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defrogThere’s been talk about the DC New 52 reboot, much of it about Catwoman and Starfire putting blatant sexism back into comics at a time when part of the rationale behind DC 52 is to build up a new reader base, particularly among females.
I think a case can be made – and in fact, bloggers at Comics Alliance, Bleeding Cool and io9 have already done that to good effect, so I don't want to retread old ground. In essence: the problem isn't so much scantily clad heroes in control of their sexuality (which is fine) as the fact they’re still clearly aimed at the same fanboy demographic.
Or, as Andrew Wheeler sums up succinctly: “Like two straight girls making out in a bar, it’s all about pandering to male hormones. Catwoman is not trying to please the man in the comic, but she is trying to please the man holding the comic.”
Which would be fine, if it was intentional. If, however, the whole point was to build up a bigger female readership, then not so much – unless they thought their target female demo was straight women who make out in bars, maybe. Or the women who show up at Comic-Con dressed as Power Girl and Metal Bikini Leia. Or something.
I could go off on 20 different tangents here, any of which would turn this post into a 3,000 word epic. And no one here wants that.
But based on the above posts, it seems like DC blew a major opportunity to do something amazing to expand the appeal of comics past its traditional readership base.
In essence, the whole point of a reboot/relaunch is to reinvent a character and the universe it inhabits, and if possible the genre that defines it – not just to make it relevant in the modern world (which is challenging enough when yr dealing with characters that were created as far back as the 1930s), but also to take it in new directions.
In the case of superhero/action comics, this is especially true when it comes to female characters, who have traditionally been created, written and drawn primarily with a male audience in mind, only to be traditionally marginalized as comics writers couldn’t really figure out what to do with them – at least not in a way that boosted subscriber numbers.
As such, DC had a golden opportunity here to change that forever – to throw out the old rules for its female superhero/villain roster and show everyone how you do female superheroes in the 21st Century.
Whether they failed completely may depend on who you ask, or what titles yr talking about. Wonder Woman’s New 52 reboot has gotten better reviews (apart from the whole pants vs no pants argument).
But overall, it seems like they didn’t want to push the envelope at the risk alienating the core fanbase too much when it comes to female characters.
And to be fair, when you make the kind of money DC does – and when yr owned by a billion-dollar company like Time-Warner – and yr faced with a declining print market as the world goes digital, yr unlikely to take many chances with millions of dollars worth of bankable intellectual property.
Or maybe DC really does suck at math.
Anyway I’m not that interested in either condemning or defending DC (not least because I haven’t read any of the New 52 books – I just know what I read on the Interwub), but I think it’s fair to say that DC probably wouldn’t be getting as much heat for the Catwoman and Starfire treatments if it hadn’t already made a point about making a greater effort to rope in female readers.
Well, maybe it would in the case of Starfire, whose reinvention is admittedly inane even by horny-fanboy standards (though one would hope that Scott Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort were actually going somewhere with the emotionless alien sex-kitten routine). To say nothing ofHarley Quinn’s new look.
BONUS TRACK: For more on the problems of male writers coming up with good female characters in traditionally male-dominated genres, see this piece from John Scalzi about why Ellen Ripley is the best-written female character in sci-fi movies, and why no one else (apart from Sarah Conner in Terminator 2) has come even close.
Yr doing it wrong,
This is dF
I think a case can be made – and in fact, bloggers at Comics Alliance, Bleeding Cool and io9 have already done that to good effect, so I don't want to retread old ground. In essence: the problem isn't so much scantily clad heroes in control of their sexuality (which is fine) as the fact they’re still clearly aimed at the same fanboy demographic.
Or, as Andrew Wheeler sums up succinctly: “Like two straight girls making out in a bar, it’s all about pandering to male hormones. Catwoman is not trying to please the man in the comic, but she is trying to please the man holding the comic.”
Which would be fine, if it was intentional. If, however, the whole point was to build up a bigger female readership, then not so much – unless they thought their target female demo was straight women who make out in bars, maybe. Or the women who show up at Comic-Con dressed as Power Girl and Metal Bikini Leia. Or something.
I could go off on 20 different tangents here, any of which would turn this post into a 3,000 word epic. And no one here wants that.
But based on the above posts, it seems like DC blew a major opportunity to do something amazing to expand the appeal of comics past its traditional readership base.
In essence, the whole point of a reboot/relaunch is to reinvent a character and the universe it inhabits, and if possible the genre that defines it – not just to make it relevant in the modern world (which is challenging enough when yr dealing with characters that were created as far back as the 1930s), but also to take it in new directions.
In the case of superhero/action comics, this is especially true when it comes to female characters, who have traditionally been created, written and drawn primarily with a male audience in mind, only to be traditionally marginalized as comics writers couldn’t really figure out what to do with them – at least not in a way that boosted subscriber numbers.
As such, DC had a golden opportunity here to change that forever – to throw out the old rules for its female superhero/villain roster and show everyone how you do female superheroes in the 21st Century.
Whether they failed completely may depend on who you ask, or what titles yr talking about. Wonder Woman’s New 52 reboot has gotten better reviews (apart from the whole pants vs no pants argument).
But overall, it seems like they didn’t want to push the envelope at the risk alienating the core fanbase too much when it comes to female characters.
And to be fair, when you make the kind of money DC does – and when yr owned by a billion-dollar company like Time-Warner – and yr faced with a declining print market as the world goes digital, yr unlikely to take many chances with millions of dollars worth of bankable intellectual property.
Or maybe DC really does suck at math.
Anyway I’m not that interested in either condemning or defending DC (not least because I haven’t read any of the New 52 books – I just know what I read on the Interwub), but I think it’s fair to say that DC probably wouldn’t be getting as much heat for the Catwoman and Starfire treatments if it hadn’t already made a point about making a greater effort to rope in female readers.
Well, maybe it would in the case of Starfire, whose reinvention is admittedly inane even by horny-fanboy standards (though one would hope that Scott Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort were actually going somewhere with the emotionless alien sex-kitten routine). To say nothing ofHarley Quinn’s new look.
BONUS TRACK: For more on the problems of male writers coming up with good female characters in traditionally male-dominated genres, see this piece from John Scalzi about why Ellen Ripley is the best-written female character in sci-fi movies, and why no one else (apart from Sarah Conner in Terminator 2) has come even close.
Yr doing it wrong,
This is dF
