Following in the footsteps of Newsweek, The Guardian looks at “the surge of women both reading comics and creating them”:
… [Gail] Simone is perhaps the most public face of the revolution — a highly popular voice, she has been appointed by comics giant DC as the first female ongoing writer for Wonder Woman. “I was actually on a panel in New Zealand recently,” she says, “where everyone was female, except for one guy, and nobody asked the question ‘what’s it like to be a woman in comics?’ It was just the same questions that would be asked if it was an entire male panel. I was so excited. It really feels like the tides have turned.”
[snip]
And while all this change is welcome, it is also quite surprising. After all, the workforce and output of the comics industry has long been male-dominated, with conventional wisdom holding that girls don’t read comics. In this environment, sexism has flourished. Female characters have often been drawn in pin-up poses — even while in combat — with breasts like zeppelins and be-thonged bottoms. As comics writer Mike Carey says, “superheroes have tended to centre on male wish fulfillment fantasies — a good friend of mine who’s a comic book artist once told me that when you draw a woman in a superhero book, you basically draw her naked and then put the clothes on.”
The Guardian’s Kira Cochrane also speaks with speaks with veteran creator Trina Robbins, Confessions of a Blabbermouth co-writer Louise Carey, The PLAIN Janes writer Cecil Castellucci, Dark Horse assistant editor Rachel Edidin, and blogger and writer Cheryl Lynn Eaton.
Edidin’s concerns about DC’s Minx imprint becoming a “functional ghetto” for women in comics are particularly interesting.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
“As comics writer Mike Carey says, ’superheroes have tended to centre on male wish fulfillment fantasies — a good friend of mine who’s a comic book artist once told me that when you draw a woman in a superhero book, you basically draw her naked and then put the clothes on.’”
But that’s how one draws ANY figure in a superhero book, and it’s the suggested procedure (in pretty much every instructional book I’ve ever seen) for drawing people, period. You draw the naked figure, and then drape/draw the clothes over it, because the naked figure–the skeleton, the musculature–is (in part) what gives the clothed figure structure, solidity, and human expressiveness.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Yeah, that part was a little off. But she’s right about the pin-up poses in combat. Batman throws a powerful kick while Batwoman throws a kick that shows off her ass.
http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/WAcker/Week29/52_30p16.jpg
You’ll never, ever see Batman kick the way she does in the top right panel. And you’ll never see a female fighter in the real world fight significantly differently from the male fighters. So women are draw more sexy in fights, which means they’re drawn as slightly less competent fighters.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
There’s also the prevalence of female characters in costumes with high heels, as evidenced by that Batwoman page you link to.
It’s hard to see a woman as empowered when she’s wearing shoes that impede her movement, for the sake of appearance.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Yeah. High heels on a woman who works in an office? Sure, okay. High heels on a woman who routinely has to stand on one leg to deliver a kick? That’s silly.
Granted, a cape that enemies can grab onto and yank you backwards with is also silly. So I tend to think of high heels as something that I wouldn’t do if I was creating a character, but they don’t actually bother me much. I suppose I’m a bit inconsistent about what costume elements bother me.