Now, I’m not trying to upset anyone here. Equal rights are an important thing, but so is femininity, and sometimes feminists and others can take an issue too far.

Women in comics has carried with it controversy since the first appearances of a female character on the page, and there will probably always be dissenters saying women are poorly or unfairly portrayed. In the past, those types of accusations may have even been true, but this is a new age of comics. For every finger pointing at exploitation of women, I can point a finger right back at how that same image or character is empowering, or has an empowering counterpart. Every fashion magazine on the rack has more negative effect on women than a single comic book character.

My examples, friends.
 

Strong Women With Powers

Some might argue that women with superpowers is cheating—they are only powerful because they are somehow different than normal women. Not at all. In the world of comics men and women alike have superpowers, but not every hero or villain has to have powers to be powerful. The fact that there are women in comics with the same abilities, and in some cases stronger abilities, than male characters actually sets comic women on a more equal footing with comic men.

Take DC’s Wonder Woman. Yes, I am aware that when she was first created she was fulfilling a certain male bondage fetish—see ANY variation of her costume for confirmation on this—but her persona completely nullifies any negative effects that might have. She is an Amazon, a true feminist in many ways, raised among only women with the strong belief that women are in all ways better than men. Her culture praises beauty as well as strength and independence.

As for Wonder Woman’s powers, she is on par with Superman, and might even be considered more powerful than him since unlike Superman she does not have any kind of Kryptonite. She is strong, capable of flight, resilient, and steadfast. A great example for all women, she is as capable as all of her male comrades, while still maintaining beauty and grace.

On the Marvel side take the Phoenix Force. Now, in all fairness, the Phoenix is not female, it is a supreme being that happens to use a woman as its host, Jean Grey. As the Phoenix, Jean is arguably the most powerful being in the entire Marvel universe, because even when she is defeated, she always comes back, strong as ever.

Of course, Jean does often become the Dark Phoenix, almost a poster child for scorned women and corruptness, haunting her lovers and causing destruction. But this is by no means the fault of the Phoenix’s host being a woman, but having taken human form. It is the fault of humanity, of emotion, that the Phoenix can become an evil being instead of a good one.

Neil Gaiman, creator of many wonderful characters over the years, including those from one of my favorite books of all time, Good Omens, gives us the character of Death. While his sometimes counterpart Terry Pratchett depicts Death as the stereotypical skeleton in a black robe, Gaiman’s Death is a beautiful woman.

This is not some ploy to undermine women as the ultimate evil, because Death is not an evil thing, but a constant fact of life. Death, in actuality, is the one thing no man or woman can ever overcome.

Marvel comics also depicts Death as a woman (sometimes beautiful, sometimes skeletal, but always one hell of a woman in Deadpool’s eyes). In comics women can be the end-all be-all of the entire universe.
 

Strong Women Without Powers

As I said, though many women in comics have awesome powers, powers are not essential to being kickass or important. Tank Girl, a comic book character of note, and an awesomely bad movie from the 90s, is a British comic about an outrageous female tank driver set in a rather punk post-apocalyptic world.

She and her storyline are ridiculous, asking no forgiveness for crudeness or lack of plot.

What makes Tank Girl a strong woman in comics is that she does everything a similarly designed male character might do—random acts of sex, violence, vulgarity, hair dying, and anarchy. There is no denying that she is female, but she has no constraints due to her gender.

I must, of course, mention one of the most important and one of the strongest women in comics ever, who is not an obvious hero, or one of the female characters drawn with a sense of sexuality in mind.

I give you Aunt May.

Peter Parker’s aunt and surrogate mother in the Spiderman comics is more often the driving factor for Peter’s decisions than any of his girlfriends, like Mary Jane or Gwen Stacy. In fact, in one of the more recent storylines for Spiderman, Peter chooses Aunt May over a life of happiness in love with and married to Mary Jane. And why? Because she is the most important woman in his life, his maternal figure.

It is not often that mothers are focused on as an important and beneficial part of any comic book character’s life, but for Peter, Aunt May is the center of everything, his last remaining family. That definitely trumps any idea that female characters are only used as sexual objects to influence male characters through their plotline. Instead they can be strong women that are there to support as well as lead.

There are also two modern characters from comics that spring to mind as strong, non-powered women, from two highly praised and fantastically written comics. Tulip O’Hare from Preacher, and Agent 355 from Y: The Last Man.

Tulip is anything but a delicate flower, regardless of her feminine name. She is beautiful, but she packs a punch, and carries a gun. She first knew the protagonist, Jesse, stealing cars and causing chaos in the good ol’ South, and is a hired gun when he meets up with her later in life. While she wouldn’t protest being rescued, she does not need a man to save her at every turn of the page, and does quite a bit of saving herself.

Agent 355, a woman working for a secretive government organization in Y: The Last Man, is one of the few sane women left in a world gone mad from losing every last man on Earth save one.

She acts as the protagonist’s bodyguard, and manages to keep her head and kick ass despite the insanity of the situation, and how so many other female characters are giving in to panic and chaos.

Some comic women may have superpowers, but they certainly don’t need them to make an impact in the comic world.
 

Villainesses

If comic book women were only ever heroes’ and villains’ girlfriends, secretaries, or sidekicks then my entire argument here would be moot. But as much as women have leading roles these days as heroes, there are also many female villains, proving that women have just as much of a place being diabolic bad guys as men do.

I can admit that deep down I’m more of a Marvel fan. I’ve just always been partial to Spidey and the X-Men. But one thing I can’t deny is that DC really knows how to make female villains.

Catwoman, played by many women over the years and drawn in many different styles and costumes, is probably the most famous female villain in all of comics, and she isn’t even really a villain. More an antihero, Catwoman is a thief with a cause. Okay, maybe not always with a cause worth stealing for, but she is not out for world domination like most comic book villains, and she usually ends up playing kissy-face with Batman at some point because despite her bad side the big man in tights is always drawn to her.

Yes, she uses her sex appeal as a weapon in many cases, but that does not mean she can’t take care of herself without resorting to that, she simply doesn’t want to deny her attraction for Batman any more than he seems capable of denying her.

Poison Ivy, a personal favorite of mine, also uses her sex appeal to a great extent, skimpily clad and offering poisonous kisses, but more power to her, because Poison Ivy represents the whole of Mother Earth, and if Mother Earth doesn’t have at least some sex appeal then something would be very wrong with the world.

She is a nature conservationist to the extreme, and more often than not leaves Bats tangled up in vines for his trouble. She may be a little nuts, but she is no fainting violet.

Poison Ivy is also sometimes paired with the wonderful Harley Quinn, Joker’s right hand woman, created first in the 90s cartoon series, and believe me these two are definitely more than just friends.

I’ll be getting to sexuality a little later, but Harley and Poison Ivy are a popular lesbian pairing and one mean team when it comes to crime. While Harley usually comes across as someone who would do anything for her man, Mr. J, she still leaves him when she is slighted and pairs up instead with Ivy.

No one ever said villainesses had to use their powers of sexuality on the hero or any of the male characters. Sometimes they save that for each other.

Not to leave Marvel out of this section, I have to mention Mystique and White Queen, two female villains who have played both good and evil on occasion, and who are not only beautiful, but incredibly intelligent and clever. DC villains have a tendency to get easily foiled and sent back to Arkham, but these Marvel women are much harder nuts to crack.

Mystique, the mutant who can change her shape into anyone, male or female, has always shifted her allegiance depending on what best benefits her, but she is not a heartless character, like some may be misled to think.

For example, she truly cares about her children—Nightcrawler, her biological son, and Rogue, her adopted daughter—and though her methods of doing right by them are not always what some would considered good, her intentions are pure. She also had one of the other well known lesbian relationships in the comic universe with the character Destiny.

While it is believed that Mystique is Nightcrawler’s mother, it was one of the creator’s original intentions that Mystique be his father, having been male while impregnating Destiny, who would then be Nightcrawler’s actual mother. This was deemed a little too controversial at the time, but, in a way, it would have been the first same sex couple child ever conceived, even if they did cheat a little.

For every grand scheme that turned out to be Mystique’s doing, White Queen is just as conniving, and sometimes in the best interest of everyone. While I will always think of White Queen as a villain, she has been a part of the X-Men for some time now, paired with Cyclops where Jean Grey was once irreplaceable.

Recently, with the current Dark Reign saga going on in the Marvel universe, White Queen supposedly was working behind the backs of her good-guy friends with Norman Osborn, but had been a double agent the whole time, looking out for the welfare of mutant-kind. Whether beautiful, deadly, or just plain ingenious, female villains in the comic world are just as devious and destructive as the men.
 

Beauty

More than once I have commented on a character’s appearance while talking up the strengths of women in comics. Hot chicks are definitely the norm. And while there are a few exceptions, like Aunt May, most dissenters against the way women are portrayed in comics will bring up the issue of how female characters are drawn. They are usually buxom, gorgeous, and sexually depicted, especially in costume design. My argument to that is…so what?

Beautiful women are praised in everything, not just comics. Actresses. Models. High school prom queens. Comics are not the culprit for women being seen as sexual objects, or for the desire to be beautiful taking over all women’s minds. I think the way comic book women are drawn is at least more realistic than any cover of a fashion magazine I have seen in the past decade. At least comic women have hips.

Ms. Marvel has been around since the 70s as a superhero, and her alter-ego Carol Danvers existed almost a decade before that as a non-powered character in the U.S. Air Force. She has been a focused-on character lately as a member of the Avengers (though currently the name of Ms. Marvel has been stolen by Moonstone in Dark Reign, but I digress).

What I love about the real Ms. Marvel is her curves. She is quite a bit more full-figured than many of her female companions, something that has been commented on more than once in the comics.

Ms. Marvel is proud of being a little more hippy than most and more proportionately filling out her costume.

Another full-figured comic book heroine that is a personal favorite of mine is Joseph Michael Linsner’s Dawn. Even in her thinnest depiction, Dawn is never a stick, but curvy and proud to display those curves.

Every year at Dragon Con in Georgia since 1998 there has been a Dawn look-a-like contest, with many full-figured women winners. Dawn is a great character for women empowerment, beautiful, real, and a true goddess. She is a character that offers more cosplay options for those of us who are not an anime size two.

So while many comic book characters are still ridiculously shaped, and women can be very sexually drawn—anyone know Danger Girl, for example—there is nothing wrong with admiring beauty, especially when these beauties promote curves and shape rather than a stick-figure.
 

Sexuality

I mentioned Harley and Poison Ivy, and Mystique and Destiny, but the nod to homosexual women does not end there.

Sunfire from the Exiles springs to mind, as does the recent Batwoman. These are powered and non-powered women who represent lesbian society in the comic world.

It could be said that this inclusion is only to appease male want to see hot women characters in intimate situations with each other, but gay culture does not end with women in the comic world.

Northstar is a well-known gay Canadian character that became a member of the X-Men. In fact, in Ultimate universe Northstar and long-time X-Men character Colossus are a couple.

Having lesbian characters is not a substitute for lesbian porn for male readers, but simply another example of strong women getting their due attention, regardless of power, appearance, or sexuality.
 

Conclusion

Women in comics are many things. Some have superpowers, some don’t, some are drop-dead gorgeous, some are curvy, some are elderly. They appeal to men and women with their beautiful designs and often skimpy outfits, but that hardly detracts from their strength and how important they are in their storylines.

Sure, they are often involved in some sort of romance, but everything is about romance and relationships in media these days, not just comics. Trying to say that comic book heroines and villainesses shouldn’t focus parts of their storylines on issues with men (or women) is unrealistic of what consumers demand these days in all media forms.

Extreme feminists might say that comics are just one of the many things that need to change in society today, but I think a lot has changed over the years in how women are represented in comic books. They have their own storylines. They come in many forms. They always kick ass. And as often as they are hurt, or injured, or depowered, or maybe even humiliated, this does not happen any more often to the female characters than it does to men.

Sorry, Women in Refrigerators, I think your point is no longer valid (see that website for further information).

As for the medium these women are found in, read on, comic lovers. Comic book women are some pretty awesome chicks to look up to.

Join me Monday for a little lesson in definitions. “Geek. Nerd. Dork. The Real Meaning.” Which one are you?

Thanks for tuning in.

Images taken from:
http://www.katapult.com.au/our_people.htm
http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles/7/dark-pheonix-and-darkseid-vs-mephisto/25990/
http://gracethespot.com/?p=948
http://www.marvelmasterworks.com/marveltrades/asm02_rev.html
http://www.comicvine.com/jesse-custer/29-10524/
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/0515083rdgreatestcharacters.html
http://www.queerintranslation.com/26/08/2009/megan-fox-meows-for-batman/
http://www.thedarkknight.matthewclose.co.uk/enemies.htm
http://www.comicvine.com/forums/gen-discussion/1/who-would-you-date/400636/
http://www.comicvine.com/magneto/29-1441/blog/
http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/01/30/lend-a-hand-to-the-hero-initiative/
http://nl.marveldatabase.com/Bestand:Exiles_Vol_1_11_Textless.jpg
http://rondomingue.com/2008/04/21/women_of_dc-ah/
http://hackresponsibly.com/
http://www.comicbookbrain.com/z030_detective_comics_831.php

8 Responses to “Why Feminists Suck or Why It’s Okay To Like Comic Book Women”