The role of women in comic books, specifically as superheroes, was briefly touched upon at the end of class today. It is definitely an issue that has been talked about, but mostly criticized over the years. It is not without controversy, nor should it be, since for the most part, the industry has done a bad job at making the roles for female characters be more than just cheesecake.
This was especially prevalent in the 90s, when art reigned supreme. The writing (with a few notable exceptions) took a backseat to the art. People bought comics for the art, not the words. If it had a cool looking cover, and pencils by McFarlane, you bought it. Because of this, we got all of the art that is used in research and examples even today showing that the women in comic books are basically just a collection of large and small body parts with little else to offer.
In recent years, Marvel in particular has tried to remedy this fact through a couple ways - one was highlighting the "Women of Marvel" in some of their comics, which was basically a slight spotlight on the women writers and artists at the company. In my opinion, it did very little to help anything. It looked more like a way for them to not feel guilty. Their other effort was a mini-series called "Girl Comics" where each issue was an anthology of smaller stories all written and drawn by women, some of them about the female characters of the Marvel Universe. You would think that this would be a good thing, and for the most part it was, until you see some pin-ups of Marvel super heroines that are barely clothed. It didn't help their cause at all.
While there are some good examples of strong female characters in comics, there are many more bad ones unfortunately. It is one aspect of the industry that I have no pride in.
No comments:
Post a Comment