2 posts tagged “when fangirls attack”

Barbar Gordon -- Oracle

Over here, another blogger, Marron, is pushing the Women in Refrigerators (WiR) meme, i.e. that women characters are killed, crippled, etc. with greater frequency than male characters in comics.  Marron makes some statements specific to Barbara Gordon that I think work in opposition to the goals of feminist comic readers like me and people would would just like to see more female characters in central roles in comics. I'll get to those, but let me grouse about some stuff from the blog first.

Marron makes a number of unsupported statements that fly in the face of reality like this one:

It’s all but inconceivable for a male writer — especially in the comic book industry — to fit a male character into the role of “damsel in distress.”

It’s as if Marron is completely unfamiliar with the histories of major characters who have been around for decades like Robin, Jimmy Olson, Bucky, Steve Trevor, Foggy Nelson, and Rick Jones, who seemed to exist only to be in distress, not to mention male characters created to die like Uncle Ben Parker, “Battling” Jack Murdock, and Thomas Wayne, whose deaths where the impetus behind the superheroic careers to some of the biggest characters in comics today. Marron acts as if Lois Lane never saves Superman, that the Invisible Woman never saves the male FF members. For Marron, those characters, these situations are “all but inconceivable.” If Marron's theory were true, women shouldn't read comics, but the theory is plainly false. So why paint a worse picture of comics than the reality and drive women away more than they already are?

When Marron does recognize that bad things happen to male characters, the idea is qualified thusly:

I will be fair, here. Men in comics have taken their fair share of abuse in the name of plot and story, but not to the extent that women have. Some male characters stay dead, but most of them make their way back — and are better and stronger than ever, whereas the only way Alex DeWitt is coming back is possibly as a Black Lantern in Geoff Johns’ Blackest Night event. Barbara Gordon will never walk again, Dinah Lance will never be able to have children, and, well, let’s not even talk about Jean Grey and the handling of the women of Marvel. Women in comics are treated much more brutally than their male counterparts — main character, supporting, or otherwise.

I could counter all the points above by mentioning several male characters who are unlikely to ever have children (Robot Man comes to mind immediately) or that male characters have died and come back to life several time like Jean Grey (e.g. Immorto, Immortal Man, Mr. Immortal, whose entire shtick revolves around returning from brutal deaths), and center mainly at Barbara Gordon because I think there is something really significant about the character.

The first thing I want to note about Barbara is that most people don’t seem to want her to be walking again. I’ve seen polls and discussions on this with people who consider themselves feminists and who are opposed to the rampant killing/maiming of female comics characters, and most people seem to like the character better as a disabled woman who must use her wits to beat her opponents. Most people seem to have really enjoyed the evolution of the character and point to it as one of the better character evolutions in comics even if (and maybe especially if) they aren’t fond of The Killing Joke, which began Barbara’s character evolution toward the Oracle persona. Oracle stayed essentially paraplegic while Gail Simone (the creator of the WiR theory) wrote the book for years. So the idea that Barbara staying paraplegic is somehow evidence of sexism or WiR is really weak in my book.

And the theory just gets weaker as we look at male paraplegic characters who will never walk again despite Marron's theory that comic guys tend to get better.

Prof. X

The Chief

Wiz Kid

Takashi “Wiz Kid” Matsuya: Another inventive genius who can’t get himself walking.

Quincy Harker

Quincy Harker: Takes on Dracula while confined to a wheelchair! The guy had guts. And by “had guts” I mean that he doesn’t have them anymore because they were splattered all over the walls of Castle Dracula when Harker detonated a suicide bomb in his wheelchair in an failed attempt to kill Dracula. Marron makes the following point related to deaths that don’t result in punishment for the bad guy:

There are people who would argue the point and say that Alexandra DeWitt’s death is no different than that of a victim on one of the many popular crime drama we watch on TV. What’s the difference between a woman in a refrigerator and, say, a murdered woman on an episode of Law & Order? In Law & Order the murderer is arrested, tried, and punished; in the case of Alexandra DeWitt’s murderer, Major Force was made immortal and then thrown into space — ten years later. He eventually dies, but it’s not as a result of justice served for his murder of Alexandra DeWitt; in a way, that makes her death even more meaningless and shallow than the idea that she was created specifically to die.

One has to wonder what Marron thinks of Quincy Harker’s meaningless death that left the immortal Dracula unrepentantly killing throughout the Marvel Universe. Come to think of it, The Chief was crippled by General Immortus, who is also immortal and presently running free in the DCU.

Roger Bochs

Roger “Box” Bochs: will never walk again ... or breathe again for that matter. He too is dead, dead, dead. I should mention that he was briefly given the power to walk by the flesh manipulating mutant Scramble (Lionel Jeffries), but Scramble created Bochs’s new legs from the flesh of dead human bodies. Bochs’s legs eventually began to decompose. Bochs found out what was going on, and he was driven insane by this most grotesque of experiences. Bochs was then bodily subsumed/absorbed by Scramble to form the combined being called Omega. Omega (and thus Bochs) was then killed, never to be seen again ... which means he can’t have children. The Roger Bochs story puts the whole “can’t have kids” tragedy in perspective, right?

Barabara Gordon is not worse off than any of the guys above who will also never walk (among other things) again. Barbara Gordon should be a feminist icon that gets more women into reading comics. Suggesting that she is an example of sexism that is reflected in WiR does nothing to help get more women into reading comics or more female characters into lead roles in comics. All it does is discourage women from reading comics and discourage readers from enjoying the character, which hurts her chances of being a popular female character.

In the comments section of Marron’s blog, Marron suggests that there will be more Women in Refrigerators columns. Let’s hope that some research is put into those because this kind of research-free claptrap does nothing to advance feminist goals in comics.

Liliaeth says:

Marvel Divas
I just read the first issue of this and I have to say, the damn thing had maybe one or two pages worth reading.

Do they really think this is what women want to read? Seriously?

Where's the asskicking? Where's the bad guys? Where's the bits about life as a woman that isn't about dating men or wanting to date men or you know ... men...

I have to say that the only bit in this whole thing that was worth anything was the last page and even then...

Dating men is fun-ish

Let me help answer her questions!

Q: Where's the asskicking?

A: Every other comic put out by Marvel and DC including those with female leads.

Q: Where's the bad guys?

A: Every other comic put out by Marvel and DC including those with female leads.

Q: Where's the bits about life as a woman that isn't about dating men or wanting to date men or you know ... men...

A: Every other comic put out by Marvel and DC including those with female leads.

Thank you, Liliaeth, for taking the brave stance of suggesting that this comic should be like every other fucking mainstream comic out there! That’ll bring the women back to reading comics. Yes, it will!

In related questioning, where are the comics about life as a man that are about dating men or wanting to date men or you know ... men?