[QUOTE=Fiver]
I’ll take this one: Buffy Summers. Faith. Zoe Warren. River Tam. Sarah Connor. Ensign Ro. Major Kira. Tasha Yar. Sharon Agathon. Kara Thrace. Jaime Somers. Agatha Heterodyne.
[…]
And none of them are comics characters except the last, and Agatha is from an indy comic (now a webcomic).
[/QUOTE]
To be strictly accurate - none of them started out as comic characters, but there have been several Buffy and Firefly comics, at least.
errm, also, Agatha has been stripped down to her bloomers on occasion, but nothing like, say, Emma Frost.
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
To be strictly accurate - none of them started out as comic characters, but there have been several Buffy and Firefly comics, at least.
[/QUOTE]
Of course.
[QUOTE=Miller]
You aren’t speaking for the masses, EC. You’re speaking for a very small minority. Most people don’t find the way women are portrayed in comics to be particularly attractive. That’s one of the reasons most people don’t buy comics.
[/QUOTE]
In defense of EC you might want to be a bit more clear about what you mean by most people not finding the women in comics to be attractive. EC mentions the following heroines in the OP. Bomb Queen (anti-hero at best more a villain), Power Girl, Witch Blade, Vampirella, and Red Sonja, all of whom are fairly attractive on a phsyical level even if they don’t have realistic proportions, which is sometimes determined by whoever the artist is that month. So I think EC is likely correct when he says most males would view the images of these heroines as attractive.
I would also concede that drawing someone to be sexy doesn’t necessarily equal sexism. I’ve already outlined why I think many comics are sexist., but to be fair, this can be a difficult line to draw in the sand. Is this sexist? I think it’s hilarious myself.
It seems rather silly that Red Sonja would fight in what amount to little more than a glittering bikini. Then again, in most of the issues of Conan I had he was fighting in little more than furry underwear. It seems to me that Conan and Red Sonja are pretty given the same treatment when it comes to clothes. Although this might hurt EC’s argument about male comic book readers not wanting to see beefcake.
My argument for sexism doesn’t stem from the fact that comic book heroines look attractive. Heck, the males look attractive too, it stems largely from how heroines are treated.
[QUOTE=Fiver]
Well, I’ve never read any Halo Jones comics.
[/QUOTE]
I’d recommend them, if you get the chance.
I’d also toss in Eve Hammond from V For Vendetta. She’s a little more problematic, given that I have issues with her mock imprisonment, torture and humiliation at the hands of her mentor V, but her degradation was never titillating or sexualised: it was meant to be an horrific ordeal. Whether V was justified in doing it, even for her “own good” is a moot point, but it was never fetishised.
[QUOTE=Scissorjack] Sure have. Course, some of us are still waiting for Book Four…
[/QUOTE]
Like you’ve been waiting for the final issue of 1963 and the last 10 issues of Big Numbers?
[QUOTE=MGibson]
Power Girl may be close to Superman’s strength, but her schtick is her enormous breasts. Has a group of women ever asked Clark Kent to show off his ass? No, but a crowd does ask Karen to show them her tits. Has anyone ever asked Batman to look sexy to distract an opponent? No, but they expect Power Girl to do it. Then there’s the fact that they refer to her as Power Girl instead of Power Woman. Even Invisible Girl got an update on her name. Do other members of the Justice League make comments about how sexy Batman or Superman look in their costumes? Nah, but they have fun discussing Power Girl’s outfit.
EC, for whatever reason you don’t feel like adressing many of the reasons why some people find comics to be sexist. It isn’t just the outfits it’s a whole lot of other things. Instead, you choose to focus on only one aspect of women in comics.
Marc
[/QUOTE]
I’ll grant you that Power Girl vs. Power Woman thing – she sure doesn’t look like a teen with those amazing gozongas of hers. (Ooh, that was naughty!) Power Woman would be much more appropriate. Plus, most of us are more comfortable with women being sexy than girls being sexy.
I almost think Power Girl was purposefully invented as a lightning rod to attract the kind of responses you’ve made to the character. Except, what would be the point of that? I dunno. But the huge chabobs in the peekaboo window of an outfit does create the impression that somebody is pokin’ somebody with a sharp stick – a sharp stick shaped like an enormous pair of breasts!
And the fact that all that pulchritude is wedded to a person with near Supermanian powers and a no-nonsense attitude where sexist behavior is concerned also points to Power Girl as a culturally as well as sexually provocative creation.
Frankly, I don’t find Power Girl all that interesting. She’s got a great bod, yes, but a person who walks around with a pair of obviously store-bought breasts in a costume specifically designed to reveal them, who then insists that people not pay attention to the things she so obviously has put on display … well, she’s clearly deeply confused at some level, but given that there’s never been any indication that she’ll ever work that confusion out, she’s uninteresting. Stuck in a rut, as it were.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Well, I like me some hot comic-book chicks, and the Mary-Jane statuette cracked me up for being so incorrect… actually, I’m fondest of Supergirl’s red hot-pants costume circa 1981. When the artwork gets too stylized (and anatomically impossible) is when it starts to lose its appeal, and not because it inspires any sense of outrage on somebody’s else behalf. If some women don’t like the books, don’t buy 'em. If they want to complain, let 'em. If they or the comic-book artists want to be taken seriously… good luck.
[/QUOTE]
I agree, that’s a fair attitude. However, I see a lot of criticism of the fact that women look sexy and that’s therefore sexist, a position no one here seems to be maintaining, but it’s definitely out there. And given that huge numbers of Americans were persuaded that George Bush wasn’t an idiot, but presidential material, not once but twice, it’s obvious that anyone can be convinced of anything if it gets repeated enough.
So I am afraid that it is possible that all the stuff online may at some point convince some comics fans that looking at a hot woman in a slinky costume and thinking, ‘Wow, she really looks great!’ That’s hot! I wouldn’t kick her out of my Fortress of Solitude, even if she put little plastic snowflakes in that city in a jar and then shook it vigorously,’ is somehow wrong.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
So I am afraid that it is possible that all the stuff online may at some point convince some comics fans that looking at a hot woman in a slinky costume and thinking, ‘Wow, she really looks great!’ That’s hot! I wouldn’t kick her out of my Fortress of Solitude, even if she put little plastic snowflakes in that city in a jar and then shook it vigorously,’ is somehow wrong.
[/QUOTE]
Three pages of this thread, and you still don’t even understand what you’re arguing against.
[QUOTE=I’m Ron Burgundy?]
I don’t know what the hell the argument is either, but you folks sure do love talking about tits.
[/QUOTE]
In our defense … go to the OP and copy and paste the link for Power Girl and look at the illustration. That’s not fan art, that’s official Power Girl art by the official artist. It is really hard to talk about Power Girl in relationship to sexiness/sexism in comics without talking about her breasts. They’re the 800-pound gorillas in any discussion on this topic relating to her.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
It is really hard to talk about Power Girl in relationship to sexiness/sexism in comics without talking about her breasts. They’re the 800-pound gorillas in any discussion on this topic relating to her.
[/QUOTE]
Well, they’re big, but I wouldn’t say 800 pounds .
Ones that are “all sex object all the time” you mean? It would be a shorter list if I did the inverse, as Fiver did (although I could do it, and with characters from mainstream comics too). But the worst ones at the top of my head:
She-Hulk, Mary-Jane Watson Parker, Lady Death, Dawn, Vampirella, Power Girl, Wonder Woman, Phantom Lady, Dumb Bunny, Catwoman, the Black Cat, Eclipso, Zatanna, Black Canary, Mary Marvel, and Supergirl.
[/QUOTE]
Heh. I kinda lost interest in this topic so I stopped posting (and that’s not meant to be dismissive or anything, there’s a reason I have sub-1k posts in 7 years, my thread attention span isn’t great), but I seriously disagree some of the above listed characters are “all sex object all the time”.
To take one example, I know I’ve seen you praise Simone’s work before, so was Black Canary’s long run in Birds of Prey all sex object all the time? For that matter, while I’m sure you hate Kelly’s run on Supergirl, her attractiveness is far from being her only character trait; she’s also sullen, angsty, and confused.
(Which isn’t to say that I think the above characters aren’t often sexualized in their manner of dress and way they’re drawn, etc. But there’s a big difference between that and suggesting their sexual attractiveness is their only defining character trait.)
Black Canary certainly isn’t indicative of any recent trends, judging from her first appearance in 1947 when she already had the bodice and fishnet stockings.
And this 1941 debut is pretty much indistinguishable from what current complainers are on about, and as far as I know, it didn’t utterly destroy gender relations.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Black Canary certainly isn’t indicative of any recent trends, judging from her first appearance in 1947 when she already had the bodice and fishnet stockings.
[/QUOTE]
If that’s her first appearance, why does the cover say “At last! Black Canary in a feature of her own!” as if the fans have been clamoring for it?
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Think of it like this. A few decades ago, the majority of comics readers had certain opinions on Germans and Japanese people. And so comics came out that caricatured those people; impressively racist stuff, considering they were written for kids. But hey, the comic companies were merely providing what the audience wanted - a chance to see Superman beat up those perfidious types!
[/QUOTE]
Am glad someone made this argument. Because even if some guys find them attractive, whenever I see female superheroes/comic book characters with ridiculous costumes and proportions beyond the reach of the most skilled plastic surgeons, I can’t help but think of embarrassing stuff like this and this (so which came first, black and Asian people reading American comics or…?)
[QUOTE=Fiver]
If that’s her first appearance, why does the cover say “At last! Black Canary in a feature of her own!” as if the fans have been clamoring for it?
[/QUOTE]
Her debut was a few issues earlier in Flash Comics#86 (the splash cover announcing her getting her own feature was on Flash Comics#92) and aside from a small mask, her costume was identical.
.
