Let me start by saying that I read far too much into things. I also just read far too much. All this is is something that I noticed after looking at the JTHM comics (by Johnen Vasquez) panel by panel and (sort of) de-constructing their construction, I guess would be a decent way to say it.
Of course, then I got to thinking about the wider implications and realised just how common a trend this actually is.
There's a lot that posing communicates and there are a set of ingrained codes in our society that attempt to compartmentalise and make sense of these codes and signals. This is particularly obvious in advertising when a message has to be communicated quickly. (The documentary 'The Codes of Gender' explains this amazingly well.)
Anyway, for the purposes of this post, I went though the comic and picked out a few panels and poses I found interesting.
Let's look at Johnny, since he's the villain protagonist.
(Johnny isn't well, in case you haven't guessed.)
Now, this is a panel from page three of the segment 'Goblins' in Volume 2. This is one of the clearest images I've found to illustrate a point I thought was interesting - namely, when a character is seen as mentally unwell, a lot of our expectations of them change. For example, if Johnny were perfectly sane, this pose would be seen as almost abrasively feminine (that is to say weak, unsure, and submissive).
Taking this pose out of context, it looks very odd (and not just because of Vazquez's unique art style). From the ground up, Johnny is off-balance. He has one leg up and bent - possibly with his heel against his knee - which is similar to advertising depicting a model grabbing the heel of her shoe while balanced on one foot. His hands are clasped behind his back in a manner similar to a small child and his head is down while he's looking away.
All in all, it's very similar to adverts that use female models and - with no context to remove the expected connection - looks weak, submissive, and completely out of place on a male.
(It's worth noting that I do not in any way mean to imply that femininity equates to weak, unsure, submissive or anything of the sort. It's simply the expected connotation in the world of advertising and in media at large more often than not. Very unfortunate but interesting from a psychological standpoint.)
There's also the manner of how he interacts with his world. Often, most clearly when he's killing (which happens quite often), his body language changes but not completely. One example might be the way he handled the gun in the JTSM segment from Volume 2.
While this one may be justified given Johnny's dislike of guns, there's still the lighter touch being used here. He's holding the gun with just his thumb and forefinger, which is not a powerful grip, and seems to only have his fingertips on the slide.
Moreover, Johnny is seen again and again in these kind of off-balance, canting poses. He stands with his head tilted (sometimes with a hand on his face or shoulder)
or is shown lying down in a slightly child-like way (occasionally with a pen or pencil in his mouth)
or sits with his legs up in the air in a similar fashion to a Vargas drawing.
But here's the interesting part: despite all of this, Johnny's more feminine poses are not read as feminine - at least not consistently and out of universe.
The reason may be something to so with the way mental disturbance (or the perception of mental disturbance) changes what we expect from someone. Most of what we were brought up to know about gender coding goes out the window when we meet someone who doesn't fit the mould. Johnny, a frequent victim of bullying, is a good example of that (even though, in universe, the reasons for this torment are quite different, I still felt it was interesting to note.)
I've seen this in my own work as well - when someone is 'off' in some way, these codes fall flat and are impossible to read. Often, villains especially are given a more recognisably feminine manner than heroes as a way to make them seem unnerving. This isn't so much a slam against women or against the homosexual community - it just goes against the ingrained codes of gender and so makes many people feel some degree of uneasy because the coding seems faulty and out of step with what we've been taught to see as normal. The Joker from Batman is a great example of this, as are many other well known villains.
In 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac', Johnny is clearly insane, which makes his off-balance posing and non-standard coding more acceptable as he is the villain in that world. In media, this is not an uncommon device to use as it serves to unsettle most of the target audience, which is usually young men. Movies and shows aimed primarily at young men tend to have villains who code feminine or at least androgynous whereas shows and movies aimed at women, when they do have villains, they are often depicted as brutes and code unmistakably masculine. This re-enforces the idea that we have strong and weak, masculine and feminine, and that the opposite sex is always out to hurt you, cause you pain or distress, or make you weak or afraid.
I can't say whether or not this may contribute to the apparent internalised misogyny, misandry, and homophobia but I wouldn't be surprised if it did to some degree.
What it all boils down to is that going against these societal gender codes causes most people discomfort. This is a good thing. I'd advise you to explore your world and why you (and your characters) act the why they do. What are you trying to convey? What are you trying to make your reader feel? What would you expect to feel? What really makes a man or a woman... a man or a woman? Or better yet, what makes a person a person?
(*Please note that all of this is only my opinion - likely to be just as flawed as anyone else's. I may come up with a post explaining the difference between sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, etc. in the next little while as well. If I'm going to ramble like this, I can at least be informative, right?)
