" comic for the intellectual/leftist magazine Evergreen Review from roughly 1966-68. It featured the title character usually completely naked and large(though not Watermelon)-breasted and undergoing tortures from various villains. It was written by Michael O'Donoghhue, so it was overtly satirical and silly. The nudity was most likely added to provide a substitute for the reprinting of the first French "Barbarella" strip from 1964-66(anyone who thinks the Angel/Callisto issue of X-Men was original doesn't realize it was lifted from a blind angel Pygar/Black Queen page here). Springer and O'Donoghue did a subsequent strip called Captain Something-Or-Other from 1968-70 that featured much female nudity, and Springer later drew his share of naked ladies for National Lampoon. So, I find it very likely that Springer gave Dazzler Watermelon Boobs entirely on his own just because he felt like it. Of course, Shooter would have seen it afterwards, and you can certainly put blame on him for obviously not having a problem with it.

I think we all agree that Frank Springer was good at drawing naked women - and Phoebe Zeit-geist is a very good illustrative example. What stands out is how badly he drew the splash page in question here. After an exhaustive examination of Frank Springer's naked (or nearly-naked) women, I can tell you that like any professional artist, Springer understood basic rules of proportion and human anatomy. Phoebe Zeit-geist has large breasts - but as you might expect, they are always smaller than her head. For Dazzler #16 to happen, I think someone like Springer had to be told to override those basic rules of proportion. And if it was indeed a mistake - how did it get past both the editor and the very detail-oriented EIC?

My best guess: Springer and Fingeroth get the infamous "storytelling" lecture from Shooter, including the maxim that every book needs to begin with the hero demonstrating their powers. Springer draws the splash, featuring what he considers to be Ali's "powers". He draws her in proportion, with her head cut off, not fully fitting into the page which further emphasizes her giant (ahem) "powers". The editor or the inker catch this and do a quick redraw. To get Ali's head fully into the page, they have to shrink it. Resulting in the infamous watermelon boob splash page.

I have absolutely no evidence for this of course, but it's fun to try to infer the motivations of these creators three decades later.

I can see Fingeroth getting the lecture, but I'm not sure if Springer ever even visited the Marvel offices during the Shooter era. He'd been in comics more than 20 years at this point, probably mailing all his work in, and I suspect that he didn't care if his art received disapproval from anyone(except for licensed properties). It's also likely that his art had deteriorated a bit by this time, resulting in incorrect body proportions among other things. His career could be paralleled with Frank Robbins, who started out with a decent Caniffish style, but by the 1970s had been reduced to drawing rubber Bendy toys passing for humans.

The comments on this entry had kind of gotten off the rails even before a trollish person came along, so i've cleaned up the comments a bit and blocked the troll.

Your site and all that, but I'm a bit disappointed that some of my interpretations of Ali are gone forever. They weren't offensive or degrading, I'm rather proud of how the Ali/Warren romance should have been done. But now they're gone forever.

Oh well. Dazzler can never be suppressed! This I command!

Also, I was doing a tribute to Jack Kirby's centennial - 50 Kirby characters/stories in 50 days - and this site was a good reference.