Women in Refrigerators — 13 years later
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!
Continue ReadingThe history of sexy women in comics via Black Canary
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.
Continue ReadingBACK ISSUE #54 presents “The Liberated Ladies of Comics”
Even if you feel Big Barda does not speak for you, it's hard to dislike that sweet Bruce Timm cover.
Continue ReadingMarketing to women: three case studies
How Sony, Ikea and DC Comics approach marketing to women. Hint: only one of these companies actually tried.
Continue ReadingCartoonists sound off on sex problems
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:
Continue ReadingMarvel’s women problems past and present: when Ms. Marvel got raped
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.
Continue ReadingActual Asian person Ken Watanabe potentially offered role in AKIRA remake
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.
Continue ReadingAmerica’s basement-dwelling population growing
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.
Continue ReadingNYCC: “Men, if you are here to get laid, leave. Ladies, if you here to get laid, take your pick.”
This article on the "Speed Dating" sessions at the recent New York Comic Con paint an interesting picture of the social dynamics of Nerd World, especially with the growing participation of women due to the anime and Vampire influences.
Continue ReadingSexy comic book women = “weird.”
I don't know who Richard Famous is -- a gay British 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.
Continue ReadingDon’t forget: This weekend is GeekGirl Con in Seattle
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 at PW:
Continue ReadingGender battles: Miyazaki is shocked to see a woman driving a bus
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:
Continue ReadingThe day in gender battles: Fight the crap or wallow in the good?
"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."
Continue ReadingMeanwhile…what is Marvel Comics doing to its women?
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 Sufragettes 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 SIX 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.
Continue ReadingWATCH: “The Secret History of Women in Comics” at SPX
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.
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