I wouldn’t put Babara Gordon and Cassandra Cain in the same category as Frankenstein’s monster. We’re comparing the attractiveness of the She-Hulk to the most-of-the-time ugliness and monstrous shape of The Hulk.
And I think a good argument can be made that the story of how Batgirl aka Barbara Gordon lost the use of her legs was misogynist. Joker surprises Batgirl at her home, shoots her in the spine, strips her naked, and takes photos of her while she’s nude and writhing in pain on the floor. The male hero, Batman has to avenger her.
In the case of Barbara Gordon’s non-Batgirl life, I don’t know how marketable she was supposed to be past the supporting character role. DC Comics deals in superhero characters, that usually have superpowers or wear colorful costumes. Hackers, members of the police force, family members, etc don’t usually get their own long running series or their images printed on shirts, posters, and backpacks.
They recently undid Barbara Gordon’s disability, but I think it was more of a case of Batgirl not being marketable towards without the Barbara Gordon identity, than Barbara Gordon being unacceptable a Oracle. Every generation I know knows that Batgirl is Gordon’s daughter, but only comic readers know of Cassandra Cain and Spoiler.
Cassandra Cain’s costume was weird. Most fans of long running superheroes like some semblance to the iconic look. There have been many Robin’s but they mostly have the same costume, even the same hair color. Cassandra’s Batgirl costume looked like she was wearing a gimp mask.
Cassandra Cain was the first Batgirl to have her own series, and it ran for several years. Compared to the great sea of decades of comics of varying levels of stupidity that is the Batman franchise as a whole, it may look small and recent, but it was not some kind of commercial failure.
And the spookiness of the costume was a plus. Remember that started around the time Kelley Jones had been doing really stylized work in the Batman books.
This is not to knock the current “Batgirl of Burnside” comics. But Cass Cain was meant to look like that, and it worked.
Actually that’s pretty impressive, 2000 to 2007. I just checked out some of the art for the first issues and it’s got a great manga look to it, very stylized and fun. I think I’ll try to track down the first issue because fans of Cassandra Cain are pretty vocal and I want to know what they know.
I don’t find anything spooky about the costume though. The movie styled black is awesome, but I hate the mask. I did like Kelley Jones take on Batman at the time. Like a modern interpretation of those early Detective Comics issues before Batman fought crime with a smile. I think Jones had left Batman though by the time Batgirl started.
One thing about She-Hulk is that, while she is more femininely drawn, she is still a rather beefy woman. She’s not some waif with super strength, but a 7 foot muscular woman*. That, to me, has always made her seem more progressive.
Wonder Woman has switched back and forth, and one of the reasons a lot of people have a problem with the new movie Wonder Woman is that her build is not big enough. And unlike Joss Whedon’s Buffy, it’s unlikely she’ll be a parody of such waif fu.
At least they can’t get away with that with She-Hulk.
*She’s 700 lbs of pure muscle, though I assume that’s because her gamma-radiated muscles are heavier and stronger than normal human ones.
Dunno… Isn’t that inviting a double standard? If a male character gets the shit beat out of him, it’s just comic book violence, but if a female character gets beaten up, it’s misogyny? I won’t go into the details of your spoiler text, but similar things have happened to male characters.
If a character is willing to throw punches…they have to be willing to get punched. You can’t have Batgirl wham on baddies, then, when she gets whammed, say, “Violence against women is not acceptable.”
Now, the obvious double standard in superhero costumes is documented beyond dispute. Female superhero costumes are much sexier than male superhero costumes. There is no shortage of sexist crap in comics.
She-Hulk is just a darn odd example to single out.
Out of context, I would agree that it’s a double standard. In context though, it seems either misogynistic or sexist. Maybe misogynistic is the wrong word to use, but considering that the writer Alan Moore has a history of abusing female characters not quite the same way the male characters are abused an argument can be made.
However, it’s not just about a female character getting beat up, it’s how this particular story was presented. The female superhero is shot, sexually abused by the villain, became paralyzed from the waist down and her career as a crime fighter ended (at least for the next 24 years). Rarely are male superheroes in the DC/Marvel universe depicted this way.
Except…The Killing Joke portrays more than just Batgirl getting punched. Actually, Batgirl is never shown in costume. Her being victimized is just a reason for Batman to go after the Joker.
Agree and disagree. Yeah, some superhero costumes are beyond ridiculous for females, but showing skin is not necessarily a double standard that benefits only male readers. Women in general can wear show cleavage or their legs, wear revealing clothing, and yet their femininity is never questioned by either gender. Men doing the same, showing off their legs, or wearing skin tight, revealing clothing can have their sexuality or masculinity questioned by both genders.
Sailor Moon for example have heroines that wear ridiculously short skirts and yet the manga was marketed very successfully to a female readership. And yet, I don’t think that super powered male high schoolers in short shorts would have fared quite as well.
Precisely. The big issue with the way that Barbara was attacked in The Killing Joke has to do with her role in the story. She was not injured while acting as a superheroine, risking her life fighting an insane villain. She was injured because she opened the front door. In fact, the story would have proceeded the same way if she had never put on a costume, never been Batgirl at all.
That’s what makes The Killing Joke so troubling. Barbara was attacked not because she was a crimefighter, but merely as a means to strike (directly) at her father, and (indirectly) at Batman. She was only a pawn in the Joker’s scheme, something to be damaged so that it would enrage and madden James Gordon. That’s what people mean when they talk about women being “objectified.” Barbara’s only role in the story is as a precious object to be attacked, and then to be avenged. And that’s not even to mention that the attack on her was sexualized in a way that attacks on male heroes rarely are.
This scene is often compared to Batman having his back broken by Bane, which happened a few years later. I’ve always hated that comparison, because the context and presentation of the two events could not be more different.
What they are referring to is Women in Refrigerators: a tendency to use women getting hurt or killed for the purpose of furthering the characterization of a male character.
Gail Simone, who coined the term, also inspired the creation of Oracle, something that wasn’t going to exist before that. She specifically cited The Killing Joke as part of the phenomenon, which inspired the husband and wife team of Kim Yale and John Ostrander to create Oracle.
They did such a good job that a lot of people were upset when she got cured and went back to being Batgirl. Oracle was something special, a disabled hero and the intelligence-based equivalent to Batman. A lot of people are glad she’s returned in the latest Arkham game.
Gail Simone was a young teenager when The Killing Joke came out, and when Oracle started appearing in Manhunter and Suicide Squad not long after. She did write Oracle as the main character in Birds of Prey years later, but, no, unless you know something special about her relationship to Kim & John, she came to the character quite a bit later, after Oracle’d long been established as a major DC character.
As for sexualization: Have you ever read TKJ? The Joker kidnaps Jim Gordon, strips Jim down, ties him up, and has him manhandled by provocatively dressed little persons. I read it as a kind of sexual assault.
Good point. Jim Gordon is made to be one the “attractions”, caged and naked.
However, would the male superheroes be treated the same way? Not to mention being permanently paralyzed (until Flashpoint 20+ years later) and photographed, neither of which happened to Gordon.
A similar thing happened in Watchmen. Silk Specter is sexually assaulted, beaten, and almost raped by the Comedian and it only stops when the other male superhero, Hooded Justice, steps in.
In the LOEG Mina Harker is brutally beaten by The Invisible Man and made to beg but is later avenged by Mr. Hyde.
I liked Byrne’s She-Hulk as well. I was a big Byrne fanboy in those days, having closely followed his long run on Fantastic Four. I’ve been out of comics for quite awhile now, so I don’t know what’s been done with She-Hulk since then, but I heard good things about Dan Slott’s work, and I’ve always loved Peter David.
Can she actually throw an adult human hard enough to put him/her into orbit? She’d need to achieve a muzzle velocity of at least 18,000 miles per hour to pull that off.
I thought one of her trade-offs, for getting to keep her intellect in hulk form, was that she lacked the (male) Hulk’s ability of “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets!”, so there was a definite upper limit to her physical strength.
Maybe you are. I’m probably the only one who made this lame joke when Peter David was writing Incredible Hulk, and the artist was Gary Frank: “Peter David and Gary Frank. Two men, four first names.”
I didn’t say it was a funny joke.
Edited to add: Darn interposing posts! This was in response to Miller.