Women And Comics

In my last post, I started off ranting a bit about women and comics.  I will paste it below:

"As I get older, I, like many others, find myself in front of news stories about gender equality and see people raving back and forth about whether or not there is a problem, just what the problem is, and if there is a problem how should it be solved.  This is something which comes up a lot in entertainment mediums and particularly in movies, video games, and comic books.

The arguments generally are, 'Should women have greater representation?' 'Do women already have enough representation?' 'How should we represent women?' 'Should we cater to social pressure?' 'What about writer's rights?' 'Is it a comic distributor's responsibility?' and many others I'm sure you're already aware of.  Many people see this as a pretty simple question with simple answers of 'yes' and 'no.' In truth, the problem is far more complex and while some recognize that, many others simply make their answers more complex to fit the role rather than explore the situation at hand.  Some will give a 'free market' answer along the lines of, 'Men read comics predominantly, and so comics cater to men, and so long as men read comics then comic companies should cater to them.'  Others will respond, 'No, women are equal and are treated as second string.  Women don't read comics because there are no comics for women.'"

I finished it with a lame ass, "The answer... NEXT TIME!" sort of bit because I really wanted to talk about Marvel's Agent Carter.  But this is something I do wish to talk about.

Women and comics is something of a very sensitive subject for many reasons.  Some take direct offense, some just discomfort, some take it up as a sword, some take it up as a shield, and really it's just a very controversial subject to most who look at it.  As I quoted above, several questions are raised in regard to this subject both for, against, and even indifference to it.  These questions become more numerous, and in some ways more polarized, as women continue to expand their role in the comic industry and comic companies want more female readers, a market attempted and failed at several times.  And it's not because comic companies haven't sort of tried, from launching short lived series with female leads to launching the Tsunami imprint which hoped to attract manga readers which have a large female following.  The reason the comic companies keep falling flat is mainly because they keep relying on old formulas which have appealed only to young and just under middle aged men, or have had men write series they believe women would like, under-represent women in their ranks, and even fans just brushing this off.  This isn't to say only men write and like comics and related movies, but so few women do that I might as well be and some companies are worse than others.  Traditionally, the Big Two have been called out for lack of diversity with Marvel being yelled at harder for being the worse of the two.  DC has been a little better than Marvel with showcasing and continuing to hire premier female talent in the likes of the wonderful artist Amanda Conner and fantastic scribe Gail Simone, while Marvel's arguably largest female writer was Louise Simonson back in the 90's with some featured artists and writers here and there. DC has been very consistent with women having something of a large presence via Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey with Oracle in particular, the current World's Finest with Power Girl and Huntress, Power Girl running the Justice Society, Black Canary as chairwoman of the Justice League, strong Batgirl titles. While Women in Refrigerators, Identity Crisis, and some other bits of oddities DC has come up with, they have remained not bad as far as women go.  They do have the most female characters, though one may argue they are generally female counterparts to male heroes, something Marvel doesn't do as often.  However, DC is more willing to press on and give these characters voices such as Batwoman, Batgirl, Black Canary, and well... Oracle, which are pretty much all people I mentioned above.  Renee Montoya got a lot of panels as the Question as well.  Marvel on the other hand tends to have brilliant female titles, but like all their more brilliant titles Marvel tends to fumble, forget to advertise, and quickly cancel books without real support.  She-Hulk has had at least two volumes which were both critically acclaimed and both were cancelled for under-performing because Marvel basically relied on word of mouth to get that sold.  It didn't help they didn't make them part of the larger Marvel Universe like they do with any other book they care about succeeding.  This is pretty reflective of how Marvel handled anything concerning women both in and out of books.

As Tim Hanley points out, Marvel's upcoming "Woman's Month" will temporarily increase how many women actually worked for them as creators and artists.  He goes on to say, "You can use one hand to count the number of women writing Marvel comics right now, and then use the other hand to count the number of female interior artists, and you won’t use up all of your fingers." And this is damning, because this is the state some people are outright content with.  Some people honestly believe that since some women are succeeding, the job is done.

Bust out the aircraft carrier with the "Mission Accomplished" banner, strap on your flight suit, and strut your stuff because the fact Marvel hires any women at all should be a sign of of a job well done and not simply just progress milestone towards a brighter future.

It pains me to see people who see things like this and say, "There. Are you happy?  We now have some women in comics and so the problem has been solved.  Can we stop complaining about this?" like some people did when a visually black man became president and some people felt that erased all the racial problems with the United States somehow.  Or when people defend the male focus of the industry because of sales statistics while pushing out the context in a short sighted way.  Early in 2014, Kevin Feige made a comment that Marvel wasn't making female centric movies simply because Marvel was just too busy making movies, and many fans pointed to the idea that Marvel had a structured idea and basically if a woman character wasn't really in it then Marvel really was too busy.  Smartly enough, someone did say that if Marvel did have this plan years ago why didn't they just simply plan a woman into it?  It's a good question, because Marvel simply put the Black Widow as second fiddle to Iron Man and the Avenger's movie and her representation in the Avengers was by far the worst of them when they could have had her tied into more movies like they did with Fury.  Maria Hill was just there to say there was a woman other than the Widow, and her part was negligible and pretty much there to make Nick Fury look smart.  Kevin Feige since then has gone on to talk about the responsibility of the industry to push diversity since the backlash of idiocy his excuses have generated (there's been more than just this one such as just not being sure when it can be done), and now there is a Captain Marvel movie confirmed a few months later.  But the explanation is crap because Feige claims it's been in the works as long as Guardians of the Galaxy was despite him saying before the idea of this movie was sort of kicked around but there were no plans at all.  This gives the idea that this Captain Marvel movie has been in work for a long time when it clearly hasn't and was only really pushed ahead after Marvel was getting barked at for its not making female oriented movies.

Now allow me to back up a few paces and talk about the good Marvel has done with women characters and comics.  Four characters jump right to mind: She-Hulk (duh), Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Squirrel Girl.  The first two have been sort of in and out of the Marvel spotlight for years and years with everything from them being Avengers to them breaking down, to having their own series off and on.  She-Hulk has commonly been pointed out as a very smart book under Dan Slott and unfortunately was cancelled due to low interest.  Carol Danvers had much the same problem under her Ms. Marvel books, though the relaunch under Captain Marvel has been met with applause and whistles of glee for a strong woman. Ms. Marvel is a new book not about Carol Danvers, but about a teenager named Kamala Khan who is Marvel's first headlining Muslim character and something of a very unique character in how she doesn't necessarily fit the Marvel mold of women.  Finally is the recently launched The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl who both humorously and confidently goes about being a superhero with a conspicuously big and conspicuously awesome butt (though that's only in her disguise to hide her tail).  The latter two are great and perfect examples of what can be done with female characters at Marvel, and while I don't think they'll be supported and eventually cancelled, I do hope I'm wrong.  But four characters and four books aren't really enough to fix this problem, just enough to start us in the right trend.

But in short, the way women are still regarded isn't right, it isn't good, and this sort of problem will forever ensure a terrible projection for the future of comic books.  Women readership is growing, and if the industry wishes to maintain or further this demographic, it needs to better acknowledge this beyond the here and there bits and pieces. The debate, points, and solutions are far more complex and wide spun than this little article can have and I hope to talk about this more because I haven't even talked about the idea of responsibility, fan backlash and entitlement, why these problems even exist, and why we sometimes refuse to acknowledge them. 

Normally I feel good after ranting a bit (the point of the blog), but honestly I don't this time.  Heck, I just focused on Marvel when there is so much more across the comic spectrum to talk about.  So unfortunately I will have more posts on this.