While I do think a lot about their background and their existance outside of the scenario, I really love Zipgun's artwork.
There is an interesting contrast:
On one side you have one or two good girls, usually Asian, wearing Gi or other practical clothes, armed only with small martial arts weapons, if armed at all. They look very competent, down-to-earth. The type of people you would love to have in your team.
On the other side is a much bigger group of women, usually blond, pale, in leather or scantily clad, often smoking, armed with guns. While other Zakos are young and cute, or tough girls who hold their own in a male-dominated world, these look really nasty and kinda trashy. I think it's mostly their facial expression. If nothing else, they look like incompetent, arrogant bitches.
So it shifts our sympathies into a certain direction. We want to see the Asians beat the stuffing out of the blondes. No matter how harsh their fate will be, they have it coming. But if one of the Asians got killed, it would be a real downer.
In all objectivity, Zipgun's picture as well might show two asian robbers taking down a bunch of good girls working for a bank, but would it make much of a difference? They still look like incompetent, arrogant bitches who deserve a beating - and if they die, it's probabyl no big loss.
I love this kind of unfairness, when their demise is "just insignificant to everyone... except me."
(Though it seems that none of the RAVEN thugs is worth to empathize with. But who knows? It's just fantasy.)
