8 years ago
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Why the “Future of Women in Comics” Thinks It Helps to Be Terrifying
As one of the comic-book industry’s most successful writers, DeConnick, 44, has been credited with drawing female readers back to comic books. She is the writer of three popular comic-book series, all starring female characters: the Marvel imprint Captain Marvel, the western Pretty Deadly, and Bitch Planet, a cultural satire about an off-planet women’s prison. She writes passionately, both on and off the page...
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I'm not surprised. If you look at comics from the 90s or even early 2000s, it's pretty easy to see that comics were fairly male-centric. Heck, I'm a male and I was turned off by the hypermasculinity and scantily clad women decked throughout every cover. It's only now I'm seeing comics that catch my interest (although Powers was pretty goddamn awesome).
When we finally get a decent female superhero movie 5 to 10 years from now, I won't be surprised to see more people talking about how women amazingly came out of nowhere to start seeing these movies like it's some huge mystery.
I hear ya! Scantily clad attractive women... just ewwwww!
I'd never heard of DeConnick prior to your snap, but now I wish I had. With quotes like, “My advice? Be terrifying." and “I’ll believe these films are definitely happening when they are on the screen.” - she sounds like someone I would've enjoyed following for a while.
I've heard of people - men - complaining about the phenomenon discussed in this article: the spread of diverse characters. They've complained about how in every corner it seems like everyone's just trying to profit from being politically correct, when there was nothing wrong with the stories before. I sometimes wonder if they feel it difficult to identify with a character unlike them, whether by race or gender or some other factor. Maybe they see so many characters unlike them and it feels threatening - what happened to the average Joe character they liked so much? And I'm not faulting them or trying to cast these guys as villains, because a lot of them are friends and coworkers, but it seems like there are some emotions behind their push-back or resentment.
If that's the case, I hope they start to understand what it's like from the other side. Of course I can like stories with men in the main role - I've had little choice, after all, but besides that there have always been great, developed male characters that I can get behind. But there is a certain feeling to seeing a character with whom you can identify more closely, whose experiences mirror your own. I'd say that companies aren't profiting off being "PC" - they're profiting off a whole massive subsection of people previously unacknowledged in comics and other media, just as they profited off a certain subsection of men by writing comics featuring shallow, gorgeous women characters.
From the related link I added (which was linked within the article) DeConnick says,
So knowing that and understanding where she's coming from, I'm still going to ask - any recommendations on where to start with comic books that are more appealing to women? Obviously Captain Marvel seems like a good place, but I never know if I need to read something else to get started or if there's some specific issue I need to look for, etc. I don't have any friends that read actual comic books to help me out here.