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Women in refrigerators--I mean, comics
Quoth
the RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered User regular
the RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered User regular
Female characters, super or otherwise, are by no means absent from a medium that tends to be avoided by members of that gender. But how are women portrayed in comics? Are they just as awesome as the fellas or are they mostly eye candy and plot fodder? Which female characters do you like the best and which ones drive you crazy, and why? And most importantly, why do all of them have unreasonably large breasts under their skin-tight costumes?
Points to ponder (I'll add more if people suggest them):
Wikipedia's take
Women in Refrigerators
When Fangirls Attack
Points to ponder (I'll add more if people suggest them):
Wikipedia's take
Women in Refrigerators
When Fangirls Attack
Site | The Miami Grindstone | Twitter | Dropbox | Picture by Galen Dara | A list of awesome lady authors
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because it would be nice if women all looked like that in real life
Lois Lane when under the correct writers is one of the best characters in comics. She is strong, yet sometimes insecure about Clark hanging out with other heroines who are more endowed than herself. But she also knows when to stop being the crazy reporter and be a loving wife.
And Oracle doesn't have a skin tight costume.......that's all I got.
Women tend to have two personalities in superhero comics... bland and bitch (ie Huntress & Powergirl). Which is why we tend to focus on the boobs, there isn't a whole lot else to go on.
So, from what I glanced of the H/A thread, that survey gave a supposed resounding no on boob size affecting buying habits, right?
Liars.
You are the most straight-forward person in the world.
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I mean, let's take a look at Janet, the Wasp.
She is a founding Avenger. She's had over forty years to grow as a character, and it seems like the only character development she's ever had was moving from Bland to Bitchy to Crazy and back again. And oh god, the slap. We'll see if my grandchildren see the day when writers have moved past that one. I mean, I've said it before. How many words does it take to describe her? Less than 4, still hitting most of the main points? Pretty much.
By all rights, she should be an awesome, three-dimensional character. She still could be. But it's a damn shame she isn't, and that's the case with a lot of females in comics.
Songbird is one of the best female characters out there. She's not slutty, has developed from being a villain to a hero to strong enough to put herself in line with Osborn's T-Bolts to watch them. And her boobs aren't that big.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Not to turn this into a Marvel vs. DC thread, but Marvel has done great things with such characters as Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Spider-Girl, Jessica Jones, and Spider-Woman, just to name a few with distinctive personalities and are generally not used for cheesecake full page layouts. Well, excluding Cho's work with Spider-Woman and Emma Frost's general fashion sense.
Yeah, Carol. You take that big missle.
Outside of the Spider-Man family right now, I agree.
DC has some good characters, but they're at the lower rung of the spectrum, like Vandal Savage, Jeanette, Ice, Fire, Oracle, Black Canary, Vixen...
Sasha Bordeaux, there's always been something off about her for some reason.
yeah i remember reading that the first time and being like "haha oh my, carol"
This is also the same reason many woman have thin stereotypical personalities in so far as many of them were originally written as narrative objects to male characters. Sexuality is often one of the few ways that can be understood as interaction with them. I'm not going to get into too much detail about this, but I think one of the formative issues is that the actions and agency of superhero comics are seen as formally masculine, that writers can't see writing women in that space.
Also, just going to point out Mystique here. While she's often been written as a sex object by men, the intriguing bit is that Marvel's focus on her as the eternal renegade has removed many of the penalties enacted in stories towards strong, independent women. Because of this, she's really the most powerful female character in comics. The utterly fascinating consequence of this is that in the process of working her into stories, writers basically keep writing her as feminist texts over and over and over again. Her part in Messiah Complex is basically an application of the ethics of care. Her miniseries in parts was just Judith Butler 101. She's the most realistic and powerful woman in comics, and yet that's something everyone tries to stop. And that's fascinating both at a textual and cultural level.
And Natasha had that short East German 1980's hair in those issues, yuck. It didn't even look that bad during her appearances in old DD issues.
scandal savage. vandal savage is a dude. one huge totally badass dude.
there's also the batgirls and now the new question, huntress, spoiler (aka one of the batgirls, i guess), and particularly catwoman
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Sorry, the lesbian thing threw me off (oh ho ho edgy family guy humor!).
And Amanda Waller is badass. She fought Granny Goodness without hesitation. She was kind of based upon follows that fat black woman won't take no sass stereotype but has grown into a strong nationalistic character, who has unwavering support of her country. Which is what I love about her character.
i think this is a good point, but i also think it doesn't have to be that way. i would point to Promethea (alan moore of course being kind of a genius) as a very feminine text, both in terms of subject matter and in technical construction. it's the only thing i know of that approaches ecriture feminine literature in comics (ironically by a male author, but again moore is a genius). unfortunately, of course, this is the only example i can think of, but it at least proves that comics can be done in that manner.
heh i had an acting and directing teacher in college who was exactly like amanda waller. she was a short stoutish middle-aged black woman who was that a double-header of lesbian and republican. she completely kicked my ass. good teacher.
The "silent issue" of Thunderbolts dealt around Songbird and her past (ha, get it? silent issue around a character who needs to scream to have powers) and really fleshed out her character. Her Screaming Mimi days, etc.
Can I just mention how when Kyle Raynor got picked at random to be Green Lantern he STILL had a six pack and looked just like every other superhero it pissed me off?
<-- Loves Kyle
Right. There's nothing concrete about the medium that says it will always be masculine, but that many authors can't see it any other way as an issue of discourse. Culturally or critically, they just don't have the tools to question that.
I will think about this more in the morning when I didn't just screw myself silly doing much the same in the Mass Effect thread, but if Reed's pushing her out then that's still silencing her culturally/textually/discursively.
What was it, in that little book that Alan Moore wrote about writing comics, that practically all major comic characters can be summed up in 15 words or less, and those traits within those 15 words are crammed down your throat in essentially every story that houses them?
I wouldn't say it's as bad as he puts it, but i would say that a lack of depth to characters isn't gender-restricted in comics.
This isn't just comics, though. That's society for you.
And I think that Sue Storm moves the plot plenty. The first thing that comes to mind is Civil War when, instead of just sheeping along with Reed, she defected to Cap's side.
Right, but issues of agency (as powers largely boil down to creation/denial of agency in narrative construction) aren't the same as power (in the cultural sense) itself. I haven't read an FF comic in awhile, but if all she's doing is following Reed's orders/being a member of the "team", then she might as well have a smock/be named Alice for the domesticity of it.
After having sex with him and feeding him a meal that is brainfood for the smart guy (....dammit, Millar).
She's just all around awesome, okay.
Getting back to Spider-Woman, I picked up the first issue this week. My wife looked at the cover and said, "I see why you're buying that."
Yes, the aforementioned giant boobs. So I asked her to read it when we got home. After she finished, she said she really enjoyed the story, liked the character (the first time she's ever read about Jessica Drew), but wasn't terribly impressed with the cover, since it went out of its way to draw attention to her breasts.
I told her that since the majority of comics readers are male, this is how the companies grab the attention of their fans. She felt that she would never have picked up the comic on the basis of the cover alone, and would have missed what she felt was a very, very good story.
Just throwing that in there.
Male characters rarely ever receive that level of treatment and, if they do, it's a valid plotpoint that sees the character react to it and how it affects them (overcome a fear or seek justice for a wrong done to them, etc).
Females, in comparison, are on the fringe, have it done to them to see the reaction on the male character and are promptly forgotten. See Daredevil's wife attacked by the villain, mentally coerced [comic book rape equivilent], sent off to the nuthouse, him cheating on her, moving on and forgetting about her for a recent example of a female treated in this way.
While there seems to be a lot of talk in this thread about the costumes/physical appearances, I've never actually seen anyone complain about how females are drawn insanely stacked compared to the impossibly muscle bound male counterparts. There is complaining about it, but not as a 'only females are treated this way' kind of thing. Males are just as horribly misrepresented and wear costumes that are painted on like skin and so on. Few show as much skin as females, but males also typically end up losing their costumes to battle damage and showing off the six packs and pecs all the time.
I did like how Cloud 9 was portrayed in Avengers: The Initiative when reacting to the impossible body types of super heroes and her being normal in comparison. Was a good poke at that physical appearance topic though.
I guess that just depends on the artist and what we see as their style. The Dodsons do the cheesecake but are consistent throughout, in that everyone is a bit thicker when they draw them, male or female (the same with Madueria, but lol Battle Chasers boooooobs). Adam Hughes is much the same. Immonen has that thin, long style to his art. Cassady has a good grasp of making character looks and appear real, etc.
I wish I could show comparisons but I have no scanner.
Being thin with big breasts makes less sense.
And the sexual element inherent in males reading about sexy men is less pronounced as well, whereas with sex women it's more blatant.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation