Dear Ms. Lee, In Episode Four of ‘Almost Live with Paul and Misty,’ broadcast on June fifth, you say And you know, also, someone raised the point in, I don’t know if it was in a forum I was reading but it’s something I’ve heard a million times before – but usually, the strongest and loudest protest over sexy things come from ugly fat girls. And now I don’t necessarily agree with that and I’m probably going to get some awesome flame mail as a result of this, but as somebody who’s relatively secure in her sexuality – I don’t think I’m the hottest broad out walking around – I definitely don’t think I compare to some of these comic book chicks – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like to look at ‘em. I find the feminine form very appealing and I’m not at all offended by that… I was raised to believe that the weight and appearance of a person were irrelevant to the justice of their argument, but I am willing to defer to the customs of your people and have recorded the following:
icon for podpress Since it’s important to you [1:08m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download Sincerely, the Editor.
I bought the first volume of the Runaways collection when I was down at WisCon and I just wanted to make a short post on my initial feelings after reading it. Once I finish my WisCon writeup for Cerise I might return to the subjects I touch on here and do a better analysis (oops, I got my rant on by accident… I think I’m almost incapable of doing short posts). So, first off, I’m definitely buying the next two volumes. I have no idea where I’ll put them, as my bookshelf is filled to the brim, and that’s not counting all the books I bought at WisCon, but, that’s life I guess. The first story arc was fun, the art was overall pretty cool, and I think I have a soft spot in my heart for rebels with a cause. Or maybe it’s just a soft spot for a team that’s mostly kick ass women, or girls in this case. I also like the clothing, and if I knew how to tie a tie I would so be wearing the shirt and tie getup that Nico was in for a bit. That being said, I had two major issues with what I read. But since they are spoilers, especially the second one, I will put them behind the jump. SPOILERS AHEAD. You have been warned. I. Well, they’re all just skanks anyway! So, the first one isn’t so spoilery. It involves Cloak and Dagger. Or, no, wait, rewind that. It starts with Sue Richards and the Fantastic Four MMO (which has way more RP functionality than any MMO I’ve played, but I digress), who is called ‘Mrs. Skank-tastic’ because of her costume, which is a leotard with thigh-high boots. Whoever her player is starts in on how Sue hits on everyone and therefore the costume is appropriate. Contrast this to when Captain America throws around the word ‘retard’ and at least gets called on it (granted, the manner in which it was called out was inappropriate in itself, but at least it was brought up that maybe that word isn’t an appropriate insult). Since these things both happen within the same two pages, the message is clear: ‘retard’ is an insult of questionable merit, but ‘skank’ is A-okay. Fast-forward a few issues with the appearance of Cloak and Dagger. Now, granted, I cringed at Dagger’s outfit because it was so stereotypically Marvel in a book whose art is, thankfully, anything but. However, I thought it would be a great way to bring up the contrast between the inappropriate sexualization of most adult female superheroes with the way the girls of Runaways are portrayed as having a varied fashion sense. But, no, again the ball was dropped and the only commentary that was made was when Chase calls Dagger a ‘skank’ (are we sensing a theme here?). I find this to be highly problematic, especially given that most of these ‘skanks’ are characters created by men, for the purpose of being titillating to the assumed male audience. Instead of raising awareness for a problem of characterization that plagues the Marvel universe, and perhaps causing one’s audience to think (especially if it is primarily made up of boys and young men), the blame was, yet again, foisted off onto the women. It may be realistic for those kinds of insults to roll of the tongues of adolescent boys, but if Vaughan could realistically call out one form of bigotry, then why not another? The team is, after all, mostly women — some of whom might just object to gendered insults. The point here is that Vaughan had a prime chance here, the chance to reach out and make his readership question the casual sexism that is part of their lives, and he dropped the ball. Hard. II. Who’s the traitor? The shifty Asian girl? The manipulative black boy? The second issue I had with the story arc isn’t as well formed as the first. But it bothered me that Alex was the traitor. Not that I think it was poorly done; on the contrary, the setup was good and it was completely in character as far as I could tell. But it felt like a let down, like the only reason they ‘allowed’ a person of colour to be the leader of the team was because they knew that he was going to die. Now, granted, I would like to see one of the girls emerge as the leader, seeing as the team is mostly girls. But it still felt good to see that Chase didn’t default to leader because of his magical white man powers of privilege. I liked how they showed Alex to be smart and capable — capable enough to get by without fancy gadgets or special powers, leading through sheer intelligence, talent, and will alone. But I felt a growing apprehension as the traitor storyline got stronger. Maybe it was my comics cynicism, but I knew the white members of the group (Chase, Karolina, and Gertrude, with the exception of Molly, who I did wonder about for a couple of seconds) were safe. There wasn’t a whole lot of speculation on their potential traitor status, and it just didn’t make sense for their character types. I wasn’t overly worried about Nico until the part where she starts moaning about her sins, which in hindsight was an obvious red herring designed to shift suspicion off of Alex. I was pretty much sold on Alex being the traitor when he started in on wanting to tell Nico something. And it was so perfect, wasn’t it? If Stephanie Brown, Batwoman and all the Women in Refrigerators had taught me nothing, it was that the Big Two love to set up minority characters to take a spectacular fall. They start you in on them and you learn to love them. In fact, I think one of the reasons that you love them is precisely they are found so rarely in positions of power. They let it continue for a while, sometimes giving you hints of things to come, sometimes not. And then one day you turn the page and the character you have grown to love is dead. If there were a thousand other Alexes it wouldn’t bother me so much. But there aren’t and so the next character who steps up to take his mantle is more likely to be a heterosexual white man than any other kind of character. And that sucks. X-posted: The Official Shrub.com Blog.
I have to start this story with the third Robin, Tim Drake. In his first appearance, A Lonely Place of Dying, by Marv Wolfman, I’d found Tim a bit too conveniently competent. I was supposed to believe that a thirteen year-old boy could do all that? Oh, I believed he had figured out Batman’s identity, that never seemed like a terribly well kept secret, but I couldn’t believe he’d traveled to New York and back, and more incredibly to me, made it outside of city limits to watch Batman fight over the reservoir, all on his bike! (This, by the way, is the story-line in which Tim bluffs his way into the manor, and then, against Batman’s direct order, steals the Robin suit from Jason’s case and wears it out to fight crime, becoming Robin of his own resort, as it were.) I first fell in love with Tim Drake in Rite of Passage, a mini by Alan Grant. In this story, I found the Tim I would imprint on like a young duckling. Tim was entirely aware of all the ways he was inadequate; he was supposed to be a partner to Batman? Tim was terrified, had nightmares of being eaten by a giant looming bat, and reacted by training harder. He knew he wasn’t good enough, but he was determined to be the best he could be. No one was harder on Tim than Tim was on himself. He was determined to be a Robin worthy of the name, but half-certain he would fail. And then Stephanie Brown showed up. I resented the hell out of her. Tim hadn’t considered himself worthy of the name of Robin until he’d travelled the world training from the living masters; Steph thought a cape and a code-name was all she needed to be a costumed vigilante. Tim was willing (and eager!) to learn from those who had been in the business longer than him; Steph wanted to do everything her own way, and frequently screwed up. Oh, how she screwed up. She couldn’t climb as well as Tim, she couldn’t fight as well, she wasn’t as meticulously devoted to detail in fact, she seemed to think the whole thing should be fun! Steph And, the most petty reason of all for disliking her, she stole panels from Tim. She shared the limelight! She sometimes got whole story-lines dedicated to her stupid family. She pestered Tim to have a social life, when I wanted to see his freaky crime-fighting brain. A diversion: some women of my acquaintance just can’t identify with a male character. They can like, enjoy, or sympathize with them, but they can’t identify with them. I think I’m being clear here that I’m not one of those women. It’s not really something I consider a special ability, but I’m actually more likely to identify with male characters than female. I eventually got over my resentment of Steph, a little. She seemed to be making Tim happy, and she was getting better at the vigilante gig, which did a lot to reconcile me to her. She got some really good story-lines, from Peter David in Young Justice, in Batgirl, and from Jon Lewis in Robin. But when I heard that Stephanie Brown would be replacing Tim as Robin, all my resentment came back. How did she think she could even compare to Tim as Robin? Why was DC taking away the best Robin ever (I don’t claim to be impartial) and replacing him with someone who was still learning how to use a grappling hook? It didn’t help that the textual reasons given for Tim leaving the position of Robin depended on Tim making a series of mistakes I saw as stupid and uncharacteristic of him. I would later learn that editors at DC had mandated that Steph be killed, and Robin writer Bill Willingham had decided to make her Robin before her death. Thank you, Mr. Willingham. My point is: DC, I was on your side. I didn’t like Steph as Robin. I half-resented her. I wanted her out of there. But even I, who had a low opinion of Steph, could not believe how badly she was treated in the story leading to her death and the aftermath. I could not believe that she was tortured to death, slowly, over multiple issues. I couldn’t fathom that Steph would set in place a plan that she didn’t really understand, and which clearly had so much room for drastic, fatal error. And I could not, and still do not believe that Batman would use her as a tool to get Tim Drake back as Robin. I was baffled that the Batman who appeared in Detective Comics after her death would agonize over whether he shared responsibility for the death of Cassie Wells, a walk on character with whom he shared a brief conversation. Had he completely forgotten that his lack of faith in Steph was instrumental in her death? It seemed calculated to rub in how unimportant Steph was; one poor young blonde girl dies, no one talks about it, a rich young blonde girl dies, she gets a twelve part exploration of Bruce’s guilt. Kevin at beaucoupkevin says: ‘A glass case being drawn into a single location won’t change anything substantial in the medium, will it? It’s not a solution; only a reminder that there was a problem.’ Shoving it under the carpet isn’t a solution either. There needs to be a reminder. DC comics seems all too eager to forget.
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Ragnell’s post about Geoff Johns’ recent comment along the lines of there being ‘enough’ dead women in DC comics canon — and the comments in response to her post — got me thinking about something which has been working my last nerve as a fan (not just of comics) for years:It was something jlg1 said in response to Ragnell’s post which got me twitching in my rage places this morning, so I’ll just quote it here: I agree that there shouldn’t be a padded safe box, and should be wary of that quote for that reason too. But as one of the people who thought it was a hypocritical response (the boards wouldn’t allow 3 attempts for my nick or something close to it, so I chose g11j), I don’t think it was that wrong a thing to point out, or that I or the other posters want special treatment. I think they’re also tired of the excuse of ‘suspense and tension and dramatic impact’ to kill wholesale lesser-popular characters. The stories are already ‘Safe’ in that you know there are certain characters that won’t ever be killed – Red Shirts don’t make a story any more tense. That’s it, right there. I mean, if you’ve been around the genre fannish block even a little bit, you already know that certain things won’t ever happen in your favorite shows, films, books, or whatever — no matter how much sense those things would make within the given fictional milieu in question. I don’t think it would be too revolutionary for me to say that any number of us who also identify as slashers build our more active fannishness (as opposed to passive/consumptive) on some version of this, after all. Kirk and Spock’s relationship felt incomplete, or Wes and Gunn’s seemed ‘obvious’ in one way or another, or — whatever. Essentially, we all knew ’1’ that there were certain logical conclusions which would never be considered as logical conclusions, because of the fact — yes, fact — that there remained Some Things the various Powers that Be felt their chosen audience(s) simply weren’t ready to accept — assuming they were ready to accept that themselves. It’s this sort of thing which has gained people like Joss Whedon a place of privilege among many otherwise cantankerous, cynical, and impossible-to-please fancreatures of various persuasions. The words ‘bring your own subtext’ were hardly revolutionary — save for how, given their context (said context including the fact that we were talking about American television aimed, at least in part, at the delicate flowers of American youth), they absolutely were. I don’t know about you… but Whedon earned a lot of damned credit from me for that one, and has completely failed to make any serious inroads into spending it down. But, well, this isn’t about slash — not even a little. It’s about character death, and the flat-out myth that the possibility of character death must remain in order to maintain dramatic tension, suspense, and — this is the kicker — a sense of realism. I could — and probably should — be brief here: ‘Fine, Creator Strawperson. Just, you know, get back to me when you’re working on The Wire.’ But — I kind of need to rant a little more. For those of you with busy schedules, though, that was really the gist right there. -Shoos you off- [Warning: Post contains spoilers for Rome episodes 1×11 and 1×12.] Seriously, let’s unpack that a little, shall we? Any number of the people theoretically reading this were great fans of BtVS. When Buffy dies in ‘The Gift,’ we all already knew that a) the show would be renewed for a sixth season, and that b) the show would not be renamed. One of the things which made me a fan was the fact that the writers never once acted as though we, as fans, somehow didn’t know those things. It’s not that they didn’t play those storylines for all the drama they were worth, it’s that they allowed the weight of the drama to fall precisely where it belonged: On the shoulders of the characters who, of course, knew no such things. This — this is kind of important here, friends and neighbors: As both a writer and a fan, I’m going to automatically, shamelessly, and with prejudice favor those works of fiction which either scrupulously keep the weight of emotional whatever on the shoulders of the characters, or which are smart enough to only shift that weight onto the audience with deftness, awareness, and respect. There is, in fact, an objective difference between the blatant audience manipulation in the arena scene of Rome episode #11: ‘The Spoils’ and the blatant audience manipulation extant in any major comics crossover event. ‘Who will die???’ they ask, and provide us with tantalizingly ambiguous hints and drum up the controversy in an effort — Lord knows they have to do something — to, in turn, drum up sales. This is distasteful, but not especially criminal. No one’s holding a gun to my head to keep me here, after all, and when it all got to be a bit too blithely, greasily sensationalist… I backed away. First from the solicits and discussion of same, and then from those writers and artists who I felt best typified the problem. In any event, the difference: While Rome, as a show, is rather different in terms of how it handles its Red Shirts — we already know that any number of major characters will be horribly killed and we know when — the character in jeopardy in that episode and that scene is Pullo. He is one of our POV characters, and is thus at least somewhat safe. The show is about the rise and fall of the Roman empire on a general level, but, in the specific? The show is about Pullo and Vorenus and how these two mostly-but-not-really average Roman citizens make their way through the incredibly chaotic times in question. Thus, if Pullo dies, the audience is half-blinded. While I wouldn’t put it past Heller and co. to do just that at some point in the future … yeah. I probably should’ve known that Pullo wasn’t truly in danger in that scene, even if there was no way I could’ve known that Heller and co. would pull out all the stops to make his rescue into purest emotional porn. It really is the same with any number of other fannish darlings. What’s the worst that can truly happen to Sheppard? Veronica? Willow? Xena? Bruce freaking Wayne? They are safe from everything but the angst of watching the secondary characters die or be maimed in some horrible fashion, and — we all know it. ’2’ So why am I privileging Rome? Well, first off, I’m doing it on a very provisionary basis. With Pullo’s survival and Niobe’s distinct lack of same in the very next episode, we’re already set up for a kind of problematic — and all too common to this little black fanduck — future in which the dramatic tension comes not from the deaths of other characters, but from those deaths’ effects on the safe characters. In and of itself, this doesn’t have to be problematic. For one thing, not every ex-person who was important to the Safe Character will be — or should be — important to us. (Hint for creator-types: If your potential corpse was — just as an example — running around being a vigilante in her own right for twelve years? She’s not going to fit in that box.) For another thing, if those deaths, however they pile up, cause the characters to grow and change in any of the various ways those safe characters logically could change/grow given what you’ve told me about them? We’re all good. Call it, for the sake of gratuitous analogy, the difference between a large amount of the canon for Duncan MacLeod and the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of wonderful issues in which Bruce Wayne is precisely as fucked-up as he should be, all things considered.’3’I, for one, have always counted Bruce’s insanity as just one of those things which prove how important all of his dead were both to him and to the universe. We’re supposed to feel that way.However: This sort of thing? Is really profoundly not the dramatic tension various comics creators are actively trying to sell me by scoffing — or flat-out mocking — when fans complain about their favorites getting killed. And here’s where we’re getting into the difference-as-I-see-it. The thing is? It’s actually okay to have safe characters drowning in their pain over losing the unsafe characters — so long as some measure of lip-service is paid to the idea that those deaths would have an effect, and so long as the deaths in question make narrative sense. I would be stunned if all we got in terms of the effects of Niobe’s suicide on Vorenus was that one scene of Vorenus rocking her corpse and weeping as her son looks on. The people behind Rome might still turn out to have developed an addiction to the bad crack during the hiatus, but… I’m tentatively confident they’ve done no such thing. As opposed to how we’ve all spent the better part of the past two years waiting for Stephanie Brown’s death to be mentioned in more than just the vaguest possible passing anywhere save for the — now defunct — BATGIRL. In any event Why, yes, Creator Strawperson Two, these characters all do lead incredibly dangerous lives. I’m right there with you. But you need to realize that it has long since gotten ridiculous that some characters are exempt when others aren’t. You’ve created a world on which characters exist on two different planes, where being brutally tortured works one way over here, and another way over there , and where some characters don’t, actually, lead incredibly dangerous lives at all… despite the fact that, on paper, they’re leading the precise same lives as this month’s red shirt. And when you start getting into what the characters who do lead those dangerous lives look like… You start getting to where I call bullshit. In any event, I feel like I still haven’t fully clarified the points I’ve wanted to make, so, to wrap up: The problem isn’t — or doesn’t have to be, if you handle things with a modicum of deftness and respect for both the characters and the audience — that some characters are always going to be safe, while other characters never, ever will be. You don’t see me writing The Wire fan-fiction, do you?The problem is that you keep trying to tell me that no one is safe, and that my anger over various character deaths is misplaced for that reason. Which makes you either one of the biggest dumbasses in the world or a lying asshole. Work on that. The other problem is, well, the question of realism. It’s good that most of you have realized that realism is a relative thing, of course, and don’t let yourself get hung up on moments of ‘that shit just wouldn’t fly in the real world’ so often that neat stuff like heavily-armed teenagers falls by the wayside. I’m here for that stuff, man, and I don’t care who knows it. But I’m afraid you’re trying to have it both ways, and that shit just doesn’t fly. Don’t tell me something is ‘realistic’ or ‘logical, given the lives characters live’ when the same thing isn’t — and never can be realistic or logical for other characters. In fact, why shouldn’t you just throw it out? How much death do we actually ‘need’ in fucking comics, anyway? You’ve got eternals, you’ve got icons to play with. If you didn’t get off on that, you wouldn’t hammer home concepts like ‘legacy,’ and not every (surviving) Batkid would eventually turn into a mirror of Batman. Most of the time, when things like this come up, the people who argue from positions similar to mine say something along the lines of ‘it’s not that we think that things like rape and death shouldn’t ever happen in comics,’ and I’m not, quite, throwing that idea out. I’m just saying They don’t need to happen every time Something Big Happens. They don’t need to be the touchstones on which you work in some Big! New! Cool! character/universe development — especially since, by your own rules, these Safe Characters see, touch, and smell death all the damned time. Why not try something really new some Crisis or another? As Jack points out, the actual central conceit of ‘Identity Crisis’ — that a) the Justice League had been mindwiping villains, and b) that they had mindwiped one of their own in order to keep mindwiping villains — is pretty damned brilliant and new. It turns things on their head. It forces readers to look at characters in new ways, and to look deeper at the universe itself, too. That’s gold . So… why was it so cluttered with murder and rape, exactly? Don’t get me wrong — I’m one of those people who are far more okay than not with how the deaths and the rape were handled. But, at the same time… What the fuck, people? Jack again: ‘When you’re unveiling your revolutionary new garden technique, chances are? You’re not going to announce it with fireworks.’ And please don’t point out that Sue’s rape kicks off the mindwiping. Are you seriously telling me the threat wouldn’t have been enough? That these people somehow wouldn’t be aware of just how much they and their loved ones could lose if their identities became known? That they’re so ass-stupid that it needs to be spelled out in human female blood on the Watchtower floor…? I didn’t think you were. So — yeah. Apparently I’ve become one of Those fans in my old age. There is such a thing as ‘gratuitous.’ In my perfect world, creators would either embrace it with all that they were or set it aside. When characters had ‘realistic’ things happening to them, it would always be meaningful. The consequences would be spelled out for both the unlucky characters and the lucky ones, and no comics fan would ever find him/herself wondering just when ‘Steph’ became a bad word and ‘Orpheus’ a just-plain- missing word. DC’s attempts to have it both ways is both insulting to fans and leaves them open to and deserving of every last one of the accusations of racism and misogyny they have received. Over and out.
’And fans who didn’t/don’t know this… well, they’re awfully cute, aren’t they? I’m speaking, of course, of that particular sort of fan who speaks of being ‘betrayed’ by a given writer/showrunner/whatever when, as an example, their ’ship of choice — and goodness, is this ever not limited to m/m or f/f relationships — gets iceberged in one way or another. The people for whom no amount of good writing, intrauniversal logic, or anything else can ever excuse Character A not being wildly in love with Character B at all times, in all ways. Actually, no — sometimes being wildly in love isn’t enough for these people. The characters in question also have to always, always behave in the manner these people feel is ‘acceptable’ for their conceptions of True Love. Not their conceptions of the characters, mind you — their conceptions of True Love . So yes, cute. And special. ‘ [back] ’Of course, a lot of this is our own fault. Look at the fuss we raised when Blair and Daniel Jackson kicked, you know? And look at the way we privilege the texts where this safety exists, if only partially. On the other hand, I was actually surprised by how tiny my little list was, the way I kept butting up against things like Farscape and Angel, and how in the Trekverse characters are, in fact, allowed to eventually die of old age. (And yes, Data falls in that category — if only because Brent Spiner is a human being with certain limitations.) … of course, Jack points out that they could’ve just done something like have Geordi give Data an ‘aging algorithm’ or some such gentle nonsense, but, well, the fact that they didn’t kind of makes the other hand’s case even more strongly.’ [back] ’ Seriously, what kind of freak is Duncan? How… how is he not completely bugfuck nuts? No, seriously. This is what made me, at best, a casual fan of Highlander. I’d watch the latest flashback death of the latest in the string of horribly murdered True Loves, and watch Duncan fail to deal in some manly, broody way, and then — I just started counting up those deaths. What are you, Duncan? Seriously ? Are you the chosen one because of your staggering, incomprehensible, and really kind of terrifying inability to form even the kind of emotional scars which let the rest of us, you know, cope? Mind you, it would make the Jesus-parallels make more sense. SUFFER FOR US, DUNKIE. BLEED, DAMN YOU, BLEED.’ [back] This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 8:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 7 Responses to ‘Realism? I call bullshit’ Hyel Says: October 26th, 2006 at 10:45 pm This is a reply pretty much besides the point, but I hadn’t seen those episodes of Rome yet (but I always read spoilers, I’m bad that way), and DOESN’T IT JUST FIGURE. Niobe in a refridgerator, goddamn. Not only does it give Vorenus teh angst, it will release him to go about having wacky adventures with Pullo without having to pine for his wife. Unless he’s staying home to be a single dad? I somehow doubt it. Bye bye, strong female character. Ah well. Niobe was always at risk anyway – from Vorenus finding out about her affair, for one, and later the Roman mafia (hah). Considering the setting, it’s surprising that one of the things I found particularly offensive in the episodes that I’ve seen was Vorenus’s initial anger at seeing the baby in Niobe’s arms… We’d just seen Mark Antony absentmindedly fucking a shepherdess without even bothering to pay her. With Vorenus away for so long, if some lordling had called on the lovely Niobe late some night, why does he think she’d have had any choice? What you said about unkillable characters prompt me to mention two shows – both prison settings – that I’ve watched that have done killed the unkillable: HBO’s Oz and British show Bad Girls. The first have given me about three, the second two I-can’t-believe-they-killed-that-character moments. And they weren’t final episodes, either, nor shows where people could conceivably return from the dead. Refreshing! And, in the case of villains (because there’s always that one villain in every soap – and these shows are just realistic soaps with violence – who is so despicable that people will watch the show just to hate on him or her), extremely satisfying.
‘Of course women have equal power. If a girl applies — ’ ‘You just switched to girl.’ ‘I… well, yes, but it doesn’t offend me, it — ’ ‘It matters what you call people.’ Why, yes, yes it does. Thank you, professor and student, for giving me such an apt lead-in. Superman. Supergirl. Power Girl. Batman. Batgirl. Batwoman. ‘And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’’ (Gen 2:23, KJV). Ever noticed that most female heroes pick up the name they use because of a male hero? (There are exceptions. Storm, Black Canary, Oracle, Spoiler, Vixen, Big Barda, Misfit, Huntress, Fire, Rogue, Marrow, Ice.) Most of these exceptions also have gender-neutral names. But have you ever noticed that when female heroes do take male names, it tends to be lessened? ‘Man’ is higher in status than ‘boy’. ‘Woman’ is higher in staus than ‘girl’. How many -woman can you think off of the top of your head? Go on, I’ll wait. Done yet? Here’s mine. Invisible Woman, Batwoman — stabbed off-panel, currently inactive — and Wonder Woman. Now, I am sure there’s more, but off the top of my head that’s three. How many -man? Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Hawkman, Sandman. How many -girl? Top of your head, keep in mind. No cheating. Marvel Girl — old, but still valid. Spider-Girl. Batgirl. Supergirl. Power Girl. Wonder Girl. Stargirl. Aquagirl. Hawkgirl. And that’s nine. I am sure here, too, that there are more, but that’s all I thought of in ten seconds. Now, admittedly, most of these characters are girls. Kids. Wonder Girl is seventeen, Stargirl is about that age, Batgirl is about that age, Supergirl is sixteen, Marvel Girl switched to Phoenix a while back, Spider-Girl is probably still in her mid-teens. Power Girl? Mid-thirties, easily. She is not a girl. She is a woman. Hawkgirl? Also not in the first flush of youth. How many -boy? Power Boy. One. That’s it, that’s all I can think of, and he’s an abusive jerk who doesn’t actually have any relation to the name he’s hijacking. Girl:
a female child, from birth to full growth.
a young, immature woman, esp. formerly, an unmarried one.
a daughter: My wife and I have two girls.
Informal: Sometimes Offensive. a grown woman, esp. when referred to familiarly: She’s having the girls over for bridge next week.
girlfriend; sweetheart.
Often Offensive. a female servant.
Usually Offensive. a female employee.
a female who is from or native to a given place: She’s a Missouri girl. Young. Immature. A child. Is that really Power Girl? is that really Hawkgirl? Is it really? It matters what you call people. Even fictional ones. Because if you think a woman is a girl — with that attendant youth, that attendant foolishness, that attendant childishness — in ink, what’s your problem with women being girls in flesh and blood?
I remember three comic shops located in the same city. For the most part, they carried the same merchandise — mainstream comics, toys, and posters with a decent mix of independent titles — but they did have some variations. Particularly, they provided very different experiences for this female consumer. I went to Shop A — which also offered computer gaming and sold game figurines — with a man and alone. When I went with a man, I was ignored and the shopkeepers kept trying to help the man, until he made it clear to the shopkeepers that he had no interest in the comics and that I was the customer. Only then did they begrudgingly offer me assistance. When I went alone, I could not get assistance, though the shop was not busy. Though I got the merchandise I wanted to the register, I left in disgust, without buying anything, due to how ignored I was. Yes, I was even ignored while at the register, with money in hand. I went to The Comic Book Shop — which carried primarily the comics, toys, and posters and had information for comic conventions — with a man and alone. When I went with the man, I had no problem receiving assistance. I was not treated as a second-rate customer compared to the man; we were both greeted politely and offered help, and when I expressed interest, I received assistance. I enjoyed great rapport with the shopkeepers and bought more than I had planned, because I liked the atmosphere. When I went alone, I received a similar experience, reinforcing the positive feel at the shop. I went to Shop C — which mostly offered collectible comics in addition to current titles, plus some toys and posters — only once, with a man and another woman. All three of us received varying levels of attention, from none to hostile glares. I found some interesting titles that I had difficulty locating elsewhere, but felt too unwelcome to bother spending my money there. I left and never returned. Out of those three stores in that same city, The Comic Book Shop saw the most of my business and my enthusiastic recommendations. As a consumer, I go to where I feel welcome. Overall, mainstream super-hero comics do not make women feel welcome… as consumers or as creators. One flip through almost any issue will show the few women presented in the comic as objects of lust, fragile ornaments of beauty, or helpless victims to be rescued more than as interesting characters. They can be almost-but-not-quite-as clever as the men and must either submit to the men’s decisions or be portrayed as unattractively strong- and wrong-headed. Their costumes are decidedly more revealing than the men’s costumes (which takes work when everyone is wearing skin-tight spandex, but the women do get a lot less of it). Aside from the costumes and hair, they look alike with the same impossible builds and faces. A quick scan of the creators’ names listed on the various titles will show an overwhelming presence of men. Just as in my experiences in Shop A, my gender is being treated as second-rate while the other is being attacked with not-entirely desired service. As in Shop C, neither gender is getting an exactly positive feeling. Comic editors may argue that women are not interested in comics, but some women want to read or create comics. We just have difficulty finding content friendly to us and finding places that make us feel welcome. I go to where I feel welcome, and mainstream super-hero comics do not give me that feeling.
We interview Carly (Obsessive0514 at the Girl-Wonder forums) about her experience at the DC Nation panel, discuss new developments on the state of Steph, Countdown Arena, the new Johnny DC lineup, Supergirl, answer the newest Stupid Question, and recommend our Favorite Books of the Month. Discuss this podcast here.
Topics of the day for Episode 1 include the Citizen Steel Neutering and our first Stupid Question of the Day: Plastic Man versus Deadpool. See an up-close Citizen Steel crotch comparison. There are some audio kinks to this episode, due to sound file issues. However, this shouldn’t be a problem with following episodes as I get more used to the finer details and keep better backups. Kimberly had to perform a last-minute save with the second half of the podcast, which I’m very grateful to her for. If you feel the sound level is too quiet or loud, please leave a comment to let me know.
It can be assumed most people have read one of those media navel-gazing articles in traditional news media on the ‘new media:’ blogs and podcasts. They can be dismissive or supportive, treat the topic as serious or frivolous. But one distinction I feel they often forget is how blogs and podcasts represent different sections of the new media spectrum. A blog is, by and large, one person. Each post is a person’s expression and opinion, their filtered perspective on a topic. A blog can be interesting or boring based on the writer’s talent with the written word. Spoken eloquence is immaterial. A podcast takes multiple people. It takes topics and expresses them with sound. There are laughs, sighs, the changing pitch of the human voice. Where humor has to be translated through text, one can hear everything in a podcast. Confusion of tone is eliminated by the reality of audio. Podcasts take the written expression of opinion and make it tangible. A podcast is not a blog. And Four Color Heroines will not be a blog. It will not be like reading Karen, Rachel, or Stephen. There will be several people, each with their own viewpoint and experiences. It will be a combination of specialties. It’s going to be interesting, hopefully funny, definitely enlightening, and maybe a bit rough in the beginning. But most importantly, it will be different. But that doesn’t mean that the quality you’ve come to expect from a Girl-Wonder hosted blog won’t be a part of Four Color Heroines. One of my biggest commitments is to quality interviews that treat topics with the seriousness they may (or may not) deserve. Interviews on Four Color Heroines will not solely be individualized public relations trips to advertise a creator’s next project. Nor will they be fifteen minutes of four people agreeing on a topic. Interviewees will be challenged without being attacked, and given a chance to respond to criticisms they might face. Possibly sensitive topics will not be steered away from. It’s going to be journalism. The real kind. So, if you’re interested in these things, feel you’ve got the commitment, put in an application. Try out audio for a change. You may find you like it. For the Episode 0 of Four Color Heroines, I’ve got a little rant I put together concerning Joe Quesada: Still an Idiot in Public, Only This Time He’s Dismissing Female Fans To Their Faces. The Ian Churcill art that sparks my ire can be found here.
