Esther Inglis-Arkell read what looks like this past Wednesday’s Justice Society of America 80-Page Giant #1, and she did not enjoy the section by Jen Van Meter and Justiniano (pretty nice looking art, though!).
During that scene, Cyclone and Power Girl talk about how cool Power Girl’s costume is, and how, in fact, it is not at all sexist or unusual in anyway that there’s a big cleavage window in it…in fact, that’s the best part because of the way it unsettles criminals and blah blah blah. Inglis-Arkell then rattles off all the other explanations for Power Girl’s sexy costumes, and the sexy costumes of her female crime-fighting peers she’s read. None of which seem to include “Just because the person who designed it thought it was sexy, okay?”
Seriously, go read Inglis-Arkell’s post. Then come back and we’ll talk more, okay?
I can’t disagree with anything she said in her post; she’s dead-on right. If I had anything to add, it would be that the writer’s doing the justification of the costumes almost never have any real control over those costumes, and probably think they’re doing something valuable by finding a reason for explaining a costuming choice that sounds better than “Some guy 20-65 years ago though this was totally hot, and wondered if his editors would let him get away with it.” (That doesn’t make it any less irritating though, especially for a character like Power Girl, who is given explanation after explanation for her cleavage window. The first one of these speeches you read is never as annoying as the second, third or fifth).
Oh, and I should note it annoys me whenever a writer tries too hard to explain a goofy or silly element of a superhero comic, costuming or otherwise, in a way that writer thinks sounds more “realistic.”
For example, in this week’s Flash: Rebirth, Geoff Johns has a character mention that Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick where’s his totally boss soup-bowl hat because it reminds him of the helmet his father wore during World War I.
No, he wears it because he always wore it, and he started wearing it because it looked cool. (Oh, and the Roman god Mercury probably had something to do with that). Whether or not you think Power Girl’s costume looks cool or is sexy, the person who designed it certainly did, and the editors and artists responsible for dressing her since agreed and kept it. Some things about super-comics don’t need to be explained, and when a writer tries to explain them, they only draw attetnion to them and draw attention to the fact that the writer is struggling with their work.
Nothing knocks one out of a super-comic faster than the writer acknowleding that they’re not really fond of or don’t really get super-comics.
November 20th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Uhm Caleb… It’s been established a long time that Jay’s helmet is/reminds him of his father’s WWI helmet. I forget where I first read it, but that’s old old news.
November 20th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I’m torn on this issue: I totally understand how ridiculous many images of superheroines are in comics are drawn but the men tend to be drawn supremely jacked-up as well. Some artists are better than others at showing diversity in the characters (John Byrne, for example, could draw a slim Cyclops and a truly teenage looking Kitty Pryde while drawing s shapely Jean Grey or Storm) I notice the more “cheese cake-y” the artist, the more exagerrated the body parts.
People tend to like to look at attractive things, I guess. It IS hard to get a non-comic reader (my wife, for example) to take a character like Power Girl seriously, so I see the merit in the blog.
November 20th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Yeah THAT’S the reason for Flash: Rebirth’s lateness. Geoff was trying to figure out why Jay was wearing that tin hat.
Get real. I’ve got problems with Rebirth’s dialogue (stupid fans requiring so much exposition), but that bit was organic and natural, not “shoehorned”.
November 20th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Sidenote: The 4th Letter is kinda like the Savage Critic. Just reading the comments in news posts I see on comic websites supplies me with enough negativity from the internet, going there would just send me into overdrive.
Incidentally..speaking of not really liking or “getting” super-comics, I’m beginning to get that vibe from a large number of op-ed columnists. That’s not a shot at you (…its hard to be genuine about that and not seem sarcastic online…sorry), just a lot of these websites I visit continually complain and moan about things that you should already know are native to this genre in the first place. (The only thing in the world revived more than comic book characters is the speech about how comic characters come back so often.)
November 20th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
No, it IS shoehorned, because it’s an effort to explain something that HAS an explanation, but one which can’t be given in the comic. It’s not as if Jay is going to say “I look like this because they guy who drew me thought it looked cool.”
And that’s the problem. He can’t actually explain why he looks the way he does — most superheroes can’t. So even giving it a shot just draws attention to how ridiculous that is.
I mean, saying that the symbol Superman wears is one thing, but he’s still wearing his underwear on the outside. Just leave it alone.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I gotta agree with Caleb and Esther. 90% of all comic book characters–not just the female heroes–were created with their physical design first before the personality. A large part of a character’s appeal is how they look. A writer can tack on a motivating explanation, but it’s just a veneer. A character looks the way he or she does because somebody thought it would look cool. Power Girl does not have big boobs because it improves her character. She has big boobs because Wally Wood thought it looked cool, and then PG’s personality was refined around justifying her cleavage.
Having said ALL THAT… I think Power Girl is one of the few female heroes where this justification works. She’s proud, confident and doesn’t really care what other people think. Zatanna, I can understand because her current look is designed around her job as a stage magician, and a certain amount of sex appeal is necessary. But others, like Wonder Woman and Black Canary, don’t make any sense. There is absolutely no reason for Black Canary to dress like she does currently, when her costume in the early issues of Birds of Prey is much more functional.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Power Girl’s “They’re holes. You don’t have to wash them” doesn’t make sense, nor does the rest of the sequence. Why isn’t the costume, with its holes, already in a wastebasket?
What they complain about aren’t genre conventions. They’re a result of writers and artists making calculated or foolish attempts to appeal to certain types of readers. There aren’t rules that require heroines to have busts measuring 36C or larger, villains to be megalomaniacs, the effects of magic to be unexplainable, or time travel stories to be senseless. Stories about superheroes can be as good as stories about anyone else.
SRS
November 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I completely agree with the Flash: Rebirth example…there is no need to go back and exmplain why things have been the way they have been for so long. Just leave it alone.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I like superhero comics. I read a shitload of them, I have for years, I probably always will. Sometimes, I LOVE superhero comics.
But for the most part, I don’t really respect superhero comics.
The day that the “native” objectification of women is somehow expunged from superhero comics is the day they will earn my respect.
That day will probably never come, so I’ll just keep hiding most of the covers from my 3-year-old daughter, who probably wouldn’t understand that seeing Power Girl’s gigantic hooters and spineless body distorted to shove her ass crack in my face is an example of how “confident” she is.
November 20th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I agree with the sentiment here of how writers can try too hard to explain some of the unique qualities of super-heroes, but what I don’t agree with is the criticism of Jay’s helmet being tied to his father and World War I. I actually think that’s cool and it adds some dimension to Jay. And I’m not even sure Geoff was the first one to suggest this, either.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Co-signed, Caleb. By buying the book, I’ve already committed to the genre’s quirks. Drawing attention to them is simply taking me out of the story.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:48 am
“Power Girl does not have big boobs because it improves her character. She has big boobs because Wally Wood thought it looked cool…”
Not because he thought the scripts he was given to draw were rubbish, and gave her progressively bigger breasts out of sheer mischief?
November 24th, 2009 at 6:28 am
For something to become a genre convention they must be repeated for years and years. Sadly the representation of female superheroes IS a genre convention of superhero comics.
Yes it can be changed but not by whinging about it and outright attacking other conventions.