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Underground > Comic Books >

The Kryptonite Ceiling

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15:34 / 28.08.02

>>>The new and supposedly more progressive run is being written by a man (Greg Rucka).<<<

Ed Brubaker.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

15:38 / 28.08.02

I think we've reached a point.

Comics, while having a history of presenting women as less than appealing fully-rounded characters, and while there is a bent in them to be mysogynistic, is a medium that, while progressive in some ways, is terribly violent in others. While this violence can be taken out of context as being directed toward a certain group, it's really everyone who is in the shit, even Jarvis (eyepatch and all).

And boobs are good things, unless they draw away from the story.

As well as penises, whatever you want, it's a free world.

Murray Hamhandler

15:48 / 28.08.02

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that Balent boobs are ever a good thing. They give me the willies...

And thank you, Cam, for the correction. I always get those crime writers mixed up. Brubaker's the Scene Of The Crime/Deadenders chap, yeah? I like him. I guess I can start buying the book for more than just the art, then...

16:11 / 28.08.02

Lord, Balent was awful! Of course, the current Catwoman still isn't human-shaped, but the old version was just terrible...

But Catwoman is actually an interesting example of something to take a closer look at here. You (and I'm sure there are others) would color the last Catwoman series as, at the very least, sleazy. But at the end of the run, it was being written by a woman (Devin Grayson). The new and supposedly more progressive run is being written by a man

I'm intrigued by this, too. I picked up the first few issues of the new Catwoman and was completely turned off by the "good prostitute" vibe in a spandex book written by a man. Interesting that the "sleazy" issues were apparently written by a woman.

Having said that, the new costume design is terrific and shows that comic characters can look sexy without being exploitative (or would we consider Emma Peel exploitative?).

Regrettable Juvenilia

17:53 / 09.09.02

Thought people might be interested by what the founder of the Women In Refridgerators site recently had to say about it and the article t.o.d.d. cites (linkity):

That dumb website has been both an interesting experiment and a colossal pain in the ass. It was mostly obsolete the moment it went up, and it's been a moron-magnet the whole time, although most posters of both genders seemed to get it wasn't a big male-bash.
What it did that was worthwhile was spawn some interesting debate, and allowed a lot of pros the opportunity to speak their minds about the portrayal of women in comics. It was interesting to see how many male pros also felt the mutilating/killing/depowering of nearly the entire pool of worthwhile superheroines was disturbing and creepy.

But dang, does that site draw hits. Years after I grew bored with it, it still gets hundreds of visitors a day, and I have to clean out the email box I set up for it constantly. One of my favorite things about the site was that when I tracked down where all these posters were coming from, a sizable percentage were coming from necrophelia sites. Ewww!

I think the site itself is fine. It asks a question, and with little editorializing, allows people who know better to give their own answers. That was its only intent.

But people have used it to show what swinish pigs male comics pros and readers are, and that irritates me. The Harpers people contacted me, and I wrote a little paragraph explaining how much the situation has improved (and mentioned Warren and others as examples of male writers who know how to write female characters), but of course they didn't use that. Not as bad as the previous national article that did a 90 minute phone interview with me about the positive trends in comics, only to use none of it.

So, again, equal parts worthwhile and irritating. But in all ways outdated.

Gail

18:10 / 09.09.02

mentioned Warren and others as examples of male writers who know how to write female characters

As someone who thinks that Ellis writes female characters terribly, I find this interesting.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:44 / 10.09.02

Mister Six
And Oracle getting whacked out the window is by definition mysogeny, I believe. Prometheus is wired for power, just fought the JLA, then whacks a wheelchair bound woman out the window. Oracle isn't an action hero.
But she is a hero. She accepts this as one of the dangers of her role. She could have gone for the quiet life after the Joker shot her, but instead becomes Oracle, lives in a Gotham which, at the time of that story, was classed by the Government as a disaster area and uninhabitable. She is part of the JLA. And Prometheus wants to kill the JLA. And is fighting them. And she has his helmet.
We're not talking about someone throwing disabled women out of high buildings for kicks here.
If the Chief from Doom Patrol whacked out of the window by a female villain, it would be similar. In any case, it's an act of hatred. It wasn't necessary.
And by which logic, if the disabled person won the fight, it wouldn't really be their victory? Or, if they fought, but she/he stayed in the wheelchair the whole time, that's all right by you?

Gaiman using the raping of Caliope to show how evil he can be is not good enough. There are other ways. The reason this is bad is that it trivializes the act in reality. He raped her, what a baddy.

Gaiman has actually set out to justify this, IIRC, on the grounds that the rape is the forcable taking of the gift of inspiration from the muse. In the days of the Greeks, poets had to flatter the muses to be given their gifts, this man obtains one as his slave and rapes her to get inspired. And when it started The Sandman was a horror comic. To me this justifies the treatment.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:00 / 11.09.02

As someone who thinks that Ellis writes female characters terribly

Care to unpack this a little? I'd be interested to see where you think he goes wrong.

13:31 / 11.09.02

As someone who thinks that Ellis writes female characters terribly
Care to unpack this a little? I'd be interested to see where you think he goes wrong.

I have read a limited amount of Ellis' work - Transmet, Excalibur, Stormwatch, Authority, Planetary, MIS, Strange Kisses. In none of these projects do I see any female characters written above the level that might be expected of a junior high student. I see a few sophomoric sex objects and a few men with breasts added, but no realistic depictions of women.

Part of this is Ellis' seeming belief that women do not need to come equipped with personalities, part of this is that many of his characters are more or less interchangeable (Spider/Sparks/Constantine/Wisdom being the prime contenders) and partly that he does not appear to be interested in character full stop.

Matthew Fluxington

14:23 / 11.09.02

I'm with Laurence - Ellis' female characters are at best cardboard cut-outs, but then, with the exception of whichever fictionsuit he happens to be inhabiting (Jenny Sparks/Constantine/Spider etc) and whatever sick villain he's writing, all the characters are pretty much wooden anyway. I've never seen any convincing 3 dimension characters of any kind in Ellis' writing, male or female. His character writing is abysmal.

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