The Pro is an Image comic by Garth Ennis, drawn by Amanda Conner and inked by Jimmy Palmiotti. It’s about a female prostitute who’s given superpowers by a horny alien, pees on the face of a vanquished foe in full view of the UN general assembly, gives a Superman stand-in a blow-job and ultimately saves New York.
It’s one of my favourite stand-alone comics.
In the introduction, Ennis explains that: ‘We realized we weren’t going to be taking any shit for sexism or misogyny on a book drawn by a woman.’ Yeeeeeah, right, because no critic has ever pointed out the misogynistic elements of a work by women before.
I’m not going to give Ennis a hard time for sexism and misogyny, because I think what he manages to pull off here is a nasty, really funny story about a woman who is upfront about the disgusting society that has economically coerced her into prostitution. With bonus superheroes, because continually pointing out that superheroes in real life would either be brutal fascists or naïve and useless morons is just how Ennis rolls. Fortunately, this time, it’s not boring or gross for gross’ sake there’s some fantastic social commentary going on at the same time.
The thing about prostitution and here and henceforth I’m referring specifically to female prostitutes is that the culture of the West goes on and on about sexy being great and empowering for women I’m totally empowered to take pole-dancing lessons, how freeing! and then the worst thing you can say to a woman is to call her a whore.
Because god forbid the sex that’s constantly commodified actually be a commodity offered by real women (often but not always economically disadvantaged, often criminalized, often raped and beaten and murdered by the same people that seek their services) instead of fantasy constructs. God forbid prostitution be viewed as just another sometimes unpleasant, dangerous job people do for the money to pay their bills. God forbid it ever be a viable career choice. It can’t be, because sex is involved, and humans can never, ever be rational about sex, especially when it involves women, because you’ve got to control women and their awful female bodies or they’ll invite sin into the world via apples.
Be sexy, girls! Sex sells! But don’t sell sex, or you’re a dirty wretch who doesn’t deserve basic human rights or dignity. P.S. If you’re physically or economically forced into being a prostitute and it’s not a free or fair choice, don’t worry! You’re still filth.
Anyway.
The Pro is not the story of all prostitutes, for which, points, but the story of one woman. For her, prostitution is neither a glamorous career, nor demonized as the province of women fallen from puritan ideals. The Pro freely acknowledges that she hates her job (in fact, she has two the other is waitressing at Denny’s, which is not enough to pay the bills). But she refuses to feel even slightly guilty for being a prostitute, and stays foul-mouthed and cynically contemptuous of attempts to ‘reform’ her. Superheroing, she says ‘sounds better than sucking cock for a living’, but the hypocrisy of the superhero game makes you wonder:
Speedo: ‘We’re the League of Honour; the security of the planet rests in our hands! I mean do you know how many supervillain team-ups we’ve defeated? How often we’ve saved the world from some unspeakable cosmic menace?
The Pro: Shame you could never fix things so I didn’t have to suck dick to feed my kid, isn’t it?
Ennis is not quite fair, of course concentrating on one aspect of social justice doesn’t mean you’re necessarily blind to others but within the context of the story his League of Honour is so monumentally unaware of the mundane and awful real-world horrors the Pro has to cope with that her dismissal of their ‘games’ is entirely justified.
There are other possibly-problematic elements. I read the jive-speaking Lime as not so much mocking the inclusion of Black characters in superhero teams as sardonic comment on the clumsiness of writers engaging in tokenism rather than characterization. The Lady who speaks in the exaggerated rhetoric of sisterhood is picked out by name and by manner as the overly-perfect, pedastaled one-girl-on-the-team: not a satire of Wonder Woman, but on the pitfalls of making her stand for all ‘womanly’ virtues. Your mileage, however, may vary.
I’m not enthused by the portrayal of explicitly Muslim terrorists, nor overly happy about the Knight paying the Pro to dress as his sidekick the Squire and masturbate. (Batman’s a potential pedophile! How never-been-done-before!) Ultimately, though, there’s only the one scene I cannot stand: a john who began the book by shooting at our soon-to-be-superheroine is later discovered to have mistreated and assualted several women, including ‘ass-raping them in the backseat’. He’s accosted by the Pro and many other prostitutes, and gang-raped. Presumably this is supposed to be a scene of totally hilarious revenge, but when it comes to rape, I have absolutely no sense of humour.
Conner’s cartoonishly vibrant, humanely expressive art for once dehumanizes the situation: depicting women lined up with rape implements including a fire hydrant, a weed-whacker and a Christmas tree while their victim screams off-panel trivializes rape to the level of wacky cartoonish violence. It’s a ‘the biter bit!’ punchline that fails to engage with the issues of power and control the book otherwise doesn’t shy from.
Incidentally since it comes up later in the story someone in the aftermath of rape-by-chainsaw wouldn’t merely be missing a sphincter and requiring 30 operations to reconstruct their asshole. They’d be dead. If you’re shooting for superheroes in a context of real-world consequences, then keep it real.
But all in all, I like The Pro a lot. It’s not a book I’d recommend to everyone, but if you’re into brutal, funny stories about mass destruction, naïve superheroes and super-realist, unrepentant women doing a job the world loves to hate them for, then The Pro may be for you.
