Depiction of Women in Comics
The question arose recently on one of the lists I read, as what people think of the depiction of women in comics. These two images say it all, I think:
Here's our boy, NAMOR!
And here's Marvel's brand new all girl Superteam! The...umm...err...vixens. *sigh*
I think, all things being equal, that art depictions of men and women aren't equal in comics. The artwork tends to depict men as power objects, and women as sex objects. I also think things have actually gotten worse on the artwork front over the last couple of decades; when I showed my wife George Perez's Teen Titans, she was blown away by the effort of an artist that could actually hand draw women, albeit ones that had a strong element of cheesecake. Contrast that to the artists these days who are essentially tracing over porn images, or at the least are being heavily helped by image manipulation programs. this is not merely a matter of simply bad and lazy artwork; it's artwork created specifically to portray women as sex objects, using quite frankly, rediculous poses.
Don't think the poses are ridiculous? Heres an experiment: go stand before the mirror (or even better, your friends) and try on one of the poses of say, Photon, or Black Cat, orFirestar up there. How do you feel? Do you feel powerful, and confident? Or does your back hurt too much from thrusting out your ass and hips?
There are exceptions of course- if a comic is stylized to a sufficient degree, the exaggerated forms can give a deliberately cartoonish impression (say, Powers or the Timmverse) . But most "realistic" artwork is being done by artists who not only never seem to have never seen a living woman naked, but have a vested interest in focusing attention on them as sex objects.
On the other hand, if the writing is unrealistic for women in mainstream comics, that's probably because the writing on all characters is generally, bad, compounded by the fact that writers can get shuffled around on a whim. The violence melodrama and wish-fulfillment soap opera aspect of mainstream comics makes it hard to write realistic personalities, though at least the writers can look in the mirror and try to extrapolate from themselves when writing men. Women and GLBT characters tend to be written as either pseudo-macho men (pointing out the absurdity of dialogue that somehow gets a pass when men say it), or really horrible pastiches of what the writer THINKS non-men are like.
There are some exceptions of course; I liked Runaways (at least the five volumes I've read of it), and Freakangels has interesting, well rounded depictins in both art and personality. Finally, the web has some interesting examples of what can be done with female characters, such as:
Sidekick Girl: a comedy about a very competent and tough sidekick, assigned to babysit a popular and highly incompetent heroine, who pretty much has the stereotypical superheroine figure, and that's it.
Magellen: in a world with an abundance of supers, training facilities have been set up to make sure superbeings use their powers for good. The main character is an unpowered woman who is determined to pass the training, but there is a wide diversity of women- and an equally wide variety of body types. The dialogue is stiff, but it is an interesting comic.
Special School: an ensemble comedy about a school for supers, with a diversity of character types and sexual orientations.
Thunderstruck: while not called a supers comic, one sister can absorb and cast electricity, and the other is a super-athlete with a katana. If Elementals could be considered a supers comic, so can this one.
And well, those are just the superhero oriented webcomics. If I wanted to draw on the wider range of webcomics for good portrayals of women, I'd have tons to choose from: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alpha Shade, Angel Moxie, Dead Winter, Nahast: Land of Strife, Juathurr, Digger, The Zombie Hunters, A Girl and Her Fed, Under Lock and Key, Girls with Slingshots, Templar Arizona, Girl Genius, Undertow, Fey Winds, Venus Envy, and the list goes on and on and on.
Honestly, if one wants to see good portrayals of female characters, the place to look isn't in mainstream comics, it's in webcomics.
Here's our boy, NAMOR!
And here's Marvel's brand new all girl Superteam! The...umm...err...vixens. *sigh*
I think, all things being equal, that art depictions of men and women aren't equal in comics. The artwork tends to depict men as power objects, and women as sex objects. I also think things have actually gotten worse on the artwork front over the last couple of decades; when I showed my wife George Perez's Teen Titans, she was blown away by the effort of an artist that could actually hand draw women, albeit ones that had a strong element of cheesecake. Contrast that to the artists these days who are essentially tracing over porn images, or at the least are being heavily helped by image manipulation programs. this is not merely a matter of simply bad and lazy artwork; it's artwork created specifically to portray women as sex objects, using quite frankly, rediculous poses.
Don't think the poses are ridiculous? Heres an experiment: go stand before the mirror (or even better, your friends) and try on one of the poses of say, Photon, or Black Cat, orFirestar up there. How do you feel? Do you feel powerful, and confident? Or does your back hurt too much from thrusting out your ass and hips?
There are exceptions of course- if a comic is stylized to a sufficient degree, the exaggerated forms can give a deliberately cartoonish impression (say, Powers or the Timmverse) . But most "realistic" artwork is being done by artists who not only never seem to have never seen a living woman naked, but have a vested interest in focusing attention on them as sex objects.
On the other hand, if the writing is unrealistic for women in mainstream comics, that's probably because the writing on all characters is generally, bad, compounded by the fact that writers can get shuffled around on a whim. The violence melodrama and wish-fulfillment soap opera aspect of mainstream comics makes it hard to write realistic personalities, though at least the writers can look in the mirror and try to extrapolate from themselves when writing men. Women and GLBT characters tend to be written as either pseudo-macho men (pointing out the absurdity of dialogue that somehow gets a pass when men say it), or really horrible pastiches of what the writer THINKS non-men are like.
There are some exceptions of course; I liked Runaways (at least the five volumes I've read of it), and Freakangels has interesting, well rounded depictins in both art and personality. Finally, the web has some interesting examples of what can be done with female characters, such as:
Sidekick Girl: a comedy about a very competent and tough sidekick, assigned to babysit a popular and highly incompetent heroine, who pretty much has the stereotypical superheroine figure, and that's it.
Magellen: in a world with an abundance of supers, training facilities have been set up to make sure superbeings use their powers for good. The main character is an unpowered woman who is determined to pass the training, but there is a wide diversity of women- and an equally wide variety of body types. The dialogue is stiff, but it is an interesting comic.
Special School: an ensemble comedy about a school for supers, with a diversity of character types and sexual orientations.
Thunderstruck: while not called a supers comic, one sister can absorb and cast electricity, and the other is a super-athlete with a katana. If Elementals could be considered a supers comic, so can this one.
And well, those are just the superhero oriented webcomics. If I wanted to draw on the wider range of webcomics for good portrayals of women, I'd have tons to choose from: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alpha Shade, Angel Moxie, Dead Winter, Nahast: Land of Strife, Juathurr, Digger, The Zombie Hunters, A Girl and Her Fed, Under Lock and Key, Girls with Slingshots, Templar Arizona, Girl Genius, Undertow, Fey Winds, Venus Envy, and the list goes on and on and on.
Honestly, if one wants to see good portrayals of female characters, the place to look isn't in mainstream comics, it's in webcomics.