It was 13 years ago that an “amateur” comics journalist named Gail Simone ran a survey about the phenomenon of “Women in Refrigerators” in comics. That site—currently housed here—used the moment of Kyle Rayner came home and found his girlfriend stuffed in the refrigerator as a lens for the entire phenomenon of female comics characters getting beaten, crippled, stabbed, mutilated, assaulted, and devalued.

Luckily, since then, everything has been fixed!

Or not.

Anyway, the women write about comics site hosted a blog carousel asking writers to update their feelings on WiR. There are quite a few essays linked to and they will take a long time to read. Rather than my summarizing anything there, I will merely say a prayer to Stephanie Brown and Sue Dibny and move on.

Unrelated, but relevant, Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass interviews Janelle Asselin former DC, now Disney editor about her college thesis on marketing to women in comics, and the conclusions she reached from a survey she ran. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s perhaps the nut graph:

The primary conclusions I made from my research are that there are four different ways the comics industry can adjust to increase sales to an often excluded demographic that just happens – oh yeah – to make up over 50% of America. Those four ways are better marketing towards women, more inclusive content, more effective distribution, and changing the cultural preconceptions of comics. Not every company would need to do every thing on that list, obviously. There are great indie companies that produce content that is already woman-friendly – but people just don’t know about them yet. They would need to market to women better or find new ways to distribute. And better marketing to women would, over time, change the cultural preconceptions of comics.

The thing that surprised me the most was that the answers, as I saw them anyway, were not insane, drastic measures that companies would need to take. These are all within the grasp of comics publishers and retailers. Obviously the cultural preconceptions are difficult to change, but with the other three being adjusted, that would come eventually. It just takes actually considering women of any age a viable market for comics.

We wanted to end this on an upbeat note however. Although we linked to it before, the new This! Moments for women in comics has arisen specifically out of this discussion as a place for triumphant and heroic moments—definitely something worth tumblring about.

All week DC Women Kicking Ass has been running polls to pick the favorite artists on various DCU heroines, such as Wonder Woman and Batgirl. It’s fun to see the great artists who have drawn these characters over the years. It is also fun to observe how community standards have changed with regards to superheroines. Take Black Canary. It’s a pretty safe assumption that even when the character was created by Carmine Infantino and Robert Kanigher in 1947, a woman in fishnet tights was assumed to be hot stuff. However, first general prudishness, and later the Comics Code, kept her sort of modest. In recent years, she’s been unchained.

We’ve gone from this

to this….

Of course, I’m sure you could find racy Dinahs from the ’60s and less sexualized poses from today. But looking at the entire post is a quick lesson in comics evolution.

See also my old Wonder Woman post.

Even if you feel Big Barda does not speak for you, it’s hard to dislike that sweet Bruce Timm cover.

Inside the issue, which is extensively previewed here, we’ll find:

BACK ISSUE #54 (84 page magazine, FULL-COLOR, $8.95) gives equal time to the “Liberated Ladies” of comics, eyeing the female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age. Headlining are such fabulous females as Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. There’s also a “Pro2Pro” interview with female creators JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, discussing their work in comics and beyond over the years. This issue also features art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a bombastic Big Barda cover by BRUCE TIMM. Back Issue is now in FULL COLOR, and edited by former DC and Dark Horse Comics editor MICHAEL EURY.

84-page FULL-COLOR magazine
Print version: $8.95 cover price
Digital Edition: $2.95

Although unconnected, three recent stories we read all point to how various companies approach marketing to the female consumer in different ways:

This morning Vulture is reporting that Sony is anxious over how poorly THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO movie is tracking with female moviegoers — although the books’ readership is mostly female:

While a Vintage spokesman, Russell Perreault, said that the imprint could not furnish Vulture with demographic data about what percent of the Dragon Tattoo readership was female, he did note that on the publishing house’s official Dragon Tattoo Facebook page, 71% of the 469,000 fans were women. He also noted that on Knopf’s official Stieg Larsson Facebook author fan page, some 65 percent of the author’s 291,000 fans of the author were female.

It’s no secret that women read mysteries—they also love playing those mystery video games and watch THE PROFILER. And yet they didn’t want to see a movie whose first teaser image was this? I’m shocked.

(Hint: that star was not in the original.) Or as the article puts it:

A third marketing insider put the film’s lack of success with connecting to its female fans this way: “I am surprised by those female [tracking] numbers, but I am not surprised that women don’t want to see an ultra-violent David Fincher movie about women being tortured and raped. I think women see these trailers and are being scared shitless away from it.”

Although we here at Stately Beat Manor love David Fincher — how awesome was that Karen O Immigrant Song trailer which actually opens the movie? — are you really surprised that the guy who helped remove women from the Facebook story might not have making a project woman-friendly as one of his top 10 objectives? Or that making a movie about a tough heroine who lives life by her own rules despite being treated as a sex object by people around her and then depicting her as a sex object in just about every promo for the movie might send a conflicting message? Shock.

Looking at the DRAGON TATTOO advertising, I doubt anyone at Sony ever really thought about marketing their movie to women, considering that demographic a given.

For the opposite side of Sweden, here’s the story of how Ikea actually got its sales in the US to rise last year. It wasn’t easy since they didn’t open any more stores in the US. The challenge: to get consumer to buy more big-ticket items and fewer $2 Bygels. Thus Ikea’s agencies used extensive psychological testing to find that women (primary buyers of furniture and accessories) thought of Ikea furniture as something to outgrow. Media agency MEC and ad agency Ogilvy & Mather developed a campaign that showed Ikea rooms as environments where things happened and people hung out harmoniously to suggest that buying more Ikea furniture would make your family get along better.

“TV ads showcased IKEA’s range of styles and demonstrated how, with a bit of negotiation, the perfect room can come together in harmony between two people. Print focused on one key style and showed people interacting with each other within that room, giving people the chance to imagine their own family life there. Online display ads highlighted big ticket items, like sofas, while rich media and video units let the user engage to open up a full page living room ‘showroom’ where they could browse products, download a brochure and find their nearest store.”

“MEC deployed editorial integrations that allowed audiences to see IKEA’s stylish and quality products in situations, such as building IKEA furniture into the storyline of HGTV’s hit show Dear Genevieve. TV and magazine editorial integrations lent credibility through association with home and kitchen professionals and celebrities.”

The result? Sales rose 7.4% (the target was 5% and the industry average was barely 1%); living room sales grew 9%, kitchens 12%.

We find this story notable for several reasons. #1 is fucking creepy how the top agencies use our own psychology to buy more shit. #2 so this is why Ikea catalogs increasingly show DIOKs hanging out in their cluttered yet spotless living rooms? #3 is that why almost everything at Beat HQ (including the desk this is being typed on) is from Ikea? Sigh.

Our third test case involves something NOT done, and yes it’s DC comics again. Our old pal Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass looks at promo for the New 52 and points out that despite some talk about marketing books like SUPERGIRL to the “Twilight” demo, not one DC preview has been given to a female-targeted blog, not even a nerd one like The Mary Sue.

Here’s some telling information, when DC was parsing out the exclusives for their new 52, a task that falls under the less expensive budget of PR rather than advertising, did they offer up previews to any female focused media outlets? They obviously had a segmented strategy offering exclusive previews to publications Maxim, Ebony and Out magazine but they skipped the female demographic. But did they target the many sites that women clearly frequent? Did they target the many sites that female geeks/comic readers frequent? No, they didn’t. Even with them explicitly stating in their publicity for “Supergirl” they wanted to focus on the female YA audience that is consuming “Hunger Games” they still chose to give that story to USA Today. It baffling to me when Oprah.com, one of the broadest female-focused outlets, proactively reaches out to my site which is focused on girls and comics (Girls Love Superheroes) to feature content and yet DC didn’t pitch Batgirl, Supergirl, Batwoman or Birds of Prey to a site like Jezebel, Marie Clare or to a site catering to the female geek like the Mary Sue or Geek Mom (which writes about comics all the time and yet their male counterpart Geek Dad was given two previews by DC).

As long as we’re picking on the DC Woman Problem again, here’s a piece we long ago bookmarked, Sonia Harris’s look at DC heroines entitled “Ms. New 52 and Her Powerful PMS”:

DC’s solo, female superhero titles depict women who are firmly focused on emotions, family, home, and sex. These women are so distracted by these things, that they’re barely able to think about their jobs as superheroes. It is disappointing to read so many women characters depicted this way, consistently unprofessional and erratic, and it is hard to imagine a male character ever worrying about any of these things to this level.

To be fair, a lot of DC male heroes are blithering idiots, also. In fact, of the DC books we read, it seems to be a common characteristic for the heroes to faff about and get all pissy about everything—everyone has PMS in the DCU.

Is there a net takeaway from these three stories? Sort of, but it’s so obvious it barely needs repeating: If you want people to give you their money, you need to figure out what they like first. That’s job #1 for marketing.

Grace Bello has taken the bold step of going to cartoonists and asking them for sex advice —
and posting the results on Nerve. The results may shock you. Not really, but we had to say that, just because “cartoonists” and “sex” were long considered a bad match –unless you were one of those swinging ’60s Don Draper cartoonists in the NCS, of course. Anyway, back to the present day.

Rick Altergott on the pecking order:

Before you were married, did you have any groupies? Has being a cartoonist gotten you laid?

No, not really. I met some pretty nice girls through the business of cartooning. Back in the ’90s, I was at a party with Jaime Hernandez, and this cute girl came up to us, and she was one of his fans. And then the same night, there was another girl who was a fan of my comic, Doofus, and she was not nearly as pretty. And both of us were like, “There’s your fan, and here’s my fan.” But I wouldn’t say either of them was a groupie. I’ve never had someone come on to me as a result of me being a cartoonist.

Anders Nilsen proves that he can answer …the big questions:

My husband wants an open relationship. I’m kind of into the idea, but how can we make it work?

One-hundred-percent openness and honesty and being into it for the right reasons. You’ve got to be sure that you’re clear with one another that you’re the primary and you’re not interested in moving on or whatever. I know several people who’ve kind of tried it, and it hasn’t really worked. That’s why I feel like, if it’s going to work, you have to be super-purposeful and clear about it.

Emily Flake just tells it like it is:

Has being a cartoonist gotten you laid?

It’s gotten me not laid, probably. I can’t think of any specific instances in which it’s worked in my favor. I think that the things that make up being a cartoonist are, by and large, the exact same things that keep you from getting laid — pretty much being awkward and sad.

More in the link.

Yesterday’s comments by Tom Brevoort on the lack of sales support for female characters at Marvel did not go unnoticed by the usual gender issue commentators.

Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass suggests that blaming the readers may not be the way to go given a lack of marketing support:

Did we give these books the level of promotion that we do for the bazzillion  ‘WOLVERINEDEADPOOL!” titles.

Do we maybe ask our overlords at Disney for some advice, “Hey, you guys seem to know how to market female-led IP, um, help?”

Right now Marvel is profitable; they have the money to grow the business. And as I said about DC earlier this year, I believe Marvel is leaving money on the table with female readers.

I am aware that Marvel’s purse strings are apparently tied up in in the hands of dude who makes the Simpson’s Mr. Burns look like a soft touch.

Susana Polo at The Mary Sue also suggests that not trying to reach a new audience may not be ultimately advantageous:

 

That’s right, ladies. All we have to do to get a retailer to see us as a part of their audience is to spend money on them. But the money comes first, and in comparable quantities to the rest of the entrenched demographic that they are already focusing on to the exclusion of others, or no dice. This is absolutely how a shrinking industry should feel about attracting a new and potentially eager audience. It is absolutely not the opposite of the way this transaction is supposed to go. Companies in the business of giving product in trade for money always play hard to get with untapped demographics. That’s how you know the demographic wants you.

 

The comments thread after this one is particularly lively if you like that kind of thing.

Also linked to at the Mary Sue: this two-part Escapist look at the strange history of Ms. Marvel

I watched these videos all the way through because they clicked something in my subconscious brain. Short version: In Avengers #200, Ms. Marvel, who was (as the above covers indicates) was created as a direct attempt to play off the then current surging waters of feminism, is abducted to hell, given mind altering drugs, has sex while in this date rape state, and eventually gives birth to the guy who raped her, all while the rest of the Avengers look on and think it’s awesome. At the end of the story she even goes off with the guy who arranged the kidnapping, rape, and mind control pregnancy. And no one stops her.

Although the Escapist doesn’t mention it, the story in question was written by Jim Shooter, George Perez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie. It squicked out enough people to give rise to this bit of historic comics criticism from the ’70s by Carol Strickland..

It also squicked out Chris Claremont, who created the Ms. Marvel character wrote several issues of the Ms Marvel comic. (Gerry Conway created the character.)Say what else you will about Chris Claremont, but he sure created a lot of great female characters (and male ones, too.) Claremont eventually wrote an Avengers annual where a depowered Carol Danvers (she lost her powers to Rogue, remember) busts on the Avengers for failing to look out for her.

And now the memory dump: I do remember reading both these stories as a kid. And I remember being really, really disappointed that Ms. Marvel, who was a total kick ass hero, had to get all loved up AND later lose her powers. I was pretty young but I remember a real feeling of disenchantment and never really liking the Ms. Marvel character again. (It was Claremont who depowered her, BTW.) Even though she came back as Binary it wasn’t the same. Spider-Man and Thor and the Hulk and all the guys got to stay themselves…why did Ms. Marvel have to get de-powered?

I’ve written about this many times before, but as a kid, picking up an issue of JSA with a hugely boobtastic Power Girl was enough to totally turn me off DC for the next 10 years.

So, just FYI, Marvel and DC, young girls do pick up on your subliminal messages. And when we don’t like them…we walk away.

The long on-again, off-again life action Akira movie is decidedly on again at Warners, with Jaume Collet-Serra to direct the Steve Kloves script. Given that AKIRA is a worldwide classic of anime and Japanese film in general that hugely influenced both animation and the cyberpunk movement, it seems ripe for reinvention in that Hollywood way.

And of course, also in that Hollywood way, despite the story being set in and infused with Japanese culture, because American moviegoers are all white and cannot be persuaded to pay money to watch Asian people on the screen, the film is being moved from New Tokyo to “New Manhattan ” (essentially New New York) and replacing all the Asian characters with white people if casting rumors are true.

Like

Kristen Stewart

Paul Dano

Garrett Hedlund

Helena Bonham Carter

Gary Oldman

Now, we loves us some Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter as much as any other member of the Brit Acting Mafia…and Kristen Stewart is a very talented and engaging young actress. Dano is faboo. Hedlund…eh. Bleh. Whatevs. But the consistent whitewashing of the film is alarming or disgusting depending on your point of view. It’s not just that the movie has to have white stars; it’s that EVERYONE has to be white.

Now, however it seems that Gary Oldman has turned down the part, and in desperation the producers have offered the role to an actual man of Japanese descent, Ken Watanabe.

Watanabe is of course a handsome, brooding movie star, as WELL as a proven favorite in the Christopher Nolan-verse with prominent roles in BATMAN BEGINS and INCEPTION. So maybe having a real Japanese person in the movie won’t destroy it? Except that the role was also offered to Morgan Freeman, so it’s clearly the “Non white person role.” Every movie has to have one. Because this is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

PS: Here’s a great quote by sensei George Takei on the whitewashing of AKIRA;

“I’m surprised Warner Bros. is not keeping up with the audience. The manga and anime phenomenon is mostly white in this country. It originated in Japan, and, of course, it has a huge Asian fan following. But it’s the multi-ethnic Americans who are fans of ‘Akira’ and manga. The idea of buying the rights to do that and in fact change it seems rather pointless,” he told The Advocate. “If they’re going to do that, why don’t they do something original, because what they do is offend Asians.”

Over the three years (!) of the Great Recession, it’s been noted many times that the Fantasy Economy has held up better than many other segments. Yes, comics sales are down overall, but they took a while to take a hit and rebounded strongly when something interesting happened (New 52).

But why? Maybe it’s because America’s stay-at-home male population is also growing, as Politico notes.

Almost one in five men between the ages of 25 to 34 are living with their parents, according to a Census Bureau report released Thursday. About 14 percent of men lived with their parents in 2005, a figure that crept up to 19 percent.

Women continue to have a slightly more independent lifestyle. The Census Bureau found only 10 percent from the same age bracket still reside with their parents, compared to 8 percent in 2005.

And that’s not all: 59 percent of men and 50 percent of women ages 18-24 still live at home.

We’re not saying that all comics are purchased by nerds who live in their moms’ basements. We’re just saying that a lot of people are living in their moms’ basements. Of course, they may not have the most discretionary income in the world, either. Either way, a lack of upward mobility can be a powerful influence towards escaping into a fantasy world.

This article on the “Speed Dating” sessions at the recent New York Comic Con by Latoya Peterson paints an interesting picture of the social dynamics of Nerd World, especially with the growing participation of women due to the influx of anime and Vampire influences.

Prejudices that plague the wider dating market are checked at the door: Asian men—who don’t fare well by OkCupid’s metrics—are a highly sought after commodity, possibly due to anime and Japanese dramas finally showing Asian male characters as objects of desire rather than derision. Spending three minutes talking about Gundam collectibles is more likely to excite a prospect instead of making their eyes glaze over. Guys won’t be mocked in front of the entire Internet for being awesome at Magic the Gathering. And, unlike traditional dating circles that try to encourage women to forgo feminist ideas in order to win true love—never call a man! Play by “The Rules”!—at NYCC speed dating, the women call the shots. This is even more poignant considering the comics and their fan worlds are heavily dominated by male artists and creators who seem to think that women are strongest when they forget to wear clothing. To carve out a space where women set the tone for engagement is nothing less than amazing.

Could it be that far from being a tiny, repressed minority in Nerd World, female fans are changing the whole game? Maybe comic-cons are no longer a “safe space” for male pursuits.

Maybe cooties DO exist and they DO “ruin” things.

I don’t know who Richard Famous is — a gay Brtish man who makes little-watched YouTube videos — but what he has to say about “the brokeback pose” and how hyper-sexualization depowers female comics characters is pretty dead on.

This weekend, the first female-centric comics convention in many a year takes place in Seattle, with GeekGirl Con. Jennifer de Guzman has a great write-up and interview with the organizers at Publishers Weekly:

Comics creators like Gail Simone, Jen Van Meter, Hope Larson, Greg Rucka, and Trina Robbins will be in Seattle on October 8-9 for GeekGirl Con, a new convention devoted to the interests and concerns of women in “geek culture.” Born out of a brainstorm after a 2010 Comic-Con International panel called “Geek Girls Exist,” the convention is an effort to “bring focus to not just women in the geek industry but also the fans of that industry,” according to public relations manager Kiri Callaghan.

“By bringing attention to the female fans, we present the industry with an opportunity to see part of its audience that it may not be aware of,” says Callaghan, “and by bringing attention to the women who work in that industry, we present the opportunity for those fans to see a possible career path.”

If we were closer than 3500 miles away we’d be there in a hot minute. Send us any reports!

It might come as a shock that Hayao Miyazaki, the revered animator behind such enduring and magical characters as Totoro and Nausicaa — a creator whose body of work nearly defines entertainment that everyone can enjoy — might have some odd ideas about women animators but that’s what this tweet seemed to imply:

@Miyasan_bot: They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we borrow from outside staff (i.e. outsource), but soon we won’t be able to do that forever.

Incredibly — and surely with great trepidation—the great Anne Ishii actually questions Myazaki on Twitter and got a response and here’s her translation:

@miyasan_bot:
Part 1:
They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we’ll borrow from outside staff, to lend a hand but we can’t do that forever.

Part 2:
These are not reasons for me to take production to China. I don’t want to deplete Japan in that way. So, what do we do?

Part 3:
(Ghibli Studios) has been resolved to rowing the boat altogether as a team and giving it our all, while everyone around us is jet-propelled with new technology and running at full-speed. We still illustrate with pen and paper. I say we continue to give this our all, together.

Part 4:
I counter the point some make that we’re in an age where you’ll find women driving buses by asking if it’s ok to have women all over cotton mills. (LOL)

Part 5:
I think it would be great to see a female animation director, but as far as Ghibli’s concerned, I can’t think of a single one for us. So what about newcomers? Well, I believe women are incredibly fast-learners and self-starters. If you look at men, even today, they develop much slower.

Ishii, analyzes the response and find it a bit more nuanced than was indicated:

My conclusion from Part 4 of the Quintweet is that for Miyazaki, status quo is an issue that starts with the basic tenet that women do work at all. Amazing to think the studio responsible for so many phenomenal heroins doesn’t think women actually earn their keep in modern professions. Actually I take that back. Nausicaa is an animist warrior; Chihiro and Ponyo are both children, as are Totoro’s neighbors. The closest thing to a working professional woman in Ghibli films is a witch who delivers packages from a bakery. [Note: I LOVE all these films and still think primary, secondary and all tertiary female characters could categorically kick every female animated Disney character in the proverbial “Pocahontas”.] And finally, Part 5. “Show me the women!” he says. Damn straight. And this is the variable that changes my perspective on the entire argument against his seeming indifference to the glass ceiling. Women are fast learners. Men are comparatively late-bloomers. Get a leg up, women! Get out of the cotton mills, stop driving all those buses and start rowing this boat to nowhere.

Some more light is shed on this in comments at Cartoon brew:

Miyazaki’s love for female employees has been one of the consistent things throughout his career. Even the bathrooms at Ghibli are apparently designed to be in the best condition and location for female animators, and he has had a strong team of female animators working with him since the late 70s up until now. His female animators are all fantastic artisans, and have been animation directors/supervisors throughout his past films. I think he is referring here to directors [of an entire film] when mentioning female animators. It seems he means to say that women are incredible assets to the team, like workers in a cotton mill (or the way the women build the plane in Porco Rosso), but might not be interested in directing.

Our thoughts? The proof is in the pudding, and Miyazaki stands as one of the towering creators of the late 20th century, whose unique imagination and knowledge of the human heart allows his work to speak for itself. But you know, he’s also an older man from a different generation in a country where women are, realistically, still fighting some battles for equality. If he spent 10 minutes in New York he’d see sassy ladies driving buses and even running subway cars everywhere. There might even be an animator or two on the bus, because they sure as heck can’t afford to take a cab.

This topic shows no signs of slowing down! Damn the torpedoes, we’re going in!

§ Let’s start the day with laughter as Martha Thomases looks at the current kerfuffle from a fashion standpoint:

Two pages later, we see Kory again, this time in a bikini. She’s swimming, so the fact that she’s wearing a bikini isn’t surprising, but it doesn’t fit her properly. The ties that should go underneath her breasts instead circle them from the middle. Maybe they have to, because the patches of fabric attached to the ties are too small to cover her if the suit fit properly.

(Perhaps this inability to find something appropriate to wear is related to her new characterization. An alien who can’t tell one human male from another probably has trouble understanding American sizing, or fitting rooms. However, since she makes it clear that, like all her people, she’ll have sex with anyone at any time whenever she feels like it, I’d love to see what the appliance stores are like on Tamaran.)

Beyond this kind of humorous examination, the idea that I brought forth here got some traction this week, especially in a blog post by Image’s publisher Eric Stephenson
called simply “Stop.”

There are plenty of other comics to read, by a wide variety of publishers, and a lot of them are even superhero comics. I actually just re-read Joss Whedon’s wonderful run on Astonishing X-Men. That work, or indeed the series Joss is best known for, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, stands head and shoulders above the books generating all this vitriol. There’s a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series out right now. Support that instead. iZ0mbie is another one that comes to mind. Or Invincible by Robert Kirkman. And actually, from DC’s New 52, there’s Batwoman.

[snip]
If you’re just complaining about this stuff to hear yourself complain, with no intention of changing your reading or buying habits, because you somehow need the security blanket of the same ol’ superhero comics you’ve always read, knock yourself out. You will get more of the same, and you can make yourself feel important by denouncing these creepy, cringe-worthy comics whilst continuing to support them like the good little fangirl you are.

This did not go unnoticed, and was backed up by ComicVine’s Sara Lima:

In the uproar, I really feel that a lot of comics that feature female characters in a positive, empowering light have gone overlooked. They have been overshadowed by so much hostility towards two titles and that is unacceptable. Yes, it’s easy to get upset and rant about how angry you are at the interpretation of a character, but that won’t help bring positive awareness to some really good books that deserve some love. Not enough people are talking about how powerful Wonder Woman is in this new relaunch, or how fantastic it is to see Kate return in ‘Batwoman.’ How these women really are kicking so much ass and taking names, and how excited people are to read their upcoming issues. And there’s absolutely no reason for that.

But others did not like Stephenson’s tone, including Tumblr’s Thewherefores who labelled it “mansplainin’”– the internet’s term for when men lecture women on how they should react:

Listen up ladies, boyfriend’s gonna show us how to do feminism, fandom and media activism right. Complaining about sexism in superhero comics is silly, because what else did you expect, right?

Except—ALL sexism is harmful, ALL sexism is worth calling out. The micro level matters, because by and large, that is where people live.

Except—superhero comics are not in fact simple soft core, id-porn. Heroic fiction is, culturally speaking, kind of a big deal. Superman means something to people. By dint of being on a massively popular cartoon, Starfire means something to people. Superhero comics can be better, and they should be better.

Except—new readers deserve the chance to weigh in on this issue, and they don’t deserve to be scolded for not being into cool comics. What I’m saying is that, a) not everyone is ~over this conversation, and b) “But why are you reading The Outsiders anyway?” isn’t helpful in this context.

Except—“What you’re really doing is helping the very things you hate find a wider audience. So stop.” Nope! People are bringing attention to the comics and to the problem at same time, and in the process, finding new allies and enemies. They’re opening the conversation to new voices, and that’s a good thing.

And Stephenson shot back:

“People are bringing attention to the comics and to the problem at same time, and in the process, finding new allies and enemies.”

Except you’re rewarding your “enemies,” if that’s what they truly are, with exactly what they want: attention and sales.

“…like the good little fangirl you are.”

And yeah, if you thought that sounded unkind, that was my point. Fangirl, fanboy – no difference. All they want is your allegiance as a fan, and they don’t care how they get it. All they want is your attention.

Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass tweeted today:

If all we do is praise the good, the crap will still come. Books w/chicks as fembots will still get released. Becuz no one will SAY A WORD.

To which I say: so what if there are fembot books? There always have been and always will be and I reserve the right to make fun of them. But I don’t deny cheesecake and its place. I don’t want to take away men’s books — I just want books FOR ME that present a better alternative. I didn’t like the characterization of Catwoman or Starfire, but Catwoman has always been a sexually alluring character and Batman has always had the hots for her. RED HOOD was just a horrible book all around that took a good character and saddled her with two horrible characters. And they should be criticized. But not at the expense of ignoring books that actually aren’t offensive or badly written, like BIRDS OF PREY or WONDER WOMAN.

Or, y’know, HARK! A VAGRANT or LOVE AND ROCKETS #4 or HABIBI or DRINKING AT THE MOVIES or I KILL GIANTS or BEAST or a ton of other books by and about women that don’t feature girls in invisible bikinis.

I dunno, There’s something about DC fans that has them locked in an eternal love hate relationship. Graeme McMillan just did a comparative study of Marvel and DC found that ON PAPER, DC has a lot more diversity than Marvel, in terms of books featuring minority characters. And yet, as yesterday’s post comments proved, most people think Marvel is doing pretty good in the gender arena, and DC can’t do anything right.

Many years ago, I remember an editor on GREEN LANTERN telling me that since Hal had turned bad — leading to actual death threats against the creative team — sales had soared. The more they complained, the more they bought.

Fans who complain and then buy the next issue to see if their complaints were listened to are playing a game, but it’s not one where they made the rules. Who is really playing who here?

September has been New 52 month and Marvel has been silently sitting on the sidelines waiting for her chance to get a dance with the homecoming king at the school dance, while wondering how her formerly drab rival managed to catch his attention.

But while they haven’t been getting all that much good talk…they also haven’t been scrutinized…yet. The Suffragettes of Comics have been too busy raking DC over the coals to notice that, as “Man Show” as their books sometimes are, at least DC has SEVEN books featuring a female character as the lead..compared to Marvel’s paltry one—X-23. Marvel also publishes Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Anita Blake, and the Crossgen pick-up MYSTIC — but while we’d consider those fine examples of diversity and finding a female audience, they aren’t mainstream Marvel U.

The situation could be even worse in the Ultimate universe, at least according to this writer who calls out Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction’s Ultimate titles as “yet more stories for boys”:

It’s just as telling to note who isn’t a woman in The Ultimates # 1. In addition to the active and apparently more important roles in Fury’s entourage being reserved for men, the leaders of this issue’s world-threatening conspiracy are all males too. (There are women in their ranks, mind you, and they appear to be identically blonde and beautiful Nordicesque twins.) Still, both Fury’s base and the gaggle of his primary opponents do have women prettying up their background. Yet not a single one of the European “Excalibur-class super-soldiers” who’re on display are anything other than conspicuously male. It’s something which I doubt real-world sensibilities over here on the other side of Pond would ever accept, but then politics doesn’t really appear to be Mr Hickman’s strong point. (* See H and I below for a few more examples of this.) Similarly, the massed carousing immortals of Asgard are almost entirely male with the exception of one bikini-clad woman carrying the drinks in the background of a single panel and another largely-naked lass making a sole semi-nude appearance to cheer on the immortal boys when they get down to their manly brawling. It seems that only the youthfully undressed cheesecake gets the privilege of waiting on the boys in this Asgard of the Ultimate Universe.

This is a little surprising since both Hickman and Fraction are not known for being mainstream/damn diversity types.

Could it be that there is some kind of corporate mandate in effect, like the ones that govern the movies–unstated rules that women have to be peripheral and background, and god help us if there is more than one in a story?

That would be way too bad. Although Marvel’s women have never been able to sustain their own books, there are lots of them, especially in the X-universe, and they are some of the best characters in the Marvel U.

Scott Edelman has posted a complete video of the panel I moderated at SPX featuring Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman, and Diane Noomin.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video, former Beat Events Editor Maggie Siegel-Berele posted her own cartoon take on the panel.

Maggie thought the panel was depressing. I say those who don’t remember the past are doomed to go to panels to find out about what happened.