Video Store Girl at Occasional Superheroine is Rethinking Feminism in Comix.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t appear to do a lot of actual thinking.
The column is a beautiful pastiche of all the ‘reasons’ people shouldn’t complain about misogyny in comics. All the classics were there The appeasement strategy! The appeal to the Almighty Market! The implication that all feminist complaints are on the same topics and are of equal worth! and this led to a quick game of what I have formerly dubbed Stupid Argument Bingo.
Stupid Argument the First: The Wimpy Qualifier.
‘Simply put, 1,000 posts griping about Power Girl’s breasts or the “misguided” male comic writer who had the audacity to write about rape has relatively very little power to change this industry.’
Oh, gosh, really? Guess we’d better pack up and go home.
The column is full of delicious little qualifiers and maybe-sos because if she came right out and said ‘You’ve got no chance of changing the industry whatsoever!’ she’d be buried in examples of instances where that wasn’t so. But by sticking in ‘relatively’ and ‘very little’ she can weasel out of those examples by saying ‘Well, the industry still hasn’t changed that much so what’s the point?’
The point is a) misogyny is wrong in any medium and I don’t actually care if pointing that out produces change or not because when I see things that are wrong, I like to speak up about them. It’s just my shrill harpy way.
b) it does, in fact, produce change, and any change is better than none.
Stupid Argument the Second: Biological Essentialism.
To create witchhunts against artists who draw overly buxom women is to work against biological reality.
…
To censor men for favorably responding to ample bosoms (or drawing them) is like beating a cat for playing with yarn.
(Actually, there are two Stupid Arguments there, but we’ll go with the more overt one.)
To wit, boys will be boys! They like boobs! They will always like boobs! WHY DO YOU HATE ON BOYS FOR LIKING BOOBS?
We are not our bodies. That’s, in fact, the essential argument of feminism that the female body is not the only thing a woman is, that she is also and more importantly an actual person.
I object not to breasts, nor to men who like breasts, but to anyone who objectifies women. Drawing women as permanently hip-tilting, breast-flaunting, sultry-eyed vixens reduces them to sexual objects.
This argument is also misandrist, as it plays the ‘Oh, teehee, those boys, they can’t help that they think only with their dicks’ card. Did you hear that, men? You are also no more than your bodies!
Stupid Argument The Third: The Rape Defence.
Now, we can say that the comics (and pop culture in general) are “teaching” men to make the sexist remarks, to grope, etc. by objectifying women.
Actually, shitty parents, alcohol, and imbalanced brain chemistry have done far more to create and nurture the groper, the rapist, and the “proactive misogynist” than any comic or movie could do.
We can say that! I do. Especially since it’s true.
Oh, but don’t forget, there are worse factors, which are totally divorced from comics and pop culture in general! I love the touch of ‘any comic or movie’, with the subtle implication of ‘any one comic or movie’, versus shitty parents, alcohol and the crazy.
That’s bad, but that’s worse! So complain about the worse one before you complain about the bad one, or better yet, isolate the single cause that contributes the most damage and complain exclusively about that.
And don’t forget, kids, works of art and cultural artefacts have absolutely no effect on you, your parenting skills, your attitude to alcohol, what you will do with your inhibitions weakened, or any of the social conditions that lead to misogynistic acts. This is the most important thing I learned in the course of my liberal arts degrees, and, like Video Store Girl, I’m happy to share my wisdom with you.
Stupid Argument the Fourth: The Strawfeminist.
And anyway, what is the answer? We have editorial restrictions on depictions and portrayals of women? What do we call it? What will be in it? Let’s come up with a theoretical one. We’ll name it the “Cassie Code.”
Awesome. Me and the rest of the strawfeminists will get together and enforce your straw censorship policy in a straw sec- OH WAIT WE DON’T EXIST.
She asks ‘what is the answer?’, answers herself with a censorship code I have seen neither proposed nor endorsed anywhere in the feminist comics world, and then condemns that code.
Oh, well done. That course of action you invented to look draconian and ridiculous is in fact draconian and ridiculous! Have a straw star.
Stupid Argument the Fifth: FREEDOM! OF! SPEECH!
You may have gathered that Video Store Girl is against censorship, which is maybe the only thing in this column with which I whole-heartedly agree. (Oh no, she thinks comics should stop sexualising teenage girls, which also gets a sincere ‘right on!’ from me). Anyone with half a social conscience is against censorship. Freedom of speech is an essential element of a free and equal society.
But that applies to everyone, and thus doesn’t gel at all with the central premise of the post that maybe people should just shut up with the boring clichéd feminism now because it’s not changing anything. This isn’t Animal Farm. It’s not ‘All comics lovers have freedom of speech but comics creators have speech that is more free than others.’
See also ‘Video Store Girl is entitled to voice her opinion that noisy opposition to misogyny in comics is pointless and silly, and I am entitled to voice my opinion that her opinion is based on stupid arguments and poor reasoning and is thus a total crock.’
Stupid Argument the Sixth: Straight Out Lies.
The only thing screaming about perceived misogynistic comix creators does is close off debate and send men on the defensive.
No, that’s two of the things it can do.
Some of the other things it can do are: build community; raise awareness; encourage women to take up comics; encourage men to take up comics; encourage people not to buy misogynistic comics (which incidentally plays into the Almighty Market Stupid Argument you can dissect in your own time); articulate thoughts people haven’t been able to articulate themselves; inspire people to email you rape threats; inspire creators to ask you for tips on how to write female characters; inspire people to write essays on comics; inspire people to make comics; inspire amazing art; inspire incredible T-shirts; inspire debate and disagreement and determination and the demand for more.
But apparently Video Store Girl doesn’t believe this meets the criteria for ‘real’ change, and has decided complaining about misogyny in comics is a lost cause. I suppose this means she’s not going to continue writing her own analyses of misogyny in comics.
It’s a shame.
What was she thinking?

Today’s exercise for the reader is an answer to the question ‘Where is Onyx?’
However, for many readers, particularly those who aren’t interested in the Bat-books or Green Arrow, this should be prefaced by ‘Who is Onyx?’
This is she:

Onyx
Onyx used to be in the League of Assassins, but she reformed. I love this origin. No rape, no child abuse, no special woman!reason to fight crime just a straight story of evil she’s done and a personal quest for redemption. Sometimes she reforms by beating the crap out of criminals and monsters, and sometimes she reforms by sitting in an ashram and meditating. I think the monastery thing is why she’s bald, but it’s also a good way of ensuring that at least no one will fuck up her hair.
Onyx is funny, bold, and very, very good at her job. She’s sparred with Shiva (and survived) and she held off both Batman and Batgirl for whole minutes it was a trick fight, designed to make her look dangerous, but she is dangerous, and she made it look real. (Afterwards, Batgirl asked if they could fight again sometime ‘just for fun’.) She’s aware of the wrong she’s done, but she’s not paralysed by it. She takes a certain delight in hurting those who deserve hurting, but she won’t kill again.
And she’s a black, female martial artist. That’s important, because non-powered, non-white-or-Asian heroes who will just kick your teeth through your skull are very rare in the DCU. Vixen (whose name is Vixen, guys, come on) has spirit-of-animal powers. Empress has voodoo (and where is she these days?). Steel has powered armour. John Stewart/Green Lantern has a fancy ring. They’re all great characters who have done fantastic work addressing and exploding stereotypes, but they’re all powered-up in some way.
Black people should also be represented by Bat/Arrow-style heroes, who don’t have superhuman powers, just guts and ability and a mission. The only non-powered black hero who easily comes to mind is Mister Terrific, and he’s chiefly known for being the ‘third smartest man in the world’ and those spiffy holographic spheres. And I can’t think of a single black woman in the DCU who keeps pace with the best of them armed with nothing but fists and feet and consummate skill.
Other, that is, than Onyx.
So she’s totally awesome, whenever we see her. But we don’t see nearly enough of her. Post-ashram, she worked as Orpheus’ bodyguard for a while, then after he died in War Games she worked independently in Gotham the only independent vigilante Batman allows in his town. She had a run-in with Jason Todd and then… she disappeared.
(Orpheus, being a man uninvolved in misogyny, would normally be somewhat outside the scope of this column, but his mission is relevant and thus I summarise:
Batman: ‘Who is this new man in town, with his fancy stealth suit and support from a mysterious organisation?’
Orpheus: ‘I am Orpheus. Note my jaw, which is uncovered, and decidedly dark. Batman, you do not represent my people.’
Batman: ‘Hmph! I protect everyone! You are an amateur! This is my town! Etcetera!’
Orpheus: ‘But you cannot inspire my people as I can. African-American people need visible heroes! I want to show the black kids of Gotham and implicitly those reading that they can be part of the solution and make a difference. My forthcoming adventures will include pointed meditations on the value of role models and the art of storytelling in inspiring a better future. Also, I am not an amateur, but a professional dancer turned producer who learned martial arts as well, thereby combating stereotypes of straight black masculinity.’
Batman: ‘My dour Bat!mien wavers in the face of your unassailable truth and undoubted ability. Let me help you set up as a Gotham gang leader, the plan being to reform or destroy the gangs from within.’
Orpheus: ‘Sure.’
{brief interlude while stuff happens and then War Games begins:}
Black Mask: slits Orpheus’s throat from behind, like unto slaughterhouse pig, just before he tortures Stephanie Brown to death
Readers: ‘Wow. I guess visibly African-American heroes can’t be part of the solution or make a difference after all.’
~Fin~
There, now you’re all caught up.)
Orpheus is tragically, stupidly dead, but at last glance, Onyx was still alive, and still with the Batman’s approval to operate independently in Gotham. She could still be there, inspiring those African-American kids Orpheus grieved over. Or she could be doing something else. But we don’t know, because we don’t see her, and we so easily could.
For example! Re-reading recent Birds of Prey issues, I was struck by how easily Onyx could have taken Judomaster’s position in the prison break storyline. Judomaster did nothing in that story but kick people in the head and make Mega-rod jokes; these are both activities of which I highly approve, but Onyx could have done them too, and added some ethnic diversity to the roster of heroes*. It’s just a thought, but one worth thinking.
People often sneer at the idea of creating deliberate diversity in comics, and I can’t fathom why. Making a conscious choice to include ethnic and other diversity in the cast of a universe as sprawling as DC’s is not tokenism; it’s a way for DC to fix a broken universe that’s excluded (often unconsciously, often unmaliciously) many types of people for far too long.
Orpheus was right. People need heroes who look like them, to show them that they can be part of the solution and make a difference. People need heroes who don’t look like them, to teach them that the world is wide and competence is not attached to appearance.
We need Onyx.
So where is she?

• –
  Comment on this column here.
• –
• Because I know this will come up: by my count, so far, there has been one woman of colour as a Bird of Prey Vixen, as an operative for one mission. Judomaster may be of colour, but not so as you can tell under her mask, Gypsy is Romani-descended, but is usually drawn as white (like Nightwing) and Shiva wasn’t a real Bird of Prey. I’m sorry, I know that last is an arbitrary judgement and your mileage may vary. But in my book, when you sub in for the Black Canary instead of being chosen by Oracle, and everyone on the mission hates you, and you abandon it partway through to go kidnap a child, and you’re still actually a ruthless assassin-for-hire, you aren’t a hero and you don’t get to officially be on that roster.

The third GRC Guest Columnist is Willow E of Seeking Avalon , who while not related to Shelia E, does share some characteristics of a mixed heritage. She’s been reading comics since she was three, along with almost anything else she could get her hands on that was SF fiction or Mythology.
Myth is a metaphor for the experience of life.
Myth is the song of the imagination, infinite and endless.

• Joseph Campbell.
  I started the People of Color in SF Blog Carnival because comics blogging helped me find my voice. And in listening to myself I heard a strong, black woman with something to say. It was as if I didn’t know how much I had to say, how much I’d noticed, how much I was pissed off, frustrated and yearning for more, until I started talking. I’ve sweat a little over this Carnival. I think I actually thought I wouldn’t find enough links, enough essays, enough anything. But the ball’s been rolling ever since I started looking for more thoughts/talk/discussions and it’s kept rolling. And as I look back to where it’s rolled from I find more and more people talking about the same thing.
  By the way, if you’ve heard and read all you want to ever hear or read about Heroes for Hire #13, then I suggest you skip right past this post, because it will come up.
  I’m tired of being invisible. I’m tired of being seen, but not seen. I’m tired of not being acknowledged in the mainstream, and in fiction and most specifically in comic books. I’m tired of wondering if comic book writers are following the saying ‘If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’
• Being Black is about more than being darker than white people or having hair that kinks to the extreme and puffs out. It’s about more than rap music and braids and saying ‘holla at me’.
• Being Latina, of Mexican or South American descent is about more than spanish language music videos, or being an illegal immigrant or cars that bounce. It’s about more than chola and big hoop earrings and saying ‘Pappy’.
• Being Asian in America, especially at this time, post Virginia Tech, is about far more than having slanted eyes and very straight black hair. It’s about more than Mulan or being Buddhist, knowing anime and being exotic.
• Being Native American is about more than buckskin and feathers and names that seemingly translate like ‘Red Willow At Sunset’. It’s about more than tipees and cliff dwellings, taxes and casinos.
• Being of Middle Eastern descent; Persian, Lybian, Syrian, Egyptian (and a host of other countries and cultures) is about more than being Muslim or Coptic and having some religious ties, however thin, to people who drove planes into the Two Towers. It’s also about more than sand and brown skin and dreams of sheiks with gauze covered harems.
• Being Polynesian is about more than bare breasts and grass skirts and volcanoes.
• Being a Jew is about more than Channukah vs Christmas.
  There’s been a flutter online concerning the female dominated media fandom and a little (somewhat clueless and very patronizing) company called FanLib. Prior to that, there was a very interesting article on livejournal by user cupidsbow about ‘How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor’. In it she discusses a book by Johanna Russ; How To Suppress Women’s Writing. I plan to hunt down the book and read it. I suggest if you’re interested you do the same. However, based on the summary and cupidsbow‘s thoughts, I found myself meshing thoughts and doing a lot of thinking about invisibility for creators of color and characters of color; specifically female characters of color who end up victims of the particular trick of being unseen while in seeming plain sight.
  Have you ever heard how Perrault twisted the tale of Little Red Riding Cap? Check here or here or just Google Red Riding Hood/Cap, wolf, rope. See what you can find. I think you’re likely to hear about the original folk tradition where LRRH ends up resourcefully outwitting the wolf and saving herself. And then you’ll read how Perrault twisted the tale into something for the aristocracy and in it, LRRH became a pampered child instead of a blossoming young (wise) woman. Among the aristocracy a child could remain a child for far longer than mere peasant stock, who needed every hand, and every fertile year from its girls and women to produce those hands. In Perrault’s version, LRRH comes to a bad end. In the Brother’s Grimm version, taken up after Perrault, after being lectured to mind her manners and follow all the rules by her mother, LRRH gets eaten by the wolf, but is saved despite her wrong doing by the dashing woodsman. The old wives tale (folklore of women) gets turned from ‘See the cunning girl escape the trap’ to ‘See how women who don’t follow the rules must be saved’.
  But I don’t want to get into how the Brothers Grimm changed and twisted the old European folk-tales to fit their view of the times, and tried to promote how they thought women and men ought to be by influencing gender roles in their take on the folklore and by instilling Christian values into the tales. What I do want to try and discuss, is how male, mostly white, interpretation made the heroines of these tales invisible as heroes in their own right and subsequently turned them into damsels in distress / damsels in need of rescuing. And specifically, how, the heroines of color get faded away into almost nothing.
  Why am I concerned about this if I’m not a folklorist? Well, I’m black. I see comics as modern myth and modern folklore. And I read comics. Fanfiction aside, these characters are re-interpreted with every new writer, new artist, new executive editor, new head honcho at the head of The Big Two (or even independent hero comics). And black characters are exceedingly rare in this new American mythology, that is when they haven’t been turned invisible.
  Misty Knight is supposed to be a hero, a title carrying character, a strong woman and a warrior. She’s the type of woman who defeats the wolf. Moreover, she’s a strong black woman, who’s proud of herself and knows what she can handle. Black people know strong black women. Most of us have only to look to our mothers, aunts, great aunts, grandmothers, the church ladies looking out, the auntie who ran the street or the block or who just plain caught you being a fool and dragged you home by your ear. It’s a bit of a generalization, but I honestly believe that most black people know a strong black woman in a personal way. I can believe they looked at Misty and smiled at the thought of some relative with a gun and a bionic arm.
  There’s no strong black woman on the cover of HFH #13.
  There are no strong women there, period. And if you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at the original cover pictureand then look at this initial tweak by Lea Hernandez aka LJ’s Divlea and this even better refocusing of the women’s awareness and kickassness.
  Personally, I like the last version, because it looks as if Colleen can’t wait to reveal she’s was only pretending to be held at bay and cut that tentacle in two; Misty looks like she’s about to laugh in the face of whomever thought they were really captured and Felicia looks icked at having to let the tentacle near her while pretending to be weak.
  Maybe it’s all my personal interpretation, but that last tweak by Hernandez shows me a strong black woman. She’s about to put a foot up someone’s ass. She’s plotting and thinking and has a plan. She’s amused that some fool thought that her keeping her mouth shut wasn’t a warning sign. She’s entertained at being thought weak.
  She’s a hero caught in media res.
  She’s plainly not invisible.
  This is her Fairy Tale.
  In most comic works if a black protagonist is mentioned at all, the text might say she’s a strong black woman but the artist often doesn’t take the time to make the character look like a strong black woman; no broad noses, no distinctive hair, no full lips, no dark skin, no determination in her eyes or the quirk of her lips. I have a whole other rant about non-graphic novel books where the authors try to describe a black person as being ‘deeply tanned’ as if being black had nothing to do with a history of oppression, struggle and slow progress, economic and educational complications and the lost culture of a multitude of tribes and instead has more to do with being an avid sunbather. Right now, however, I’m trying to focus on how someone not me, not black, perhaps, can point to HFH #13 and go ‘There’s the strong black woman’, and not get that I don’t see her. They won’t get that there’s nothing and no one there.
  Misty isn’t the only character who somehow lost her ethnic background. All through 2006 and into 2007, I kept having to be reminded that Marvel’s Ultimate Wasp is Asian. You could have knocked me over with a spoon each time. All I saw was black hair, pale skin. Where was the Asian identity? Were there cultural references in the text? Was I supposed to notice her eyes? Though how do you tell if a female character is Asian, when they’re all drawn with ‘cat-like’ slanted eyes and dark shadows of eyelashes? How do you tell if a female character is Asian when just by being female a character is meant to be somehow ‘exotic’; when certain ethnic traits are reduced to a sexy factor and spread around to all the women, how do you tell if a character isn’t ‘exotic white’? How do you tell Storm is black, if you don’t know her, when she doesn’t always look it?
  I love the character of Storm in Marvel’s X-Men. But there were instances growing up where, depending on colourist, Storm with her white hair and blue eyes came across to me as more Afrikaner than African. And I began to assume they wanted to deal with the jungles and wide open plains of Africa for the exotic factor and they wanted a native character, so there was Storm. I couldn’t have explained my thoughts like that at the time, I was fairly young. But I wasn’t too young for my mind to somehow know that something was off. I wasn’t too young for it to be held in the back of my thoughts that Storm was African because Africa was exotic. And with each new interpretation of Storm, aside from the cartoon version in Evolutions Storm was not African, to me, because she was meant to be a strong, regal black woman. Her blackness seemed an incidental plot point, used for ‘a very special issue of’ or in relation to a ‘a very special crossover with’ and it almost always had to do with her being a living goddess to certain tribes; the untouchable and awe inspiring exotic.
  I think the writers and creators to this day don’t realize that by excluding that part of her character, they’re the ones who make bringing it up a ‘big deal’ and ‘issue related’. There have been rounds on livejournal between the majority white fandom and the fans of color, over how Black characters are treated as alien and other. Except in comic book fandom, it’s the creators who seem to think they can’t just treat a character as a character with their history and what’s generalized about their personality. If a character is black/asian/non-white ethnic, they have to be vibrantly stereotypically black/asian/non-white ethnic, or else exotic and mysterious and not easily understood. And in between those two portrayals, the only other option chosen is to treat them as if they aren’t ethnic at all, and forget the color of their skin, or the shape of their eyes or their possible life experiences and treat them as white. And thus the huge scope of their lives (themselves) as non-white (females) is ignored or forgotten and thus made invisible.
  If they just had her consistently darker than ‘tanned’; if they just dropped a few lines of Storm dealing with being Black in America; if they just showed The Wasp talking to her parents, perhaps, or fitting in in plain clothes among other Asian Americans; then there wouldn’t need to be ‘very special issues’ and if a plot point came up about their characters, it’d be more about them and less about Storm’s sometimes brown skin with blue blue eyes or Janet’s strangely submissive behavior.
  I’ve heard about how characters who are gay simply don’t get used in group team-ups when they’re obviously part of the team. And yes, that’s a form of invisibility. However, I don’t know if that version of invisibility is quite as kick-to-the-stomach as being told the person with a one percent darker pigmentation than everyone else, with caucasian features; blue eyes, long flowing hair etc, is meant to be you as the super heroine (the young Black girl reading). Or that the intelligent girl who doesn’t even look Asian, but is somehow playing the submissive Asian wife is suppose to be you (the young Asian girl reading).
  You can always imagine gays in the background, or seek subtext among the characters in the foreground. If you don’t draw, I’m not sure how you’re meant to re-style for blackness, the character that’s set up as ‘your’ hero. So at least in terms of self-identification, it’s more painful for me, to not see black characters fighting and winning and dynamic in comic books and I’m more likely to talk about that, than I am to talk about how unoriginal Katherine Kane is as a lesbian super hero. Because it’s not just that ethnic women are made more in tune with the dominant (white) culture’s concepts of attractiveness. It’s that everything that makes them not-white gets rubbed out, erased, re-drawn, ignored, There’s nothing there for young girls of color or grown women to see as themselves in a Fairy Tale or Power Fantasy. But then we’re told ‘But she’s right there, up in front! We’re telling her story!’’
  They erase her, put up a shell, fetishize it and then expect accolades.
  That hurts me more than the forgotten by the wayside Kate Kane (though I do have some serious ranty thoughts about lesbian invisibility and Renee Montoya walking around now without a face)
  In HFH, if you don’t know Colleen is Asian, how would you guess? If you didn’t know Misty is Black, how would you know? They lightened her skin, they messed with her hair, they ripped open her top to make her more of a sex object that a person, they thinned her lips and they took away the appearance of inner strength. If I didn’t already know who they were, I wouldn’t pick up the book. And in truth at first on seeing the cover I didn’t recognize them. Looking at that cover, I didn’t feel as if I belonged. I felt as if the power fantasies I want to see are nothing but the fetish fantasies of the creators. I couldn’t see the story of the cunning girl who’d trick and win over the wolf.
  I’m not invisible. I do exist as a fan of color. I am a comics and SF fan. I want to be seen. I want characters like me. I want them to be seen. There are black female soldiers in Iraq. There are Asian police women. There are daredevils of East Indian and Native American heritage. There is inspiration all around in everyday living, in most cities in America for powerful female characters of color. And if the bulk of the writers are in LA, Calif, or NYC, NY, then they really should know from a simple BART or Metro train ride that Latinas can speak perfectly good english and black hair isn’t straight in the front, puffy in the back, and sometimes the feistiest looking teenage female in the car looks to be from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong or China.
  Others can speak more eloquently than I about ‘whitewashing’. But I wanted my chance. Especially since I’m not too tired (yet?) to scream loud and long to make myself heard and seen.
  I want to see myself reflected in our modern myths, in these powerful tales of courage and wit, bravery, sacrifice and determination. I want my own heroes (those just like me through appearances, background or ethnicity) to be weaved into the general tapestry. I want the lessons learned and encouragements given to apply to me (and other women like me). I want to see aspects of my dreamings.
  After all, I am here, I am present and active and loving and strong and interacting with different human beings all the time. My life experience counts.
• – –
  Interact here.
• – –
  If you’d like to support creators and fans of color, here are a few links to follow:
  The Carl Brandon Society, if you want to get involved in increasing awareness and representing fans of colour.
  EAR: Entertainment Arts Research is a black owned gaming company, that participates in the The Urban Video Game Academy.
  The Urban Voice of Comics, a magazine stressing that they serve the forgotten multicultural market for comics and all things related.
  NewWave Comics, a division of NeWave Enterprises, which devotes itself to multicultural and ethnic entertainment comic books and related products.
  Gettosake A popculture production studio featuring people of color in short films, comics and cartoons mostly for commercial products and branding.

Girls Read Comics (And They’re Pissed) is an archived blog; I don’t expect to make any further updates.
I’m still active on the forums and in Girl-Wonder.org. For more about my other work, including my young adult books (and lots of feminism, and occasional comics mentions), check out my website and my blog.
I remain incredibly grateful to all the many excellent readers who sent email, commented on the forums, or just sat and read what I wrote and thought about it. You people are fabulous; really, for two years, you regularly made my week. My special thanks to my guest columnists, for contributing such wonderful work, and to Betty, for wrangling recalcitrant internets.

Oh, hey! It’s been a while! You see, I was under deep cover in an undisclosed location.
By ‘deep cover’, I mean ‘the duvet’, and by ‘undisclosed location’, I mean ‘my bedroom’.
Anyway, I’m back, lured by the tantalizing scents of bad copy and casual sexism. Check this out: Marvel’s selling stuff to women now! Women!stuff! Only not women. Females.
The consumer products team at Marvel is thinking big when it comes to females.
That’s the first line. Who writes this stuff? (That is a question rhetorical: the WWD byline says someone called Julee Kaplan, who I will charitably pretend is really sad about the damage done to her perfectly articulate article by some confused intern.)
This one always gets me. Referring to women as ‘females’ is dehumanizing, particularly when it’s contrasted with the use of terms like ‘men’ or ‘guys’, rather than ‘males’. Both female and male are fine as adjectives, in moderation. However, when you want to use a noun to refer to female humans, ‘women’ is better, both stylistically and politically, as a recognition of that very humanity. If you want a description for both women and girls, then ‘women and girls’ is the way to go.
The fashion industry magazine in which this article runs was, by the way, originally titled Women’s Wear Daily.
The words ‘female’ or ‘females’ appear five times in the article, three as an adjective (twice as ‘female product’), and twice as a noun. Women turns up once, as ‘women’s apparel’. When men turn up, they are not ‘males’, but ‘guys’, in this truly wonderful quote:
‘Since our core customer has always been guys, we need to be very careful when we introduce female product so that we don’t alienate our core,’ said Paul Gitter, president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc. ‘What we have found through testing is that we haven’t alienated them, which gives us the OK to move forward with female product.’
That’s what he says. What I read:
One: When introducing things specifically designed for women, we must be careful not to alienate guys. Because when it comes to things for women, it is the opinions of men that are most important.
Two: Did I say women? I meant females.
Three: Also, our core customer is lots of guys, squished together to make one super-huge dude. Subject-verb agreement is hard! Let’s go shopping!
The actual products, of course, are the typical cutesy girl!fare lip glosses, T-shirts that express love for superheroes rather than identification with them, heart pendants. These things are not inherently bad. I personally love sparkles; I have a plastic wand with a star that lights up and twinkles and I adore it beyond all reason. I also note with no little glee that one of the twin heart pendants features Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Their love is so volatile!
What I resent is more of the same gender-specific shit: girls don’t want to be superheroes, they want to love superheroes; ‘female product’ is about specific kinds of normative feminine, rather than ‘shirts cut with space for breasts’; before making anything for women, we have to be careful not to piss off men.
I’m aware that, broadly speaking, products marketed to be appealing to men can also be appealing to women, but the reverse is much trickier to pull off partly because of centuries of gender-specific marketing. Nevertheless, you’d think Marvel’s president of consumer products would have the grace and marketing nous to realize how ugly this sounds, and refrain from baldly stating so.
You don’t have to be a marketing expert (although the one I know agrees with me) to notice it’s pretty dumb to announce you’ve got big plans for selling to women in terms that are so insulting to women.
Sorry.
Females.

DC, after recently announcing the cancellation of the Minx line (my thoughts thereon remaining unprintable), has gone on to announce the cancellation of Blue Beetle, Birds of Prey and Manhunter.
Of course, rumours immediately abounded that BoP in particular wasn’t actually going to be cancelled, just relaunched after a spell, and this may well be so. But fuck it. Comics companies continually lie to their fans, and second-guessing them is extremely tiresome. While I never believe a word about upcoming storylines, I save myself some energy when it comes to cancellations, and discuss what they are actually saying.
I am not actually die-hard opposed to the resolution of series, even ones I really adore. I am okay with stories that end witness Sandman, or better yet, witness Alias, one of the best superhero titles of the last decade, with a definite beginning, middle and end. Jessica Jones went on to other things, some of which are awesome (Young Avengers) and some of which have been pretty pallid (Mighty Avengers), but Alias was no worse off for its ending. Provided Blue Beetle, Birds of Prey and Manhunter hit it out of the park in their conclusions, I won’t mind that they do conclude.
What I, and many other activist fans are worried about, is the fact that removing these titles significantly decreases the diversity of the DCU. These are not just titles where women and people of colour played starring roles; they are titles where women and people of colour were the focus, of the title, and of the storylines. With them gone, the DCU becomes that much more focused on the intriguing adventures of white dudes.
Newsarama asked Dan DiDio about this, thusly:
3: With that news in mind, and to bring in some of the themes of questions that were posted, with the cancellation of Manhunter, Birds of Prey and Blue Beetle, you’re moving back towards virtually all male characters in title roles (Supergirl and Wonder Woman notwithstanding) and they’re all rather WASP-y.
Diversifying the line has been something that you have championed in the past, so is this a situation where you’re buckling down for now, or a rejection of the ideas of a more diverse DCU by the market?
DD: In this particular case, since I know what’s on my schedule, I feel very confident that we are not walking away from any of those issues. Like I said, Birds of Prey goes away, but there’s an Oracle miniseries coming which places a prominent female character front and center. We have Supergirl running and reaching a new level of prominence and success. We have Vixen still running as a miniseries right now. We have Secret Six running, with strong female characters in the lead, we have Power Girl about to premiere, we have Wonder Woman who is the preeminent female character in all of comics.
In terms of diversity, one of the things we did in regards to bringing in the Milestone characters is that we brought in the true ethnic mix that made that line so unique. I have to believe that what the future holds for those characters is that not only will they be appearing in both touchstones books like Justice League and Teen Titans, but also in their own books somewhere in the foreseeable future.
So, realistically, it may seem like we’re shrinking things, but what we’re actually looking to do is to give every opportunity for success, and if these books cannot achieve the level of success and not achieve the goals we set for them, we’ll rest them for the moment, and come up with new ideas and new concepts which will diversify the DC Universe and hopefully attract a larger audience in the process.
This is mildly encouraging, but only mildly. Firstly, awesome as miniseries might be, they are not titles; they do not provide a similar impact upon the common memory of a comics universe. A miniseries starring Vixen does not make the DCU as commendably diverse as an ongoing title would. Secondly, Super Girl, Wonder Woman and Power Girl are all excellent characters, when handled well, but I will point out that they are also all white women. Not since Batgirl (also cancelled) has a non-white woman been a title-carrier in the DCU.
And thirdly, it’s not enough to include women and characters of colour in your team books, though it is an excellent start. How they are presented in those titles is also of vital concern.
If Mr DiDio is really concerned about the promotion of diversity in his books, he might want to take a close look at the team titles he retains, and consider a few changes:
He might want to have a word to Ed Benes about his ludicrous female butt shots in the pre-eminent team title. (If he is determined that characters must be sexy sexxors, he could grab Nicola Scott or Dale Eaglesham, both of whom are more than adept at drawing sexy sexxors of any gender, and who rarely sacrifice storytelling for sexxorness.)
He might make it a point of editorial concern to prevent colourists bleaching characters of colour or artists from portraying them with Caucasian features.
He might want to enact overall editorial policies that actively resist moments of sheer racist stupidity, such as the moment in The Elongated Halloween where Vixen refers to her past self as ‘Intombi’ and a note helpfully reveals that this means ‘young girl’ in African.
He could stop referring to ‘strong female characters’. Unless one is clear as to the specific strengths of the characters, it’s a term that is commonly invoked to describe the mere existence of any female characters in a title, and thus lacks all meaning. (And are there so many weak female characters that we must so distinguish the strong ones? Why is there never reference to strong male characters perhaps because good male characterisation is automatically assumed to be a strength of a story? ‘Strong female character’ shouldn’t be a description of a title’s outstanding feature. It ought to be a default.)
I’m saddened, but not devastated, by the cancellation of these three excellent titles. I’m pleased that the head of DC editorial avers his awareness of diversity issues and his dedication to maintaining and improving the diversity of the DCU. However, I have a hard time believing him. Until I see better all-around portrayal of diversity, especially in comics that merely feature, rather than star, women and minorities, I don’t think I ever will.

Have you heard of Lady Bullseye?
She’s got a really twisted character and has a really fascinating history—inspired as much by [manga and Japanese film character] Lady Snowblood as Bullseye,’ Brubaker shares. ‘It’s explained in the first issue why she’s chosen that name. It ties into her origin. I like to play with people’s expectations sometimes, and when someone hears ‘Lady Bullseye’ they think of a very specific story. Hopefully the story we’re telling completely subverts that.’
So, you know, in Daredevil #111 it turns out she’s a crazy sexy ninja assassin (a very thorough summary, with pages, is here). This is actually exactly what I thought when I first heard ‘Lady Bullseye’, familiar as I am with Bullseye (crazy assassin) and the Dragon Lady stereotype (sexy ninja). Maybe the subversion lies in leading me to think, ‘Phew! I guess that’s not going to happen!’?
But what, Karen, you ask, is her motivation? Well, it turns out that as a girl she was kept as a yakuza sex slave and driven ‘nearly insane’ by rape. (Quote: ‘Tortured. Used. Broken.’) Until Bullseye happened by on a job and inadvertently inspired her to fight back, wherein she escaped and ripped out an armed sex slaver’s throat with some keys. All she needed, y’see, was inspiration.
According to interviews, Brubaker tossed the idea for Lady Bullseye around with editor Warren Simons and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. These are intelligent men with years of experience in comics, and I cannot easily ascertain how they could possibly have arrived at this character concept without once pausing to realize how closely it resembled something assembled from a Make Your Own Sexist Stereotype Kit.
So I have very thoughtfully made it all up.
Scene: Marvel Bull-Pen.
Joe: Guys, we need more strong female characters! That is what the people want! So, let’s come up with a strong female character for Daredevil.
Ed: Hear hear!
Warren: Wait, strong as in…?
Joe: Strong as in strong, you know. Strong female characters. Everyone loves them.
Warren: Well, there are lots of ways for characters to be ‘strong’. They could be more than normally courageous, or be very capable in crises, or possess a sharp sense of humour, or be physically adept, or-
Ed: Physically! That one.
Warren: It’s just that a lot of people use ‘strong female character’ as a way of saying ‘a female character’. It’s become a pretty meaningless descriptor. So I think it’s important to be specific about the qualities that make her actually strong.
Ed: Okay, so how about… She’s an assassin!
Warren: … I guess you’d have to be pretty strong to assassinate people!
Ed: Hey, the kids are into Japan, right? Manga is cool! I like manga! What if she was… a ninja assassin?
Warren: That’s very original and shocking!
Joe: A sexy ninja assassin!
Ed: A crazy sexy ninja assassin!
Joe: A crazy sexy ninja assassin with ties to the Hand!
Warren: Good point; she needs some sort of connection to the Daredevil mythos. She needs to be inspired by someone important in the Daredevil rogue’s gallery.
Ed: Possibly by another crazy assassin?
Joe: Some sort of crazy assassin who was extremely important to the Daredevil mythos with a connection to the Hand?
Ed: I’ve got it! How about Bullseye?
Joe: I like it! We could call her Bullseye Girl.
Warren: Bullseyette.
Ed: Bullseyina.
Joe: Bullseyelle.
Warren: Lady Bullseye!
Joe and Ed: Yes!
Ed: She needs something extra though. A dark secret, haunting her past. Some form of torment that drove her insane and made her the twisted psychopath she is today. She needs an origin story that totally subverts what the reader would first think when they hear ‘Lady Bullseye’.
Warren: Well, I’m stuck.
Ed: I know! If only I could think of something totally original. And shocking.
Joe: Guys! Guys! She’s a female character, right?
Ed and Warren: A strong female character.
Joe: So… I’m just throwing this out there as a wildly original and shocking stab in the dark… what if… the reason she’s a crazy psychopath is because… she was repeatedly RAPED?
stunned silence
Ed: Joe, you’re a genius. That is incredibly subversive.
Warren: I am so originally shocked right now.
Joe: Well, my work here is done! disappears in a puff of rainbow glitter
Exeunt, with Divers Alarums

I would like an extra seven hours in every day and some sort of additional appendage, please. And a pony. Made of gold.
This is by way of an apology, insofar as I make them, for my utter slackitude over the last several weeks of this column. Many things have happened I turned 27! The Secret Six title started again! The Runaways and Young Avengers began another crossover! Several commenters on scans_daily and stupid_free were utterly appalled at the way Genius (my review/interview) hints that possibly police in L.A. are not always kind and gentle neighbours to people of colour in low-income neighbourhoods and there might be some complex and interesting dynamics worth exploring in a comic*! but I have not written about them, because I have been writing about other things, and, not incidentally, giving myself some really spectacular muscle cramps. Also, baking. Go me!
During this period of GRC neglect, many wonderful things have been happening in the magical land of Girl-Wonder.org! Here are but a few:

• Planet Karen is back, with its eponymous author! This is news that’s definitely worth a celebratory glass or ten.
• The Feminist Friendly Comic Book Store Map has been well and truly debugged. It is freaking awesome. Visit and review your favourite stores, to the delight and convenience of your peers, and the honour of your LCS.
• Spoiler Space is looking for submissions (ignore that date). Share your feminist and intersectional activism thoughts on comics and the comics community, enter the caption contest, or scribble up a comic submission. Reprints of material you’ve already published elsewhere are welcome.
• Girl-Wonder.org is partnering with Cerise, the online feminist gaming magazine, for a special October issue on the overlap of gaming and comics! Cerise is looking for submissions details are here! Topics can cover any intersection of comics and gaming, from creative to fannish. What can the industries learn from each other? What are the best game-based comics or best comic-inspired games?
• As part of this joint venture, keep an eye out for Cerise bloggers stopping by Girl-Wonder.org in October, and your chance to win combined prize packs. (Also, Cerise-editor-and-my-best-friend Robyn Fleming and I will probably interview each other again. Fun with accents, and maybe that story about how we scarred Justin Pierce of Wonderella fame with our wild party girl ways. [Speaking of Wonderella, did you know that you can now buy it in book form?])
• Rachel Edidin has stepped down from her Board of Directors position. We are sad to see her go, but she’ll still be blogging at Inside, Out and fulfilling her position as one of the Mod Squad!
• As a result of Rachel’s reluctant resignation, we have a Board seat free. We’re holding a by-election all Girl-Wonder.org volunteers are eligible to run and vote, so get your nominations in to me at [email protected] by September 21st. Self-nominations are welcome!
• A heads-up our big yearly fundraiser, the Art Et Cetera Auction, fast approaches. It’s running October 6 12, and the donated items are freaking awesome. Keep an eye on the frontpage newsfeed as we start highlighting donations on the run up to the auction opening!
  And that is all for now. I hope to resume this column’s regular-ish schedule in the very near future. For one thing, Misfit keeps bouncing in and wondering very loudly if perhaps I would like to drink straight spirits from the bottle, and the last time I ignored her hints I eventually woke up with a concussion. I rather like my brains unbruised.
• I highly recommend Naamen’s take on the Genius uproar, here he also includes a links round-up to other commentators. For my own part, I wish to observe that the people who complain that Genius has a Mary Sue for a main character and is poorly written compared to the other Pilot Season offerings are perfectly entitled to their opinions, even when one of the other offerings stars a famous novelist who dreams perfect translations of ancient tablets found on Mars and who wields Excalibur. The novelist a professional writer then earnestly narrates the caption, ‘Mankind was notched down a peg or two on the food chain,’ which is my favourite line in a comic for months.

In an unprecedented event on this column, I’m going to dial down the anger. Don’t worry, it’s just a brief fit and sure to pass soon.
Your not particularly humble columnist was recently exceedingly gratified to receive the following email from someone who wishes to be identified as an ‘independent comics publisher’. He had for me a request:
‘After reading your column of Joss Whedon, I was curious if you could be of some help to me by providing me with a list of cliches surrounding super-heroines in mainstream comics. I’m not looking for a critique of artistic styles, etc, because I feel that stuff is fairly obvious. What I’m looking for are the sort of things that you and your colleagues have noticed regarding flaws in characters like (1) Buffy, (2) Wonder Woman, (3) Batgirl/Barbara Gordon, etc. I’m in the midst of writing the female lead for my OGN and I’d like to only commit full-conscious acts of deliberate misogyny (joking), if any at all, so any observations, thoughts, or what have you on the above heroines or others like Supergirl and Ms. Marvel that come to mind would be greatly appreciated.’
‘Well, shucks,’ I thought. ‘How awesome is that? Who says that no one listens to angry girls?’ And after confirming it was okay to use his request for this column, I made a list.
How To Write An Original Female Lead Character In A Fashion That Doesn’t Drive Karen Crazy:
Bechdel’s Law: Important, Damnit:
1) Is she the only female character in your magnum opus?
Is her position within an ensemble cast ‘the girl’? As in, you have ‘geeky guy’, ‘strong guy’, ‘goofy guy’ and ‘the girl’? WARNING WARNING WARNING.
If you have only one female character, then it had better be airtight justified by the setting/plot, and she should be scrupulously backgrounded and fleshed out. And seriously, best not to do this at all. Throw some more female characters in there, preferably of different ethnicities, body shapes and ages, as appropriate. Don’t fall into the ‘default gender = man’ trap.
2) Does she talk to other women?
3) … about something other than a man?
Random selections from my personal experience over the last 24 hours shows women talking to each other about: comics; booze; the Israel/Lebanon crisis; travel plans; their neighbours’ kids; novel editing; RPGs; Ani DiFranco’s new album; anal sex; the vast number of people who write for public consumption who really can’t write; internet trolls; work; the weather; and Disneyland.
Basically, is she a real person? Real people talk about all sort of crap and a little off-hand dialogue goes a long way. Check out Birds of Prey, Alias and Ex Machina, where women talk to each other about men, but also, among other things, about food, their costumes, their jobs, art and politics.
Character Design:
4) What is she wearing?
Is it appropriate to the climate/society/personality/powers/financial circumstances/occupation of the wearer, or at least as appropriate as what the men around her are wearing? Is she wearing it for herself, or for her readers?
Supergirl wearing a frilly almost-skirt which magically never shows her underwear sewn for her by Ma Kent is character-assassinating fanservice. Power Girl’s famous boob window can be either ‘strong woman proud of her body’ or ‘LOOK BOYS BOOBIES’, depending on the artist, the writer, and the reader.
If you find yourself saying things like ‘But she just won’t be as sexy in cargo pants,’ stop and ask yourself a) why you think your female lead character must be sexy and b) whether this is a character design imperative for your male characters (and why not?).
5) Was she/is she going to be raped?
Many, many female characters in comics have been raped or sexually assaulted, often to provide motivation for male characters or to prove that her rapist is really, really evil, really! Because her rape is, oddly, all about him.
Rape is a tricky topic, since studies show something like one in four of women in the First World can describe being sexually assaulted, often by people they know. In developing nations, stats are harder to acquire (especially since in many cultures being raped outside marriage is proof of non-chastity and rape within marriage is perfectly legal) but it’s generally shown to be higher still. So a lot of women in the world have been raped, and it’s numerically realistic for at least one of your many female characters to be one of them.
But does the reader really need to know she’s been raped? Is it vital to the story? Not all of the character-building process needs to be explicit on the page.
If you must write about rape, and think you can handle this topic with sensitivity and a lack of sensationalism, proceed with extreme caution. Particularly avoid ‘this is the only reason she’s fighting/causing crime’ or ‘it’s not actually her reaction to the rape we’re concerned with, but that of her male romantic interest/colleagues/friends.’
Feminism In Comics:
6) If she objects to sexism, make sure it’s actually sexist.
I adore Carol Danvers from the tips of her blonde hair to the soles of her kicky black boots, but when Ms. Marvel was descending into an alcoholic mess, she dismissed objections to her increasing recklessness as ‘It’s just because I’m a girl!’ when actually it was because she was flying into battle drunk off her ass.
The fact that real sexism exists and might be an issue for female superheroes was neatly glossed over. Instead ‘Sexism!’ is clearly presented as Carol’s pitiful excuse for the negative response to her self-destructive behavior. This wonderfully diminished the impact of misogyny personal and institutional as a real, often insidious force that really impacts women.
7) ‘I hit boys!’ is not a strong feminist statement.
Buffy Summers how I loathe what was done to this character ended up forcing oral sex on a male character over his repeated verbal objections. To a musical sting. The writers, I am fairly certain, did not actually realise they had written a rape, particularly as this same character later attempted to rape Buffy, which was not treated as at all amusing.
See also: Men forcing demonic power into the First Slayer = metaphysical rape and utterly despicable. Buffy using Willow to force demonic power into possibly thousands of young women = empowering!
Women are entirely capable of stupid or evil decisions. But those decisions should be treated as such by the text, not lauded as a turning of the sexism tables.
8) Are misogynistic situations presented uncritically?
Does your creation perpetuate stereotypes and misogynistic tropes without thinking about them at all, or does it problematise them? Misogyny, like racism and homophobia, exists. There’s no reason it can’t make an appearance in your work, but it shouldn’t be endorsed by it.
In the Birds of Prey story ‘One Day; Well-Chosen’, Oracle and Black Canary engage in some slut-shaming of Huntress. Misogyny! Then they realise they screwed up and make amends. Misogyny criticised within the text!
9) If you’re a man, consider getting a female feminist pre-reader.
If you’re a guy, you have male privilege. This is not your fault. However, even if you’re a feminist, your privilege may well be blinding you to parts of your work that might be offensive or dumb. Why not ask a female feminist to read over your script? She isn’t every woman, or every feminist, but she might be able to spot something you missed.
If this sounds like a lot of effort to go to just to keep the feminists happy, remember it’s not about that. Presumably, you want to write the best damn comic you can. Realistic female characters = good characterisation. Good characterisation = good writing.
Finally: I am neither every woman nor every feminist. What do you think, dear readers? What character stereotypes piss you off? What have I missed? What have I got, in your opinion, plain wrong?

Following yet more reports of harassment at conventions, Girl-Wonder.org was moved to action. We are proud to launch the Con Anti-Harassment Project.
(Because conventions should be fun.)
The Con Anti-Harassment Project is a grass-roots campaign designed to help make cons safer for everyone. Our aims are to encourage fandom, geek community and other non-business conventions to establish, articulate and act upon anti-harassment policies, especially sexual harassment policies, and to encourage mutual respect among con-goers, guests and staff.
We offer a con database with contact information, template letters for writing to con organizers, policy tips for con organizers who want to establish such a policy, and a moderated safe-space forum available for those who want to discuss their experiences or accounts of harassment.
Conventions can’t completely eliminate harassment. They can be prepared to act upon it when it occurs, and send a clear message to harassers that they are not welcome.