Update: I wrote this article almost two years ago, and my views have significantly changed since. Milo Manara is an absolute piece of shit, and his art is most definitely sexist. I am keeping this piece online, only because I still feel that writer representation and characterization is vastly more important than some shitty artist's shitty drawing. And it would appear that in the major companies, writer representation is trending down rather than up, with women opting to work on independent titles rather than with DC or Marvel (with some notable exceptions). Comicbooks appear to be doing well in the characterization department though. Far better than even ten years ago.
Anyway, article starts here:
People love Superhero movies. People know that these
superheroes they love seeing on screen come from comicbooks. But people don't
read comicbooks. Most people don't. But I do. Which is why it really pissed me
off one fine day when my newsfeed was suddenly crammed with articles about how
Spider-Woman's ass crack is highly offensive. Now, I agree that ass cracks are
offensive. Anybody who's ever been on a bus would know that. Unless I'm
especially unlucky on busses. But that's besides the point. Let me
elaborate.
Marvel launched a Spider-Woman title some months back.
Spider-Woman's super powers include pheromone manipulation, which makes women
irritated and men horny. That's not her only power, but that doesn't make it
any less strange. Comicbooks have a rich history of objectifying women, using
them as incentive for men, and stuffing them in refrigerators. More on that
last one later. What makes Spider-Woman's pheromone power special is that while
most female superheroes had super sized breasts and super tight costumes to
make men act stupid, she actually had a special superpower to make this easier.
She could easily have become the most sexist comicbook character ever, but the
writers were like meh fuck that. And just like that, the single most badass
female superhero (after Wonder Woman) is born. She kicks so much ass, that at
one point, she acted as a quadruple agent for the Avengers, SHIELD, HYDRA and
SKRULLS. Skrulls aren't an organisation. I typed Skrulls in all caps to emphasise
that they are a terrifying shape shifting alien race. Technically she'd been
replaced by a SKRULL at that point (the queen of them all, no less), but she
was chosen because only she could handle the pressure. To put things in
perspective, they could have picked Captain America, but they chose
SPIDER-WOMAN. Caps because she's badass. Okay. Badass is an unfortunate thing
to say. Why, you probably don't wonder because you've probably already read a
dozen articles about this, in spite of never having seen Spider-Woman in a
comicbook. And you'd have been shocked. Gosh, how sexist, you'd have thought.
Comicbook readers are perverts and creeps, you'd have decided. I have judged
that you have judged us. And now I'm going to defend me and my kind from you
and your kind. I've already shown you how Spider-Woman is bada- really awesome.
I'm going to defend the offensive cover that allegedly portrays her in an
intensely sexist manner. But first let me talk about where the sexism in
comicbooks really lies.
Women in refrigerators. One fine day, Green Lantern gets home
and finds a note asking him to look in the fridge. He thinks his girlfriend has
cooked something for him and he opens the refrigerator to find that actually,
his girlfriend had been cooked for him. Not actually cooked, just, cut up I
guess. This was done solely to piss the hero off and give him incentive to kick
bad-guy ass. This is a trope that arises time and again. We've seen it in fairy
tales, movies, TV shows, books, everything. Sleeping Beauty needs her Prince
Charming, so on so forth. The woman is simply incentive for the man. "The
Woman In A Refrigerator" is the term used for this trope when it shows up
in comicbooks. The woman doesn't necessarily have to die. She just needs to
become the hero's reason to fight. A variation of this is when a villain is too
powerful for a female superhero to overcome, so a male comes and handles the
situation. Comicbook writers are trying really hard to get rid of this cliche,
and female heroes have become more kickass than ever. They carry their own
titles, have their own problems that are not spouse related, they deal with
their own shit. And the number of good female driven titles has never been this
many- Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Storm, Silk,
Spider-Gwen, Batgirl, Squirrelgirl, She Hulk, friggin' SPIDER-WOMAN, the list
goes on and on.
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| "This is NOT the sandwich I asked for." |
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| "What do you mean that's not lipstick?" |
If we are to take that much context
into the cover, then the Jason Todd variant would be much more offensive. Its a
reference to the time Joker smashed his head in and killed him, and he came
back to life as a disillusioned, vengeance fuelled vigilante.
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| Fun Fact: Robin brain is a delicacy in some places. |
DC ultimately
pulled the Batgirl cover and never released it. This was not good, because this
was the second time such a thing happened in a very short span of time. Its a
short road before censoring starts restricting even mildly offensive things.
Soon Luke Cage (Power Man) will have to stop saying “Sweet Christmas!” because
minority religions are not represented in that catchphrase.
The next issue is their costumes and the way they’re
generally drawn. Reading comic books, like any art form, is a form of escapism.
For men, seeing musclebound superpowered billionaire geniuses facing relatable
real world problems, dealing with them, while simultaneously kicking ass makes
a good story. Peter Parker-financial struggles! Tony Stark-alcoholic! So on! So
forth! We aren’t particularly fussy about the costumes that heroes wear as long
as they look cool. Be it Namor in his underwear or Superman in his underwear
over tights or the Punisher’s simple jeans and T-Shirt. It also helps that the
women are easy to look at. To the most part, women seem to simply accept the
costumes worn by the heroes. Some of the costumes are pretty inoffensive and
comparable to the tights that most male heroes wear. Some of them are fucking
outrageous. While I can’t decide what’s what for a woman, women probably can, so
I asked a few women and men what they really want to see in their cookbook
characters. More on that later. Anyway, times (and costumes) are a-changin’ and
Wonder Woman finally decided that she really needs some fucking pants. Several
female superheroes have been given redesigns or simply drawn differently, while
the newer ones are given decent costumes to begin with. People don’t have
problems with this as long as the costumes look cool.
This whole thing started out with me wondering what the big
deal with the following cover was.
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| "Eyes down, creep." |
And I saw the video embedded in it. And I mostly agree with
the guy. I think that while comicbooks shouldn’t alienate readers, the readers
should have some sense of what’s offensive and what’s not. If you opened that
link, you’d have seen Spider-Man in that pose and worse several times (for
people who complain that Spider-Man would never pose like that). Magazines
which love to have scantily clad women on their covers crib when a comic book
has a fully clad woman in a pose. Another complaint is that the costume looks
like its been painted onto her and that no cloth looks that thin. To people who
have that complaint I ask, when has Superhero clothing ever been otherwise.
Tights are tights. Like these covers are different.
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| If you must sit like that, please just look at someone else. |
People say that the covers can't be compared because the
purpose they serve and the aesthetics are different. But there is literally no
context in the Spider-Woman photo you pervs. Granted. The artist is known for
erotic graphic novels, but take a look at his Nightcrawler cover. Nobody
screamed bloody murder here. Nobody called Milo Manara (the artist’s name) out
for using his tail as a symbolic penis as opposed to Spider-Woman using her ass
for absolutely nothing. Both these covers could offend you if you really really
really wanted to be offended. But otherwise, I don’t think so.
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| "I may not have horns on my head, but that does not mean I'm not horny..." |
I wondered if people were making a fuss just to make a fuss.
Or if women are genuinely offended by the cover. So I asked some people what
they’d choose for their body types, and what they’d choose for their costumes,
given some comic book characters.
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| To make things clear, the lower picture is Image 1. The poll is arranged according to number of votes. |
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| This happens to be in the right order. |
These were the results. Among men, more people wanted to be
athletically skinny like Spider-Man. Nobody wanted to be a lump of muscle
walking around in their underwear. The results for women are similar enough,
but an even number are alright with a one piece swimsuit. The poll therefore
does not reveal a hidden anger among people against sexy costumes, but rather,
there are limits. I didn’t feel like this was satisfactory though. So I asked a bunch of people outright, what they felt about the Spiderwoman cover when the
Spider-Man cover was placed right next to it.
So there. 24 people is by no means entirely conclusive, but
in this context I think we can extrapolate a little bit. A clear majority say that the cover is not offensive, but they would have thought it was sexist
had they not seen the Spider-Man cover. We can infer, that some half aware
idiots decided to take it upon themselves to show the world how sexist comic
books are, when the industry is doing its best to change. Sure, it was, and
still is sexist in some ways (see Starfire costume below - the excuse they use is that she's an alien who explores her sexuality), and spreading awareness is very important, but to
say that something as silly as this is offensive either shows a complete lack
of knowledge (don’t half ass it, half-asscracks are more offensive than Spider-Woman asscracks), or
some serious double standards. For those people who still find it offensive, I
would love to hear why. Censoring one thing wil only lead to censoring another
thing. Think I’m being paranoid? Take a look at this case here, where people are trying to ban a number
of powerful comicbooks because they aren’t like
Batman and Robin.
Aside from stronger stories, check out the redesigns that characters have
undergone recently.
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| Cool! |
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| Way cool! |
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| Wait what? |
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| Wtf |
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| It's a step in the right direction, I suppose. C'mon you lazy fucks. You're not helping my case. |
Now the fight they fight is a very different fight. There are
a number of female comicbook writers and artists in the industry now. This
isn't surprising, considering that 48 percent of comicbook readers are women.
That's a large number, and as with men, a number of them are likely to turn to
contributing to their favourite art form. Or literature form. Or both. Heck,
Gail Simone, Kelly Sue DeConnick and and G. Willow Wilson are among the best
writers in the industry, and Fiona Staples is undoubtably one of the most
talented artists around. They've done amazing things for comicbooks in the past
few years, and some of their books will certainly be considered among the
greats. Yet, last year, in the Women In Comicbooks Panel at a certain Comic
Con, there were absolutely no women. This might be a funny complaint for a guy
writing about sexism to have, but men should be involved in the discussion.
Involved I say, but not at the fore, because, screw it I don't need to explain
this. It'd be like white people saying racism doesn't exist because they've
never experienced it. So this is a disturbing issue that the industry has taken
upon itself to solve, and I think it's doing a good job. I'd like to say that
the men in the comicbook industry have been much more accepting than in, say,
the video game industry.
But again. I'm a dude so I really can't say that for sure. The reason I'm
writing this article, is to separate the issues from the non issues. I really
cannot comment accurately on the degree to which the above problems have been
quelled. I only intend to show where the real problems lie.
Comic books aren't what they were. Editors and writers are
trying earnestly to make comic books more diverse, and approachable to
everyone. The best example of this is the new Ms. Marvel, who had a critically
acclaimed run just now, written by the super talented G. Willow Wilson. The new
Ms. Marvel is a teenage muslim girl in New Jersey called Kamala Khan. The
previous Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers, a white woman. If you think the switch
caused controversy, it did. All switches cause controversy. Did it all go away
when the first issue came out? Nope. But the only people who dislike the
character are a handful of internet trolls. The rest of the world loves her,
and with a gong, she ushered in a new era of acceptance into comic books. Make mine,
Ms. Marvel!
Think I’m wrong about something? Something I’ve missed you’d
like to point out? Have a different perspective to offer? Please, feel free to
use and abuse the shiny new Disqus comment section below.
