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Yeesh. The degree to which female characters are just getting smacked down here is really disheartening. Only Emma Frost survives at this point.

Actually, the fact that the only female character preserved to the Sweet 16 is the most dominatrix character on the charts could be taken as funny…

What? No Heroic Age?

We’re now in the Elite Eight actually… (or “Great Eight”).

Er…wait, I’m a day ahead of myself…so sorry…

Kelly is going to be sooo disappointed. What is with the aversion to female characters?

Looking back through the brackets, for me at least, most of the female characters that I do like ended up being matched against another character I just happen to like even more. Rogue and Nightcrawler, She Hulk and Dakseid, Catwoman and Joker and a few others. Just the way the bracket worked out for me. And several of the female characters I just find boring and didn’t vote for, but that goes for the male characters too.

So it appears that Darkseid over Kitty was the big pattern breaker here. Every Bracket besides hers is 1st vs 5th and 2nd vs 3rd seeds. She is the only 3rd seed to lose to the 6th here OH NOES!

damn you Cronin!!! Doom doesn’t stand a chance against sad sack Spidey!!! you seeded him this way on purpose, didn’t you? OH HE’LL GET HIS REVENGE ON YOU, CRONIN. DOOM WILL GET HIS REVENGE!

Mary’s right, I’m disappointed…combined with pissed, but not really surprised unfortunately.

I suppose it’s fitting in some bizarre backwards way that only Emma Frost made it to the elite 8 (although up against Wolvie she’s sure to not advance beyond that)…but no wonder comics constantly piss me off…no Wonder Woman, Rogue, Kitty, Storm, She-Hulk, Power Girl, no CATWOMAN or ORACLE?!?!?

I give up. Bah!

Can’t say I’m surprised either. I was a little disappointed that Oracle went down so early, but I didn’t think that any of the others stood any chance of reaching the top 8. No matter how popular Catwoman, she wasn’t going to beat out Batman’s premiere villain. Same with Wonder Woman against the iconic Superman. Darkseid with his combination of Kirby and recent exposure was responsible for several more.

The bigger surprise to me was the amount of anti-x sentiment. I don’t enjoy any of Marvel’s x-titles anymore and it looks like many others agree with me. Even the sole surviving female character made it in part because she went up against ANOTHER x-character.

I would like to put in a vote for next year to select the brackets based on another criteria? Perhaps exclude the non-tights characters since those matchups always look odd. Perhaps base it on which characters are featured in the major events of the year?

I have to disagree with the outcome of Spidey and the Thor match.

danar: 3 of the top 8 are X-Characters. I don’t think there’s an anti-X-Men bias here.

How is Superman a 9 seed? Really?

Batman and Captain America made it to the Final Four last year, Superman did not, so he’s behind both of those guys, hence the seed.

Why is so much of this site the past year filled with disgruntled feminist complaints? Us nonwhite minorities have way more to complain about in this tournament than women do. Get over it already.

Man am I dreading the bitching we’ll see around here when Marvel does its women month.

Batman vs Grayson is interesting.

@T. “marvels women month”

Is already nearly over, since it was supposed to be in March. Guess you survived it.

I’d argue that bitching about people having views that don’t match your own, is at least as annoying and counter productive as “disgruntled feminist viewpoints”.

T has a point tho, the ONE non-white character in the whole tourney went down in the first round. Talk about lack of representation! And no Sinestro and Darkseid don’t count…

I just hope it doesn’t come down to Kyle vs Hal.

T does have a point. But there was more than one non-white character. Both Storm and Luke Cage went down in the first round. And even though he’s not always portrayed as such, I’m pretty sure Black Adam is supposed to be Egyptian or Middle Eastern. But again, he also lost in the first round. And other than that, all white folks, not counting random colored aliens.

So if that’s how you want to judge things, T has a much bigger gripe than Kelly or Mary do.

I think T totally has a point…the representation of minorities on the list (and in comics) is borderline abhorrent…but if that’s a point T (or anyone) wants to make…then make it. Don’t just take a swing at feminists and others interested in talking about female representation on the list (and in comics in general) because they have a view that doesn’t synch up with yours. It’s childish, counter productive, and just kind of rude.

I think the biggest problem is that there were no major non-white characters created in the Golden Age, only two in the Silver Age, and just a few in the Bronze Age. So it’s not that surprising that only two were included in this contest. There have been a lot more in the Modern Age (or shouldn’t it be Iron Age?), but from the looks of things, it seems there are very few modern characters of any ethnicity that can rank alongside the classics. Female characters have been around much longer, although they were rarely given much importance until the ’70s and ’80s (and often not even then). So it’s not that surprising that they’ve fared a bit better than non-white characters.
(So far, nobody has complained about the lack of Gay characters. Or the fact that both of the disabled characters have been eliminated already.)

Hey! Kelly and I responded at the same time! (Her response wasn’t there when I started typing anyway.)
Hi Kelly.

Hi Mary

Ok, I guess I’ll take a swing.

I think a large part of the reason there is only one female character left at this point has a lot to do with the same reasons Mary Warner points out about non-white characters. Less of them were created in comic’s early days. And on top of that, a lot that were created were basically just female versions of already established male characters (She-Hulk and Power Girl, for example.)

I have a hard time believing anyone that voted in this poll thought to themselves “I’m going to vote against female characters.” The female characters just ended up against more popular characters than they are. As great a character as Oracle may be objectively (and I like Oracle, and voted for her in the first round), do you actually think she’d beat Daredevil in a popularity contest? As crappy as his movie may have been, Oracle hasn’t had a movie. This is 100% a popularity contest of a genre media that has historically been created and consumed by males. Of course the male characters are going to do better. It would be like complaining that a public poll of the top 10 movie action heroes doesn’t have more women represented. It’s not to say there isn’t an underlying problem, just that being surprised about it in a popularity contest like this seems out of place.

Like I said, I had hopes for Oracle. Sure Daredevil had a really crappy movie, but Oracle had a crappy tv show!

As for 3 x-characters making it to the top 16, I don’t think there is a bias per se, but I think the X-popularity is definately dropping. There were 11 starting with 8 in the same region, so it would be difficult for them to not make the 16 at all. That said, let’s look at some numbers. Originally, DC had about 36 characters in the tournament with 10 making it to the sweet sixteen or 27.8% advancement. Marvel had 28 characters with 6 in sweet sixteen or 21.4% advancement. X characters had 27.27% advancement. Every other group that advanced (with the exception of the Avengers) had a better rate. Considering that the X-titles rivaled the two other massive rotating (Avengers and JLA/JSA), it had a pretty low rate of advancement.

Teen Titans, Bat Family, Green Lanterns, real Avengers : 50%. JLA/JSA : 35%. Fantastic Four, Super Family 33%. Vertigo : 28.6%. Shazam : 0%
(“real” Avengers : Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye. I calculated “expanded” Avengers had a 21.4% advancement.)

The only thing that upsets me is that i have never heard of this before. I just stumbled across it today. Does anyone think it would be better if they had DC characters on one side of the bracket and Marvel on the other?

@ Kelly Thompson:

I suppose it’s fitting in some bizarre backwards way that only Emma Frost made it to the elite 8 (although up against Wolvie she’s sure to not advance beyond that)…but no wonder comics constantly piss me off…no Wonder Woman, Rogue, Kitty, Storm, She-Hulk, Power Girl, no CATWOMAN or ORACLE?!?!?

I give up. Bah!

Don’t give up.

If anything, then this poll shows the virtues of pushing one set of characters forward. Hal Jordan would’ve been an early out 15 years ago. None of the DC “legacies” would have performed nearly as well prior to DC beating the concept into our heads for the last decade. Power Girl would not have escaped the first round prior to Palmiotti-Gray-Conner.

On the other hand, out of sight tends to mean out of mind. All the Sandman characters got wiped out quickly.

Gail Simone is back working on BoP, so maybe next year will be different.

Kelly, if you’re pissed, you should probably be more angry at the comics creators and marketers than at the voters (and maybe that was where your ire was directed). The problem probably stems most from the fact that the creators generally haven’t made the female characters as interesting as the male ones.

That isn’t always the case, of course (I voted Jessica Jones over Tim Drake and Catwoman over The Joker).

But a lot of times, even if a character is great, she doesn’t have the same marketability as other characters or maybe hasn’t been involved in quite as epic stories. A hyper-capable woman in a wheelchair will never look as marketable as an athlete with a bat on her chest. And further, Oracle just hasn’t been involved in storylines as well-recognized as epic as Daredevil (who has some of the best creator runs of any hero and a lot of stories that are far better than anything even Spider-Man ever got). I think with Power Girl a lot of people still don’t really feel comfortable with how she (through creator fiat) has chosen to represent herself. Where heroes typically hold their icon (bat or spider or es or four…), she demonstrates that her icon is cleavage. Which is fine for her and I understand why she might use that as a symbol of her girl power, but if I’m reading a comic on the bus, I don’t want it to be hers because I would get tired of having to explain her to everyone who looks at me because I’m reading a book that looks exploitative. Storm has just seemed…vacant. For a long time. Rogue is diminished by her association with Gambit. I used to think she had a lot of potential and maybe she still does, but when about 1990 hit, the tying of her to one of the chief emblems of what was wrong with the ’90s was a big smudge on her record. It would be like if she fell for Carnage.

All that said, Emma Frost baffles me. I find her repellent. The character for me was not redeemed by Morrison’s reinvention of her. *shrug* I probably even would have voted Punisher over her (another character I don’t enjoy).

Is already nearly over, since it was supposed to be in March. Guess you survived it.

I was already burnt out from the griping from March’s women’s month issues around here. But I thought there was another female oriented publishing initiative from Marvel coming up called “Marvel Her-oes?” Am I wrong or did that pass already too?

Anyway, the reason female protaganists aren’t that popular in superhero books? Because it’s typically a male-oriented genre with an overwhelmingly male audience. If you take a typically female-oriented genre with an overwhelmingly female audience, you find mostly female protagonists.

You don’t see guys bitching that most protagonists in romance novels are female, do you? You don’t see female fans of romance acting as apologists for this fact either, do you? So why can’t people understand why the same logic works here as well?

A lot of great points guys.

And to be clear, I’m not mad at the voters. It’s just my usually frustration that women in comics aren’t kind of ‘further ahead’ of where we are in 2010 that they stand a chance in a competition like this. And they don’t. I could see that it was going to be a tough low win road on day one of the tournament.

Also, as I said in my comment above, I’m not surprised. Frustrated, but not surprised. I WAS surprised that WW got trounced by Superman by 72% – because that percentage seems really high, but otherwise I’ve not been surprised that the ladies have kept losing. I would have thought Kitty had a better shot of making it to the elite 8 than Emma…but yeah, mostly the wins make sense.

@Seth: Your thoughts on Power Girl choosing to let her “symbol” be “cleavage” is exactly what I’ve thought for a long time now, and a huge part of what bothers me about the character. I’ve never heard anyone say it exactly as I’ve felt it before, so I wanted to give a shout out…if you’re living in my brain, get out! If I’m living in yours…I’ll discreetly look for an exit.

@T. I guess it’s just hard for me then T., I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a girl that watches “chick flicks” or reads romance novels, or chick lit…I prefer comics and independent film and if you gave me the choice over an action movie (which I’m not a huge fan of) and a chick flick, I’d pick an action movie every time.

So it’s hard to be someone really involved in an industry and with fans that are basically telling me they don’t want me here and not only don’t want to have any change whatsoever…but are unwilling to talk about it.

Considering the state of the industry I’d think you, who I know to be an intelligent guy regardless of our differing opinions, would be open to a little industry change as I’d be surprised if comics can survive without it. You know something that can help it survive? If it can find a way to open its doors to women and bring in female readers. You know what else might happen if women were included instead of excluded? There would be less bitching. There would be less fighting against the machine.

Also, while we’re here why ARE comics a “male-oriented” genre. There’s really no reason for it. No reasons except for small minded non-progressive people being involved early on that couldn’t see the potential for male AND female readers. Women read in record numbers (close to 80% of fiction readers are female)…why would comics want none of this? I’ve never understood it, I think it’s incredibly myopic.

As for Marvel and Women…you may want to sit down, because they are doing a YEAR of Marvel Women. It started in March and it will include things like: Girl Comics mini, Her-oes, Heralds mini, Firestar one-shot, Dazzler One-Shot, Black Cat Mini, Namora one-shot. The Black Widow ongoing, Pixie Mini, Rescue one-shot, Galacta one-shot, Spider-Girl ongoing, Emma Frost one-shot…and on like that. Most of these, sadly, will be inconsequential one-shots that will change nothing, but yeah, there’s a lot of deliberately female character focused material being released this year.

I had no idea all that stuff was coming up, Kelly. Now you’ve got me all excited. I love the Black Cat (and her first mini-series was so awful, I really hope this is a good one). (I’ve never heard of Galacta, or Heralds, or Rescue, so I have no idea what to expect there. Is Namora alive now, or is that a flashback book?)

There’s no reason for comics in general to be a male-oriented genre, but it makes sense that super hero comics specifically are a male-oriented genre. They’re basically big budget action movies on paper. Lot’s of fighting and violence. That appeals to men way more than women. The same reason action movies and football appeal to way more men than women applies to super hero comics.

I find it very interesting that women are being discussed as being in the same arena as non-whites, gays, etc. On the one hand all of these groups have not been well represented in comics. On the other hand, women are NOT a minority. There are more women in the world than there are men. Women are THE majority group in America and the world, so at least statistically speaking their poor representation in comics is not just hard to understand, it’s bad business.

Comics have a basic problem, which is that there are about 350,000 people buying stuff in the direct market. They are mostly white guys born between 1965 and 1985. Worse, they have mostly been buying the product more or less every week since they were 12. Periodical comics are habitual and when someone breaks the habit they often just go away as a customer.

So, there is a small and shrinking portion of the population that buys periodical comics. If things continue as they are, then it just a matter of time before the 22-page floppy becomes an obsolete product. Maybe that isn’t the end of the world, since a lot of great artists draw fast enough to make a living on monthlies. Maybe the dollars going exclusively to Graphic Novels would improve the product quality. However, it would kill the local comic shop, more than a few smaller publishers and cause everyone else to utterly freak out.

To avoid that, it seems like the Big Two should be looking for ways to grow.

The most obvious place to look for new readership is though word-of-mouth from existing readers. Comic fans telling non-comic fans to try a comic. The most obvious group of people to address that product toward would be the wives and girlfriends of existing readers. They have a vested interest, after all.

The question in my mind is whether comic book culture is so actively hostile to women that it is impossible to release product that appeals to both women and men. For all the painted on costuming, broke-back posing and the rest in mainstream superhero comics, I can count on one hand the number of legitimately titillating images that I have seen. It seems to me that purpose of that imagery is not to arouse the male reader, but hang a “No Girls Allowed” sign in front of the clubhouse. That impression is confirmed by how female characters are generally used in the stories themselves.

So T., my question to you is: if not women, then where are the new readers going to come from? Bear in mind that consumers do not tend to change their buying habits past a certain age and the current comic culture is more hostile to kids than women by a country mile.

@jazzbo But most men like looking at women. Shouldn’t that make a woman starring in a comic book the ultimate man pleaser?

@ Jazzbo:

There’s no reason for comics in general to be a male-oriented genre, but it makes sense that super hero comics specifically are a male-oriented genre. They’re basically big budget action movies on paper. Lot’s of fighting and violence. That appeals to men way more than women. The same reason action movies and football appeal to way more men than women applies to super hero comics.

I think that you are confusing cause and effect here.

Comics, as a medium, are actually pretty bad at conveying action. For one thing, there is no movement. Most of the methods of creating the impression of movement requires de-compressing the plot by using multiple panels in sequence in one way or another. For another, comics are a cool medium. They require more active participation on the part of audience to derive meaning. That means that they function poorly as a “thrill ride”.

Superheroes, as a genre, are built upon the very American fantasy of transformation. The whole idea is that you can magically go from being one type of person to a completely different type of person by essentially magical means. The fan-base has a vocal faction who fantasize about being bad-asses. The industry has pushed the medium to its absolute limit in the delivery of that fantasy. As people looking for other things in their entertainment have drifted away, that portion of the fan-base has grown in importance.

Comics, as a medium, are actually pretty bad at conveying action. For one thing, there is no movement. Most of the methods of creating the impression of movement requires de-compressing the plot by using multiple panels in sequence in one way or another. For another, comics are a cool medium. They require more active participation on the part of audience to derive meaning. That means that they function poorly as a “thrill ride”.

They are great at conveying action, just in a different way than movies or TV. While they lack real movement, they are great at capturing the perfect powerful pose, at freezing the action at the best possible moment (say the moment of impact) to be enjoyed as long as you want. With a novel you can follow a protagonist’s internal narrative while action is unfolding wonderfully but you lose the visuals. With movies, you get the best visuals but lose a lot of the internal narrative as you can’t have an indepth running voiceover going on in the duration of a fight scene and even if you did it would be distracting and lead to sensory overload. Comics are the best of both worlds: they don’t go into the same depth of internal motivation and narrative as a novel, where you can wax on about feelings and motivations via text for pages on end, and you don’t get the same level of movement depiction of a movie, but you get a great mix of both.

@ T.:

They are great at conveying action, just in a different way than movies or TV. While they lack real movement, they are great at capturing the perfect powerful pose, at freezing the action at the best possible moment (say the moment of impact) to be enjoyed as long as you want. With a novel you can follow a protagonist’s internal narrative while action is unfolding wonderfully but you lose the visuals. With movies, you get the best visuals but lose a lot of the internal narrative as you can’t have an indepth running voiceover going on in the duration of a fight scene and even if you did it would be distracting and lead to sensory overload. Comics are the best of both worlds: they don’t go into the same depth of internal motivation and narrative as a novel, where you can wax on about feelings and motivations via text for pages on end, and you don’t get the same level of movement depiction of a movie, but you get a great mix of both.

The process that you are describing requires effort on the part of the audience. As a result, I would suggest that it is different than what I would define as “action”.

To me, action on film (and it is really best experienced on film) overwhelms you visually and auditorially senses and pulls you into it. The big dance sequences from musicals probably worked similarly for prior generations. Your responses (i.e. “Oh no, a car!”) are largely in the control of the film-maker whether you identify with the protagonist or not. That is why it is possible to enjoy an action movie with wooden acting and a terrible script as long as the action sequences are well directed.

In contrast, the process you accurately describe requires the reader to take the point-of-view of one of the people either in (or witnessing) the fight. In that way, it is much more akin to the actual experience of violence , which (in hindsight at least) tends to feel like a series of frozen moments that experienced highly subjectively. Action films transport the viewer, whereas violence in comics involves the reader.

It is a very different cognitive process to me.

It is a very different cognitive process to me.

Sure it is. I agree.

The process that you are describing requires effort on the part of the audience.

Again, no disagreement.

But similarly, a novel is a different cognitive process as well. And a novel requires a lot more effort on the part of the audience than a novel as well.

But a comic book, while requiring more effort than a movie, still requires less than a novel. Hence what I said about a comic book being a happy medium between both extremes.

To me, action on film (and it is really best experienced on film) overwhelms you visually and auditorially senses and pulls you into it.

Yes, I never denied that movies are better at that than comics. But comics can do a lot of things movies can’t do as well. You can’t freeze a perfect moment in a movie quite as well as you can in a comic book. There’s something about an awesome splash page with perfect poses exploding off the page that a movie can’t match. And a movie can’t give internal narrative the way a comic can. It mostly has to infer through a look or subtext..

Considering the state of the industry I’d think you, who I know to be an intelligent guy regardless of our differing opinions, would be open to a little industry change as I’d be surprised if comics can survive without it. You know something that can help it survive? If it can find a way to open its doors to women and bring in female readers. You know what else might happen if women were included instead of excluded? There would be less bitching. There would be less fighting against the machine.

I’m not against proposed change or female empowerment, I’m against the constant moral outrage and judgment against fandom and comic creators for something that largely isn’t a sign of bad character, any more than the romance novel industry catering to a largely female readership with mostly female protagonists is any sign of bad character in THAT industry.

Some genres just click better with men than with women, it’s just a fact. And as a result, they will always cater more to them. Just like some genres click better with women than with men, and as a result will always cater to WOMEN. Does that make the creators of romance novels or chick-lit evil, bigoted or sexist for being more female friendly and being exclusionary toward men?

THAT is my problem. Us guys aren’t passing moral judgment on women when they create their own female-friendly media bubbles, yet we’re expected to be apologists and are treated like assumed sexists when we do the exact same thing in our own male-friendly media bubbles. It’s that double standard that I hate.

Also, while we’re here why ARE comics a “male-oriented” genre.

COMICS are not a “male-oriented” genre. SUPERHEROES are. Because superheroes were created and have existed for decades primarily as adolescent male empowerment fantasy.

There’s really no reason for it. No reasons except for small minded non-progressive people being involved early on that couldn’t see the potential for male AND female readers. Women read in record numbers (close to 80% of fiction readers are female)…why would comics want none of this? I’ve never understood it, I think it’s incredibly myopic.

See, there you go again with the moral judgments and accusations. So are romance and chick-lit publishing houses “small minded” “non-progressive” or “myopic” for not trying to constantly attract men and alter their work to appeal more to male sensibilities? Do you also fight to make these female-oriented genres put more male protagonists, more male-centric viewpoints, market more strongly to men, alter story content and tone to be more agreeable to men.

I would like answers to these questions.

As for Marvel and Women…you may want to sit down, because they are doing a YEAR of Marvel Women. It started in March and it will include things like: Girl Comics mini, Her-oes, Heralds mini, Firestar one-shot, Dazzler One-Shot, Black Cat Mini, Namora one-shot. The Black Widow ongoing, Pixie Mini, Rescue one-shot, Galacta one-shot, Spider-Girl ongoing, Emma Frost one-shot…and on like that. Most of these, sadly, will be inconsequential one-shots that will change nothing, but yeah, there’s a lot of deliberately female character focused material being released this year.

Okay, YOU may want to sit down but…NONE OF THAT BOTHERS ME. You think I have some hatred of women and that the existence of female protagonists is going to offend me somehow and that I want to keep superhero comics as a boys’ club. I don’t. Marvel and DC can publish as much female superhero material as they want, so long as it’s good.

MY problem is the “it’s never good enough” mentality a lot of feminist readers have, or this judgmental inability to understand that there are plenty of logical, nonsexist, nonhatred, nonpetty, non-closeminded reasons the superhero genre is always going to skew primarily male. It’s like this assumed premise that so long as the landscape of superhero comics is mostly male-oriented, it’s a sign that caveman neanderthal womanhating sexism is at play and nothing else.

Frankly it’s insulting. Especially because we don’t hear the same charges being hurled at female-centric genres of entertainment.

Another thing to keep in mind: if you ever created a superhero comic that truly, TRULY appealed to women just as much as men, and I mean 50/50 appeal, it would no longer be recognizable as a superhero comic. Maybe it would be better, maybe it would be worse, but it wouldn’t be a superhero comic as we have known from Action Comics #1 through today.

Similarly, if you created romance or chick lit novels that appealed just as much to men as to women, 50/50 across gender lines, it would no longer be either a romance or a chick lit novel. It would be a different genre, probably with more crude language, Penthouse Letter type content and fistfights and explosions.

Maybe both steps would be fine for creating a nice, inoffensive commercial product with the ultimate broad commercial appeal, but would it be fair to the scores of men who have always liked having escapist adolescent male power fantasies of superheroes or is it fair to the scores of women who have always liked reading escapist seduction fantasies involving rakish rogues and Prince Charmings who make Cinderalla dreams come true that they could always rely on romance and chick lit for?

@T.

Again, no disagreement.

But similarly, a novel is a different cognitive process as well. And a novel requires a lot more effort on the part of the audience than a novel as well.

But a comic book, while requiring more effort than a movie, still requires less than a novel. Hence what I said about a comic book being a happy medium between both extremes.

Well, then I do not understand your objections to Kelly’s issues.

We agree that one of the keys to enjoying superhero comics is the reader proactively connecting with the either protagonist, the antagonist or (in the work of someone like Kurt Busiek) a bystander. This is particularly true with regard to fight sequences, but it is also broadly true about suspense and scenes with sexual content. Well, then what roles are appealing enough in most modern superhero comics to induce the average female reader to project themselves onto? Are the fantasies so mutually exclusive that it impossible to construct a superhero fantasy that is appealing to both genders?

It seems unlikely to me. Superhero stories work just fine across gender lines in other media. THE INCREDIBLES, BUFFY, SMALLVILLE and the Harry Potter series play just fine to both male and female audiences. You could correctly argue that there is something about sexuality and sexual freedom in the superhero genre that should not be repressed. However, female-friendly material in boys adventure genres tend to be more sexually frank than previously male-exclusive stuff. Look at the contrast between TRUE BLOOD and the Hammer Horror cycle for example.

If there is nothing innately masculine about comics as medium, nor superheroes as a genre, then what exactly is the issue?

If there is nothing innately masculine about comics as medium, nor superheroes as a genre, then what exactly is the issue?

The THEMES superhero comics cover are innately masculine, just like the themes Western novels cover are innately masculine and the themes martial arts movies and action revenge movies with explosions cover are innately masculine.

Although novels, comics and movies are all not innately masculine, some genres do have themes that are. Just like romance novels/movies/comics also have themes that innately feminine and appeal to women, like the “devoured by a rakish rogue they eventually tame and domesticate” theme and the “Cinderella rescued by a Prince Charming and cared for for the rest of her days” theme. These themes do nothing for guys, on average.

T.: I could be misunderstanding Kelly’s argument, but I think she’s pointing to the shrinking audience for superhero comics (whether that’s really the case or not) and wondering why Marvel and DC aren’t doing more to tap into potential revenue. I’ve never heard of the romance novel business being in any danger of going down the tubes, so there’s no reason for them to change. It seems like superhero comics need to find new audiences or they’ll disappear (again, that’s probably extreme, but it’s more of a possibility than with romance novels), so that’s why they need to do it. It’s not unlike hockey, which is struggling to find new audiences and has changed a bit (not a lot, but a bit), whereas football doesn’t need to change because it dominates the sports landscape. And yet the NFL still tries to expand its audience even when it doesn’t really have to. As opposed to Marvel and DC, which cling desperately to their audience and claim everything is fine.

Of course, I could be misreading what Kelly is saying.

T., if the themes covered by superhero comics are innately masculine, then why SMALLVILLE and BUFFY have such large female audiences, when the themes of those superhero TV shows are not that different from the superhero comics?

I challenge your assertion that a fantasy of power or transformation is innately masculine. I could even agree that it may appeal to more males than females, statistically, but I’m not sure the percentage would favor males in such huge numbers as people may think.

I also would disagree with the notion that males have gentlemantly chose to leave “women’s genres” alone. The amount of vitriol and – in some cases – sabotage campaigning against iconic “chick” movies by males has been astronomical. Months before SEX AND THE CITY – THE MOVIE even premiered, multitudes of males swarmed sites that ranked movies, “voting” low scores for the movie, without even seeing it (since the movie hadn’t even premiered).

Honestly T., you’re a smart guy and you make good arguments and I guess I could try to go point for point with you, but I think the fundamental problem between us is that I don’t really accept your premise.

The premise being that superheroes are for boys.

Maybe it’s impossible for me to accept that premise because I am not the definition of a “normal girl” and as such I respond really positively to superhero comics…and you telling me that they’re not for me because they’re “male oriented” honestly makes me feel like you’re saying there’s “something wrong with me”. And I’m sure you can imagine, that’s not a great feeling. I don’t (and really have never) responded to things that are typical “girl” things, but to things like superheroes…and so it’s hard for me to agree that “superheroes are for boys”. Instead I’m more likely to see that superheroes have been for 60 years plus pushed towards boys, often ignoring girls entirely while occasionally making alternatively valiant and lame attempts to include girls. Maybe some of the more direct feminine/masculine stereotypes were true 60 years ago, but I believe that now – and for quite some time now – had young girls been handed superheroes (with non exploitative female protagonists) in equal measure to whatever the alternative to that is – that girls would OFTEN pick superheroes on their own. Boys aren’t the only ones with adolescent empowerment fantasies. Boys really don’t have the market on that, I assure you.

So, I can’t agree with your premise. My premise would be that girls get Barbies and princesses and pink shit handed to them as that is what some very antiquated ideas suggest they are SUPPOSED to have and like and so that’s what they end up doing…engaging in princess and prince fantasies and damsel in distress fantasies because that’s all we think there is. And particularly if we want to fit in that’s what we choose – because that’s what other girls have been handed as well, so that is what is “normal”. Also, if we don’t want to upset the apple cart and annoy people on forums and such (ahem) it’s also the thing to pick. To shut up about it and play with what is given to us. But speaking as someone that was long ago disenchanted with what was handed to me and never quite bought into princesses and pink…I don’t think that I should have to just accept that this is “not for me” because it is “for you”. I think it can be for both of us…if not in the same books…then at least in the same medium and even genre. But for little girls, unless they have someone in their life to introduce them to it and/or another catalyst to launch them into it…they may never find comics. Add to that the “no girls allowed” sign that hangs on everything from the look, feel, and population of your local comic book shop to the actual books being produced and they have no reason to try something new that they might LOVE…and that might speak to them far more than other things they have been handed.

For what it’s worth I would TOTALLY be supportive of men coming into romance novel forums (does such a thing exist?) and trying to talk about why they can’t find more interesting/layered/whatever male characters if they loved romance novels but thought they could be better and more inclusive. I also think romance novels as being “for girls” is a terrible comparison to superhero comics being “for boys” as while I don’t read romance novels I assume that the primary aspect there is…well, romance/love. But in comics, even superhero ones, you generally see a combination of a huge variety of these elements…elements that both boys and girls are and should be interested in – including love and relationships.

I don’t think you hate women…I just think you don’t want me here…or at least not as someone that speaks out. And I guess that’s fine. It bums me out, but you have every right to feel that way. Just as I have every right to disagree with the status quo.

I only brought up the Marvel month/year of women thing because you brought it up as a catalyst for why you were going to have to hear more complaining. I wasn’t saying you have an issue with the books, I was just trying to bring you up to speed on how much more complaining you MIGHT see…since YOU tied the two together in your original post about this issue.

I don’t necessarily think they’re related, but then I’m pretty comfortable with the discussion (and occasional lamentations) of the state of women in comics.

Additionally, a huge part of this whole discussion (the point of it really), which Dean pointed out much more eloquently than I’ll ever be able to…is that including women more in comics could help SAVE comics. It could be a huge windfall of cash and readers if comics can just open up to some change and find a way to court a wider audience. I don’t even know that that means that “your” books (whatever those are, I have no idea) necessarily have to change…or have to change so much that you’ll now hate them…I think it’s very subtle things that make comics more palatable to readers that aren’t already inside the niche of superhero comics.

@Greg: No, you got it just right.

Also, maybe it’s because I have such a fondness for the comics I read in the 1980s, but if you take the best-sellers of the time – Uncanny X-Men, Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes – it’s hard to say that it was the manly ACTION that was the distinguishing feature of such comics. People enjoyed them for the personalities of the cast and how they related to one another (such a “girly” idea).

Reducing superhero comics to the equivalent of noisy action moves doesn’t sit well with me. Superheroes are much richer with possibilities than that.

Superhero comics, like Romance novels, are genres. Genres do not have set themes that they can use. There are themes that are frequently used by the genres, but that does not make them innate. It is for the authors to decide the themes of the work, not he genre.

The things you cite above as themes are not. “Cinderella rescued by a Prince Charming and cared for for the rest of her days” is a plot. A theme is “with great power comes great responsibility”, or “betrayal”, or “love conquers all”. Those are themes which could exist in a book with the plot of women “devoured by a rakish rogue they eventually tame and domesticate”. Additionally, both the plot and the theme could exist in a Superhero comic book. All the story would have to have is a main character who has superhuman abilities and/or wears a costume and some fighting/action.

Given that the genre of Superhero comics can be rendered in any way so long as they include the genre indicators (to simplify: powers and/or costumes, action) they story itself (plot) and what it is saying to the audience (theme) can be directed at men or women. It is the author’s choice of who the story will be directed at and the publisher’s marketing plays an enormous role in who and how these things get seen.

If it is an author’s choice, within a genre, what is being told and how, (i.e. whether a woman will be portrayed as a damsel in distress or a woman of action) then it should not be a given that a genre is for one sex rather than both. The argument that comics are for boys and that the THEMES (your capitals usage) of superhero comics are innately masculine are false. The THEMES of Westerns aren’t self evident. What themes? The Western is a genre and can encapsulate many themes. Blood Meridian can exist in the same genre as Johnny Guitar (read/see them, they are great) and they do. BOTH are Westerns, both have different themes.

We aren’t even getting into the fact that everything you’ve mention is a sub-genre.

Given that the Superhero comic is a malleable form that can encompass many stories (plots and themes), the business of comics needs people like Kelly to point a critical eye at aspects that keep the genre ghettoized. The statistics back up the higher numbers of female readership for fiction, so it would be stupid of Marvel, DC, or anyone who loves the medium of comics to not pursue that readership. How do comic books make these things happen? When people with a voice demand higher standards. Kelly (and I) don’t want Superhero comics to remain a scorned niche in the media landscape.

One of the ways that would help Superhero comics approach equal footing with movies as a serious genre is to address the proliferation of titillating images selling their books. The Da VInci Code didn’t have a girl with a low-cut top on the cover, so why do the majority of comic books have that every month? The rampant pointless use of overtly sexual images keep the majority of comic books (non-superhero included) in a niche that most people ignore and it’s thinking like your T that helps sustain it.

So you want people like Kelly (feminists) to stop commenting or posting because you think they are pointless but criticism is not the enemy of progress, but rather its agent. People like Kelly, on the web or with an email to the creator, are needed in this community. Trying to shut her, or other feminists up is actively keeping the medium you love (which is dominated by the superhero genre) from getting the best talent available by keeping it small and poor.

You mention quality in your arguments. Browse the blogs of people in the video game community and wonder what it would be like if your favorite comic was drawn by them, then realize that they don’t draw comics even when they want to because they can’t make a living doing it. Or watch Brian K. Vaughn work on Lost and sell more screenplays as his efforts go to where he can make a living rather than making more comics like Y: The Last Man or Ex Machina.

If 25% of the female readership in this country was buying Superhero comics the revenue would go up and so would page rates and then new talent would gravitate towards comics. Why wouldn’t you want that as a comic fan?

@ T.

Another thing to keep in mind: if you ever created a superhero comic that truly, TRULY appealed to women just as much as men, and I mean 50/50 appeal, it would no longer be recognizable as a superhero comic. Maybe it would be better, maybe it would be worse, but it wouldn’t be a superhero comic as we have known from Action Comics #1 through today.

Similarly, if you created romance or chick lit novels that appealed just as much to men as to women, 50/50 across gender lines, it would no longer be either a romance or a chick lit novel. It would be a different genre, probably with more crude language, Penthouse Letter type content and fistfights and explosions.

I think that your impression of chick lit is out of date. From what I understand, the distinction between an actual sex scene in a Nora Jones novel and a Penthouse Forum letter is vanishingly small. The difference is almost all contextual. Romance novels deliver their raunchy content after devoting a lot of effort to establishing a relationship.

In other words, the romance genre has evolved with the times and Cinderella doesn’t keep her petticoats on after the The Ball.

The THEMES superhero comics cover are innately masculine, just like the themes Western novels cover are innately masculine and the themes martial arts movies and action revenge movies with explosions cover are innately masculine.

Sure, that is true of some characters, but it is not universally true. Daredevil is a Kung Fu/Noir mash-up. Batman certainly has elements in common with the protagonist from Yojimbo, Jacobean revenge tragedies through its descendant genres, like the Universal horror cycle and Noir. Wolverine certainly owes something to the Western Gun Fighter tradition. However, it is not true of every character. Superheroes borrowed from an awful lot of genres and a lot of them have traditions featuring strong and/or leading women.

Moreover, times have changed. The assumptions that underlay female genre arch-types in the old boy’s adventure genres are either different, or have been revealed to be more complicated than they appeared to the men that created them. For example, our cultural attitudes toward women having sex outside of marriage is vastly different today than it was at the on-set of the classic Noir cycle. Maybe it is not the worst idea in the world to think about how female characters derived from the Femme Fatale arch-type (i.e. Black Canary, Black Widow) are portrayed.

@ Kelly Thompson:

I cannot imagine what traditional “boy’s” genres like crime, fantasy and horror would look like if they had tried to exclude and marginalize women. Half the dramas on TV are police procedurals and women seem to be at least half the audience. Female authors have sold an awful lot of books about wizards and vampires in the last decade. It might not always be my personal taste, but they certainly help the health of those genres.

So, I consider you a force for good around here.

@ Greg Burgas:

Hockey is a PERFECT analogy. WATCHMEN would be the Gretzky trade. The Image guys would be the ’90s expansion teams. The Ultimate Comics line would be the Detroit Red Wings. IDENTITY CRISIS would be those trapping New Jersey Devils teams.

I could work on this analogy for hours.

‘But a lot of times, even if a character is great, she doesn’t have the same marketability as other characters or maybe hasn’t been involved in quite as epic stories. A hyper-capable woman in a wheelchair will never look as marketable as an athlete with a bat on her chest. And further, Oracle just hasn’t been involved in storylines as well-recognized as epic as Daredevil (who has some of the best creator runs of any hero and a lot of stories that are far better than anything even Spider-Man ever had)’.
Contagion.
Cataclysm.
No Man’s Land.
Officer Down
Bruce Wayne: Murderer / Fugitive.
Shall I go on?

OK I’m a moron, I managed to forget Storm and didn’t even think of Black Adam as non-white. Duh.
I also didn’t mean to sound like I was supporting the “disgruntled feminist complaints” point of T’s statement. I love disgruntled feminist complaints and welcome the female voices that have been popping up on this site lately. Diversity is a good thing folks. Too bad no one can convince the big two comic companies of that.

I found it deplorable that the only LGBT character in this tourney is Storm and she got knocked out immediately despite being one of the most well known characters, and perhaps the most well known woman and non-white character, that Marvel have.

I would love to see more female characters hit it big in superhero comics. And yet, I hate most of the female characters in existence today and despise when they get featured simply because they are women.

Let’s face it, most of the female characters that DC and Marvel are sexist, escapist fantasies designed to appeal to MALE readers, not female readers. And that is what pushes me away (I’m one of the most pro-feminist males you will meet). Take a look at most of the female characters the big two decide to push.

Powergirl- boobs, boobs, boobs

Supergirl- often portrayed as a vapid, petty blonde idiot. Drawn like a Barbie doll.

Wondergirl- See above.

Rogue- had her character ruined by pushing the “Southern belle” aspect of her character and tying her to Gambit. As an addendum to that, my favorite version of Rogue was in the Age of Apocalypse where she was portrayed as a strong, confident mother and leader on equal footing with Magneto.

Black Canary- fishnets and tied to Green Arrow. Pushed into being the Justice League leader for no good reason.

Storm- She is always portrayed as the epitome of a strong woman, but its all on the surface. When was the last time she showed herself to be a competent leader in the x-books (i hate black panther) rather than a politically correct representative brought out to chastise the other characters for not being as strong and womanly and minority as she is?

On the flip side, female characters that i would LOVE to see more of:

cassandra cain batgirl- loved the character. not skimpily attired. not a male sex fantasy. just a girl with huge amounts of potential trying to do the best that she can. perfect.

oracle- i wish she was still in the JLA. she’s competent. inspiring for multiple reasons. not a token female rolled out to criticize male characters. DC really tried to destroy my love for the character with those ghastly covers on her recent miniseries, though.

Lois Lane- i would love to see a Lois Lane comic, focusing on her life as a news journalist. I love the fact that she and clark are married and are almost always portrayed as equals. Granted, her silver age portrayal was ghastly. But the modern Lois is a wonderful strong character that is a far better ambassador to girl readers than a power girl comic can ever be

catwoman- unfortunately, DC has ruined what i loved most about the character in the past five years: her role as a mother.

traci 13- similar to lois lane, she has been portrayed as an equal with blue beetle and is not sexualized for the purposes of male fantasy

I think that what annoys me about the comics that push the female characters at the Big Two is that these characters become inherently 2-dimensional. They are defined in opposition to the traditional male characters, as opposed to being defined as a strong character in their own right. You do not, for instance, see a comic showing how great Batman is contrasted with a woman. How can I take seriously characters that need to be defined by contrast with males?

The problem with Storm is that she seems a one-creator character. As reviled as Chris Claremont is, he seems the only one that can make Storm work. Add the notorious difficulty comic book writers have to work with female characters and black characters to the “goddess” aspect that can make her one of the more remote of the X-Men…

Dent – You complained about Supergirl, but do you think it realistic if all females in comics are portrayed as highly intelligent and mature? You know, in real life, not all women (or men, for that matter) fit that criterium. I also cringe at castigating a character only for having big breasts or for wearing fishnets. I know, I know… comics sexualize women to a ridiculous degree (I wish Marvel/DC never used Ed Bennet and Greg Land again, and characters like Psylocke seem to exist almost only to tittilate fanboys), but in real life (again) some women are more exhibitionist and vain than others, the variety of human experience should be reflected in comics.

Storm is Gay? I’ve never heard any mention of that. When did that happen?

Storm is sometimes hinted to be bisexual.

There are whole periods of the X-Men that I didn’t read the comics, but the occasions I remember are the ones related to Storm’s “very special friend”, Yukio. There is one Uncanny X-Men Annual in the 1980s where the X-Men are affected by something (I don’t remember exactly why), and their greatest desires are shown, and Storm’s greatest desire is to “go wild in Tokio with her friend Yukio.”

@ Rene;

I think you hit the nail on the head. Comics are not well served by sweeping the stuff that does not conform to modern sensibilities under the rug. The Internet is too ubiquitous. Someone has that old issue, a scanner and a snakry comment at the ready. It plays a role in shaping the reader perception whether it is currently in continuity or not. The characters have escaped the control of editorial.

In my mind, the keys are diversity and using the histories these properties have to shape three-dimensional characters.

Storm is actually a good example. It has been a while since I read the X-books, but the consensus seems to be that Storm is kind of off-track. What usually happens when a character gets off track is that some creator comes along and takes the character “back to basics”. In Storm’s case that is complicated by two factors. The first is that she is not a solo character. She would probably need to get swept up in a broader “back to basics” movement in X-Men. Second is that her basics are exactly the sort of sexualized fantasy that generates so many problems. I mean, she debuted as a beautiful black woman wearing a kente cloth skirt who subsequently feels over-dressed in a one-piece bathing suit, a cape and thigh-high boots.

However, I do not think that makes Storm’s past some de facto source of shame.

I mean, show those early issue of the X-Men to the average woman and I would be willing to bet that her response is not “ewww … you pervert”, but to ask “why is she dressed like that?” In other words, she is asking about the character. I am sure that Mary or Kelly could speak to this better than I can, but it is my impression that women tend to view how people choose to dress as expressions of who they are and that typically goes double for other women.

The problem is not simply one of costuming, but characterization.

To the extent that superhero costumes (both female and male) are explained, those explanations are woefully inadequate. It is a line here or there on the way to an action scene. However, think about how much better explained the outfits get explained in movies that are designed to play to a broader audience. Batman spends a whole scene learning about the theatrics of fear in BATMAN BEGINS, or Superman’s Dad is suddenly wearing the ‘S’ shield as a family crest in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE. That stuff adds layers and make superhero stories richer. On the other hand, try to get the reasons given for Huntress’s bare mid-rift or Power Girl’s use of her cleavage on the women in your life some time.

Back to Storm. Women in Kenya have not been the stereotypical bare-breasted natives in a long, long time. It is a post colonial, majority Christian country. Moreover, Storm travelled around in her youth to places like Egypt that are majority Islamic and pretty much the opposite of free-spirited, clothing optional places. In other words, her lack of clothing in her Goddess phase was a deliberate choice. Same deal with wearing a bathing suit in Upstate New York.

Well, why does a person do that?

Well, let’s think about Storm’s biography. She was a petty criminal. She found a tribe that she convinced to worship her like a goddess and proved her divinity by showing that had so much control over the weather that she didn’t need clothes. When an affluent westerner showed up, Storm ditched her worshippers for a bigger, better deal. Surrounded primarily by men, she wore a costume that drew maximum attention to her gender. She worked her way up to the top of that organization. Then, she traded them in to marry into a royal family.

Sounds a little like Imelda Marcos, Eva Peron or (ahem) Sarah Palin. It suggests the same kind of complexity and character that drive popular male heroes. I am not saying that this is a perfect analysis of Storm, but it does suggest a starting place for a hero’s journey. It all came from trying to explain her clothes.

That sounds like a pretty good analysis of Storm. I went over a decade without reading any X-Men (I just started buying it again last year), and I don’t read Black Panther, so I’m not sure if I know enough about Storm to know how accurate an analysis that is, but it sure seems right to me.
(When I was a kid, though, I thought Ororo’s habit of stripping naked all the time was pretty cool.)

Darn it. I missed the first seeds and my opportunity to support my faves. One vote probably doesn’t count for much, but I still would liked to. *sigh* Oh well, my own fault.

Kinda sad that Rogue and Storm didn’t make it further.

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