I’ve been watching the scrapping over gender issues in superhero comics closely for over two years now, and I’m no closer to being able to predict the sort of reaction a post will get now than I was then. I’d say I’m more baffled than ever by this point.
A short time ago I posted some thoughts on the different ways that artists handle male and female superheroes when drawing danger scenes. I don’t believe artists always consciously do this, but the vast majority of superhero artists emphasize sexual characteristics when a female character is the focus of the scene and de-emphasize sexual characteristics when a male character is the focus of the scene. I wrote it general and specific so as not to lay the blame of this matter on the shoulders of any individual artist, but on the general culture and the expectations they learned to draw with and are rewarded for meeting. I managed to personally offend at least two artists. It was remarkable to watch them argue against the post, because even if neither of those artists had ever done a scene the slightest bit unequal when portraying male and female characters, it still didn’t invalidate the observation that when you walk into a comic book store and look at the superhero rack you see boobs, legs and butts prominently displayed when there’s an injured woman on the cover and you see crotches and butts discretely downplayed when there is an injured male character on the cover. Nevertheless, this post which I had thought was as inoffensive (at some points cowardly) as anything I had ever written caused a sizeable fight.
In contrast, just last week I posted about “gay-baiting.” I looked at an issue and came up with four specific points in the development of that issue that alone implied thoughtlessness, but together added up to malice on the part of a major publisher and one of its writers. I actually accused them of purposefully offending the readers in order to gain sales. Because I mentioned lesbians, I got a fight, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting. After two years of posting impersonal analysis of gender issues and finding that even the most tame of reviews that mentioned sexism could attract comments saying that I was overreacting, that so-and-so did not hate women, and that I thought that the writer/editor/publisher was personally trying to offend me I fully expected something of the sort on this post, a post where I actually said that the professionals were trying to anger the fans. I was seriously expecting a fight about that part.
I got a nice argument on how conservatives are people too. Nobody seemed to notice what I had actually said.
I’m not the only one this happens to. As I’ve said, I’ve been watching for two years and I’m amazed at the reactions sometimes. Posts that I think are the most vitriolic, personalized, unfair sort of criticism aimed at a particular personality barely elicit a disapproving comment, while the comment sections of fairly neutral and reasonable pieces on the sort of things a female reader would want to see in mainstream comics become a soapbox for some random person’s grievances against feminists. In most cases people either discuss something else or accuse the blogger of creator-bashing. Sometimes they’re right about it but usually they seem to call the most innocuous analysis creator-bashing and change the subject (or join in!) when actual creator-bashing happens.
I don’t have a good conclusion for this one. Like most of us, I know pretty much what to expect when an industry insider makes an announcement (“No! Change bad! No change!”, “The Editor in Chief should be fired!”, “Creator X RULZ so this will be AWESOME!”, “I have a MUCH better idea!”), but when it comes to a fan calling for diversity things are a lot harder to predict. I think, however, this is important to watch. Social criticism is tough in any arena, and fans are particularly resistant to change and disagreement.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:14 am
I think the reason that people miss YOUR points, Lisa, is that you yourself so frequently and staggeringly miss the point. Regarding the Outsiders, you tried so hard to make that issue about corporate malice and Chuck Dixon without pausing to consider the actual characters involved.
To whit: Batman was a dick? To a young hero? Well I’m shocked.
If you start from that point, the notion that Dixon is simply writing Batman IN CHARACTER, then where is the rest of the argument? Batman was dismissive and critical of Firestorm in the new issue of JLA, even to the point of giving him membership simply so that he could be monitored. Since Firestorm is young and black, does that make Batman racist, or tactically brilliant? And if you think that Batman’s attitude toward Firestorm has anything to do with race, are you going to accuse the black writer of said issue of fostering racially insensitive attitudes? Where does it end?
I’m NOT saying that comics DON’T have problems with sexism, homophobia, or even race. There have been MANY, many examples over time (including the gratuitous ass-shot of Black Canary in the same JLA issue).
What I’m saying is that in your frequent rush to condemen, you alienate people who might be your supporters if you approached things from a more, shall we say, patient point of view. If you actually took the time to explain why you thought something was wrong rather than insisting something is wrong and demanding that all others automatically agree with you, then you might make more progress.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Oh, wow, I didn’t realize that thread devolved into oppression olympics. Sheesh.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Hey James Meeley!
December 7th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Anon, you rock.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I think Anon is on to something, myself. There are a lot of things in comics that degrade women, and not a few cheap shots at gays, but it seems to me that Lisa Fortuner saw what she expected to see in a Chuck Dixon comic. When I read the issue of BATO in question, I just took it as Batman being a jerk, which is definitely in character. When I read the previous post, I was surprised that Lisa reacted so strongly against that scene.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Anon — See! That is exactly the reaction I braced myself for when I wrote the Dixon post, thank you for demonstrating it!
See, what confuses me is no one commented in such a way, and instead they went back and forth about political allegiances and expressed mild befuddlement.
If my troubles come from a rush to condemn, it would be easy to fix. But how do you explain the difficulties in the first post? Those caught me completely off guard. And how do you explain the absence of a comment like yours in the second post?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Lisa, I’d say that *some* troubles come from what Anon is talking about. I think you have some valid points in that first post you mentioned, but in the other situation Anon is correct. Two different threads that had problems for two different reasons.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Lisa, here are my opinions regarding the differences in the reactions you received.
The difficulties in the first post have more to do with what may have been perceived of as an attack upon the very way an artist does his or her work. Just looking at my own collection of art instruction books, artists as varied as Andrew Loomis, Jack Hamm, and Hikaru Hayashi all make a point of emphasizing drawing women in as beautiful and sexy as way possible.
By criticize that very thing, you were calling into question how an artist does his work. Particularly looking at how Jamal Igle responded, it was as if he were fighting for his life and livelihood. Not a good thing to question in anyone, especially a man.
As for the lack of negative, rabid response to your Dixon post, well, it isn’t a secret that the Big Two often do things to upset their audience. As a long time superhero comics reader, I know there will be times I’m reading a book written and/or drawn by someone I can’t stand (for me, Mark Millar and Brian Bendis come to mind right now) and I will suffer through it because a different or better creator will come along in time.
Nothing Dixon did in the issue itself was out of character or necessarily aimed at badmouthing a particular group (if anything, I could make an argument for calling Dixon a racist for singling out the black woman on the team as the inadequate member or for her sudden street level speech pattern). And the bating of the fans is merely part of the game of promoting comics. Bill Jemas did that all the time and look at how the Marvel books sold because of it.
You may want to look at that trend, of fans accepting and even buying into being treated with open disdain by the publishers, as a future post.
Namaste.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Thanks, Vincent, for being the only one to read the actual post.
I can understand where the artists were coming from on the other post, though because neither of the ones who responded had their works used as examples I was blindsided. (I have to disagree on your gender comment, as I’ve seen female writers defend their work against this sort of analysis with the same fervor.)
It was the Dixon one that got me. Because I had no criticized anyone so directly in any post on this blog so far, and I had not accused anyone of direct malice on this blog. A few weeks earlier I complained on my own blog about DC playing up the WiR phenomenon to get more of a reaction to Barda’s death and had a slew of shrieking trolls commenting that I was insane for thinking DC was “personally out to offend me” and a few bloggers linking me with that in mind. I expected a reaction like that.
Or a reaction accusing me of singling out the writer and rushing to condemn him, as I’ve had on this thread. (Which is actually very amusing, because some of the other commenters here don’t seem to realize that I wasn’t rabidly attacked on the other thread no matter how many times it is pointed out.)
Instead I got a few tame replies of “I don’t see the issue” and a lovely fight about whether or not gay people are intolerant of conservatives.
Your explanation seems sound (though I disagree in part because I think Dixon was specifically gunning for gay rights supporters), since it was well-accepted that they were playing for a reaction, but I think there may be more to it because I have definitely seen fights over people who think you are crazy to assume that marketers are trying to rile up the fans (and I’ve also seen people accuse major companies of trying to offend readers when its much more plausible they were just being stupid).
December 7th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
“Thanks, Vincent, for being the only one to read the actual post.”
So everyone who disagrees with you didn’t actually read your post?
Congratulations, you are no longer worth anyone’s time.
December 8th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Jason — I actually didn’t see your first comment when I answered Vincent’s. They turned off my comment notification so I’ve been going by checking periodically and you are just above his very long comment. I was annoyed at the three commenters who seemed to feel I was complaining about the opposite reactions that I was. Sorry about that.
December 8th, 2007 at 4:02 am
“You may want to look at that trend, of fans accepting and even buying into being treated with open disdain by the publishers, as a future post.”
I agree with Vincent, this would make an interesting post and address the issue I had with Dixon’s online response to readers. I am new to comics, but I had not encountered such disdain from a writer to a group of readers before I read Dixon’s response. I did not find the scene he wrote offensive, but his confession regarding his and DC’s intentions surprised me.
From a business perspective, I’m surprised a publishing company would encourage this “looking down upon” fans mentality. Even if they do publish comics, it do I not believe it should excuse it.
A Mr. Defender asked good questions in another person’s blog recently that asked…
“When did the relationship between comics professionals and comics fans become so hostile? At what point did we go from being proud members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society to the ungrateful snots who must have their entertainment forced upon them, and if showing a hint of disatisfaction must be treated as an adversary?
Is it because Marvel Entertainment has movie property money and DC Time Warner, that we aren’t the sole sources of revenue these companies required to surive as once we were? At this point comicbooks are pretty much an afterthought at this point, right?
I don’t know about you, but when I go out to eat at a restaurant I don’t expect to wait hours and hours for my meal then have it finally brought to me, my steak raw and potato uncooked, and when I dare to complain or comment on the lack of proper service and the state of the meal be informed it was either A)The Chef’s culinary creative choice, B)The lateness of distribution because the waitress was out taking a smoke or C) You’re being ungrateful to the restaurant for being contrary sir.
You wouldn’t put up with that kind of treatment from anywhere else you expect to exchange money for a good or service, and I know I’d be hacked off at a movie theatre if they treated me the way the Big Two sometimes do.
I’m not suggesting that DC or Marvel need take every suggestion into account and change their flavor constantly to suit fickle tastes (mine alone would be just fine. ~.^), but I am suggesting that maybe it’s time to understand that if people are saying something doesn’t please them as a customer to a business, maybe it behooves that business to take a look at what they’re doing. If they can justify it with a wait and see attitude… then I’ll stick around. If they can’t. . .well. . .maybe those ungrateful snots might be on to something. Stranger things have happened.”
December 8th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Of course fans love it when they are treated with disdain.
Do you know what the single most popular post in my (admittedly) still young and barely viewed blog is?
http://rationalmadman.blogspot.com/2007/11/fck-you-fans.html
Face it, fan boys are nothing more than battered women with bad hygenie.
http://rationalmadman.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-are-fan-boys-like-battered-wives.html
December 8th, 2007 at 6:12 am
I think ppl “fixate” on things in posts that upset them, and generally the milder and more rational the post, the more they’ll fixate b/c whatever’s “glaring” to them will seem so much more glaring amidst the calm. :\
Also that some ppl just see a nice, calm post, as an invitation for them to use the comments section as their soapbox (often for unrelated topics).
December 8th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Not everyone sees things the same way. At the risk of doing just what you said people do…. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a blogger who has been wrong, ever. Bloggers (and forum posters) are almost always right.
What you call “baiting” may just seem like harmless pranks or inside jokes to another person. From their POV it’s not a publisher trying to offend them but showing “they can be down with them.” But not everyone will see it that way and there is nothing wrong with that. On most controversies there are always the “I’m ABC and I wasn’t XYZ by this” and “I’m ABC and I was XYZ by this.”
Can you imagine a world why comic fans agreed?*shudder*
Also sometimes people might point out one specific thing out because they feel that one thing is not valid in of itself. Kinda like starting a calculation problem with the wrong variable. The arithmetics may be right but the conclusion will never be valid.
As for diversity in comics, I think it will always be “we’ve come far but we still have a long distance to go.”
December 8th, 2007 at 10:19 am
“I don’t think I’ve ever come across a blogger who has been wrong, ever.”
Amen. Freaking A-MEN! The “smart” people out there agree, obviously, and any other point of view is wrong, or didn’t “read the actual post” becuase there’s no way a blogger can be wrong…or that there might – legitimately – be more than one way to see a given issue or example. But alas, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that latter admitted to, and “YMMV,” both literally and as a concept has become an endangered species.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Kwaku — I saw that with the page from Thunderbolts recently. What looked to some people (particularly me) like a wink at the feminist readers was taken by other people as a sign that Marvel was making fun of them.
Still, at some points I have to think that the “light joking” constitutes disrespect to other people, particularly when something is marketed to annoy people and when they pick it up there’s nothing in the comic to mitigate that annoyance. (Cutting off the preview on Thunder getting offended by the “special” comment, only to have the payoff when you bought the book be “Thunder’s oversensitive.)
Brad — Sometimes there is a misread, though. I’ve seen a lot of commenters argue things that were addressed in the post without acknowledging that they were addressed in the post. That’s not disagreement, disagreement is when you acknowledge that the person in the post countered it, but say why you don’t believe the counter was effective.
For example, earlier in this comment thread commenters reacted as though I had complained about the reverse that I did. The poor reaction was to the first post, I got jumped on by commenters saying I deserved the poor reaction to the second post — the one that didn’t happen.
Then later in the comments I made my own mistake and completely missed what Jason said correcting that — applying the commenters argument to the first post linked.
These things happen and they happen frequently. It is very tiring repeat yourself two three or four times, and it is insulting to go to the work of trying to make your post as clear as possible only to have people who appear to have only skimmed it jump in and say whatever comes to mind with little regard as to what you actually wrote.
So yeah, people get annoyed and snappy at that.
And when dealing with social issues the problem with multiple viewpoints is someone actually often loses at that. I mean, to take one of the biggest examples we’ve got now — what gay person can say there’s legitimately two right ways to see the issue of marriage? There is they are allowed to be married just like straight people or they aren’t. If “they aren’t” is a legitimate way of seeing things, then the other side loses a very important right. This is reflected in the small stuff like representation in comic books. People are on edge for a very good reason with this stuff.
December 9th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Lisa, I just think that most of the people who post here are not interested in long, thought out analyses of comics. Saying essentially sexy art=bad thing gets a reaction. Looking at the hows and why and wherefores of DC’s editorial decisions and Dixon’s writing choices may simply go in one ear and out the other.
For example, when I initially read the Dixon post, my first thought was “oh, okay, maybe I’d better read the issue for myself.” And that was it. No desire to respond, nothing. When I read the sexy art post, I could at least being in Jamal’s corner as he argued his points, knowing he was saying what I would have said much better.
It just might be fair to say that you can’t really predict how anyone will react to anything you say.
Namaste.
December 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Jesse, I think a lot of the disdain you’re seeing is inevitable, due to the fact the 75-80% of the online criticism of comics is so flaming stupid. If a restaurant customer began loudly shouting “OMG this is the worst steak ever why do you hate me so much you are raping my childhood?!?!?”, he’d probably be treated differently than the guy who politely points out that his steak is overcooked.
I don’t know that tweaking the obvious lunatics among us is the best business strategy, but it’s entertaining as hell to watch.
December 11th, 2007 at 4:11 am
Matches…so then the 25% of online critics that aren’t stupid, have to put up with the disdain aimed at their legitimate criticism?
Just because some idiots out there don’t know how to express themselves intelligently, doesn’t mean that it invalidates the legitimate concerns of the 25% of critics who share the same idea but aren’t “screaming rudely in the restuarant.”