Oh, you think so?

Source

That's for all comic books and graphic novels, not just superhero comics. Granted, superhero comics make up a fat fraction of comic book sales, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the sales figures for superhero comics top 975 million dollars.

Meanwhile, the total sales revenue for romance novels in 2013 is estimated to be about 1.08 billion dollars.

It would be easy to dismiss those sales figures as people buying Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, but paranormal romance accounts for less than 20% of romance novels and "Sexy millionaire/Billionaire" is less a less popular trope than "Strong hero/Heroine" or "Friends to lovers".'

: Especially
: since they're all books with only a single sexual illustration, not a
: comic book or movie full of them.

Gosh, could it be that women are wired differently than men? Could it be that visual porn*stimulates a neurochemical trigger in guys, and women get a similar rush from reading about emotional bonds between characters? Yes it is.

That image of the beefcake on the front cover of a romance novel isn't supposed to turn women on on its own. It's not the front cover of a Hustler magazine. It's a promise that there will be a dark brooding man with abs and a manly jaw like this one, and the female stand-in for the reader is going to tame him and emotionally bond with him.

*Generalization. There is a market for erotic stories for men, but the content is more pornographic than typical romance novels. My source is a guy I knew in college who made almost a thousand dollars a month writing mind control erotica. =(

: Using little known romance novels

Romance novels account for fifty five percent of all fiction novels sold. They're little-known to you, just like Hawkeye, Loki, and Joker are little more than names to many adult Americans.

: to claim a lack of unequal sexism is like
: someone in the 1860s saying "American slavery isn't racist because
: black people in Africa have slaves too". Both are wrong, but one was
: WAY bigger than the other.

Arguing market share is missing the point, innit? The argument is as follows:

A comic written by a guy claims that defined abs and beefy arms are a male power fantasy, and women fantasize about smooth features and puffy lips.

Romance books, which are marketed towards women far more than comic books are marketed towards guys, have beefcakes on the front covers.

Since book covers are designed and market-tested to grab the audience's attention and sell the book, we can conclude that women do fantasize about guys with well-defined abs and beefy arms.