After a hell of a day at work, I booted up my ancient desktop computer to write this column and was almost immediately greeted with an instant message from Chris asking if I read Supergirl that week. He was punished for abruptly interrupting my train of thought with being told about my day. Chris’s good mood was not diminished by this, and he was ready with a preview of his Supergirl #20 review:

But the real draw here–no pun intended–is artist Renato Guedes, who does some truly wonderful work. Ever since her return at the hands of Mike Turner and the launch of the series with Ian Churchill, the latest version of Supergirl’s been criticized (rightly, if you asked me) for her rail-thin, oversexualized appearance, but here, Guedes’ work blows them all away, and he does it without offering exploitation and calling it beauty. Here’s hoping these guys stick around for a while, and that this book finally gets the readability it deserves.

He then told me to put it in my WFA and smoke it, so I thought I’d do him one better by putting it in this post as an example of why positive blogging is pretty much impossible when you’re worried about how women are portrayed in comics.

Here’s another one. A few months ago, I found a panel in Green Lantern Corps that I really liked. It was a close up of two female character’s faces, and the artist (Pat Gleason) had not only drawn two separate, distinctive noses, but he’d gone out of his way to use different cheeks, chins, and eyes when rendering the two characters. The face structure and the expressions even suited the personalities, with Soranik’s short, brusque blood-red face contrasted with Iolande’s smooth, long lavender-pink face. Many other artists (and I’m not naming names, but one prominent name rhymes with “hand”) distinguish their female characters only by their hair style, and I was impressed with the care Gleason put into the panel. But when I wrote this post about the panel, I gave up on a positive tone halfway through the first sentence because every word was a complaint against most of the other artists in superhero comics.

I was praising something that should not be praiseworthy. It should be normal. I mean, I love most of what Gleason draws for other reasons but that particular panel stuck out because it was two female characters being drawn in a way female characters aren’t normally drawn. So even though this is most certainly wonderful, I’m still complaining when I talk about why I like it.

Moving beyond art, we’ve all heard the phrase “strong woman character.” Does anyone know what it really means? I’ve seen it used to refer to physical strength, emotional strength, willpower, likability and realism when it comes to female characters. Really what it means “a female character that does not suck.” People throw it around all the time, as a way to tell people that the woman in a story does not suck. How often have you heard the phrase “Strong male character”? Rarely if ever, am I right? Because a strong male character is not noteworthy, its normal. If you have a strong male character, you say that the story has “good characterization” or use whatever adjective appropriately describes the character (“Kyle is relatable,” “Wally is likable”). If you have a good female character, you have to go out of your way to say there’s a strong woman in there. Why? Because it is unusual for a female character not to suck.

That female characters in particular are written properly should not be notable, but the phrase “strong women” is used more often than “good characterization” when it comes to a female lead or an ensemble cast with female characters. This just draws attention to the fact that not every book that has good male characters has decent female characters too. Things are unequal, and that shows up even when people are happy with something.

Honestly, when your reaction to the art for Supergirl #20 is “She looks like an actual teenage girl!” and “She’s actually wearing undershorts!” are you being positive?

Not really.

Its like gushing over a vial of rosewater poured in a bucket of sewage.

That’s not to say there is not a lot to love about superhero comic books. Some of the art composition, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman back issues, crazy pulp scifi concepts, mutants, Pat Gleason, space aliens, death is not permanent, continuity minutia, alternate universes, retcons and the universe being saved between panels in “Day in the Life” stories are some of my favorites. I adore superhero comics and could never totally quit them. However, I find them extremely hard to praise on a feminist level because any good review is pointing out good things that should not be out of the ordinary in entertainment, but somehow still are.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Just Past the Horizon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.