lol. I actually intended for that to be a pun in light of tonight’s strip. but if you want to fantasize about amber and leslie’s potentially plastic boobs I will not stop you.
It would be a strawman if these exact phrases (maybe not “shut up forever” but everything else) didn’t frequently pop up from haters in the DCWKA tumblr, as well as other message boards.
Not our fault they’re living straw man.
Amber’s opponents so ridiculous that it makes mockery of her ‘victory’ over him.
But then, so did 6 straight panels of *sphincter clench*
I don’t even know what that strip was trying to say but it seriously undermined my ability to take anything he’s saying on the subject seriously.
A moral argument built on sand will not stand. And you don’t build a house out of straw. …straw house on sand = bad combo.
While strawmen usually refers to representive characters with huge flaws you can easily argue against, real-life strawmen can be anyone who while claiming to represent a certain group, is seen as a kind of a ‘black sheep’ by that group as this person makes the group look bad.
That’s kinda the point. You can schadenfreudeby kicking real-life strawmen in the balls… it’s a lot of fun! …but it’s also mastubatory. You don’t score points for it.
Dismantling a living strawman’s argument is like winning an argument with a six year old. Yeah, you can do it… but it’s not an accomplishment.
Except for the part where it’s opinion’s like this guy’s that seem to hold the most power in real life. Heck, just a flashback to last year’s SDCC showed plenty of people ready to jump on the “you already said you’re unhappy, and we promised to do absolutely nothing about it, now shut up because you don’t matter!” train.
Don’t care. The POV he’s presenting is so flimsy it’s like kicking over a styrofoam cup.
It doesnt’ MATTER that this is a real POV… you need to build up his POV, add more justifications or false-arguments or appeal-to-imaginary-masses so that there’s something THERE to dismantle.
Amber needs to punt this guy like a football. How far can you kick a styrofoam cup?
You need a more substantive argument– something with more mass to kick– or it just makes it look like Amber’s Winning Again through no merit of her own.
Or maybe that’s what Willis was going for. I mean… she IS his Stephanie Meyer stand-in. Maybe the antagonists are supposed to take a fall for before Bella’s self-inserted awesomeness.
tldr; How is she supposed to take him down a notch if he’s already at the bottom?
Laura: “This is a real-life problem that’s directly relevant to people.”
Derik: “Don’t care.”
And now we have the comic.
And just like the comic, it’s a flimsy argument presented by an overbearing dude with lots of volume. Derik just really likes proving my comics 100% correct.
Your entire premise sounds weird to me. It’s like you’re placing the Buckets of Blood guy into the role of a primary antagonist and then complaining because it wasn’t intellectually stimulating enough when Ethan conquered him, dismantled his opinions and proved his entire paradigm to be fundamentally flawed.
Key difference: Buckets of Blood managed to be funny.
I derived no entertainment from this. If its value instead lies in being “a very special” Shortpacked! where a lesson is learned I think its message was muddy.
And David, the realness of the problem does not make it impossible for you to do a comic about it that isn’t very good. Saying that the problem automatically make any statement on the problem deep and profound is, itself, a corollary problem. (A much less important one, admittedly.)
Maya Angelou is awesome… but that doesn’t stop Fiona Apple from sounding like a dumbass when she talks about her. The subject and the speaker are not one.
No offense, but your opinion on this particular strip is worthless to me. I value more the opinion of the people who actually live this strip every day, who did find it had a punchline with value, even if it was bittersweet. If they find worth in it, then I succeeded in my goal.
You didn’t find it entertaining? That’s too bad for you. You are not my only reader. Surprise, you found a comic that’s not actually about you. I’m incredibly sorry.
Okay, that’s legitimate!
I quite enjoy Shortpacked! 98% of the time. I didn’t ‘get’ both strips with Arch, but whatever.
Please don’t take my inability to figure out what’s going on in this particular strip as a disenjoyment of your work overall. I guess this onw just falls in my blindspot.
Also, I should probably reiterate I was calling Fiona Apple a dumbass, not you. Lovely music though.
(No reason we can’t be civil at the end of the day.)
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.
To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position
Ya know I remember not buying the original fable because you couldn’t be a chick in it and thinking to myself, so if I play it once evil and once as good, and the developers are not trying to reach out to my fiance playing it at all, I’ll have spent $40 for a game that might get played twice by me (cause that second play through was never gonna happen) and not at all by the girl that is living with me.
So when playing Resident Evil: Code Veronica, did you have to wait for her to finish the Claire portion of the game before you could start the Chris portion?
I’ve never played Fable so maybe I’m thinking of the wrong game, but… don’t you make your own character in Fable?
That’s a little different from a game with a defined hero–or one with multiple protagonists representing both sexes.
Not really. In the original game you get what you get. In fable 2 and 3 you can play as a girl or a guy, and you can dye their hair, but that’s about it. I haven’t played the new Kinect one.
I’m not really a gamer but I love the Fable series. In fact, we finally bought 2 and 3 last night so now we actually own the first three. (They’re super cheap now, too.)
I actually never liked the resident evil games, because when people were telling me they were so awesome they had shit control schemes. I hear the 4th one finally fixed that.
I’m really happy that DC has FINALLY closed up Power Girl’s boob window. Her new costume is a little goofy, but at least she’s dressed marginally less like cheesecake.
And yes, I know, people are gonna go “ooh! Ooh! But teh comic gave her a justification that showed how VULNERABLE she was!” To that I say… nah, i’m glad it’s gone. Having someone hastily patch it with “she couldn’t think of a logo because she admired Superman, so she let ‘em swing in the breeze” is really silly.
Didn’t Huntress also recapture her pants? Could it be that sometimes some of the women characters will wear clothes when they fight crime now? How crazy would that be??
Many female (and non-sexist male) Wonder Woman fans also hated the pants, but it’s the “classic costume” so it’s going to have fans regardless of gender politics.
I like the pants. The classic costume…it’s so damn hard to take seriously, even by superhero costume standards. I also really liked the straps, I wish those had at least been kept.
I didn’t like the pants because it doesn’t fit with Wondy, and I think the same thing about the bathing suit. She should wear a greco-roman skirt or a toga skirt; it makes more sense and won’t be turned into a thong like the bathing suit bottom does.
I liked it when the bottom of the bathing suit was basically short-shorts. Something sporty and athletic. Though a greco-roman-type skirt looks pretty fitting too.
I just take issue with people redesigning costumes for redesigning costume’s sake. Especially when they can’t do it well. (Really, all they had to do was close the window. There was NOTHING ELSE wrong with that costume. Unless you wanna start taking issue with the way gymnasts dress.)
Also I take issue with making her skinny, since I absolutely loved Amanda Conner’s interpretation, but that’s something else entirely.
A) “I can’t think of a logo, therefore boobs”
B) “I’m sensitive and vulnerable, therefore boobs”
C) “Hey, criminals, look! Boobs!”
Of course, all it really shows is that the writers can’t make up their boobs, and were so intent on having boobs that they’d boobs any excuse they could boobs with.
See, and I’m a little sad to see it go. For one, it seems like…I dunno how to put this. Like small potatoes (er) compared to what’s happening characterwise to Starfire and Catwoman. Or more specifically, I have no faith in an editorial mandate that says to cover up an iconic character design, but keeps Harley Quinn in her new godawful WHAT IS THAT costume. It seems unbalanced, and fewer folk were crying out for a closing of the boob window.
Me, personally, I liked it. And not so much for the “vulnerable moment” with the reason behind it. I liked it because it was bold, in-your-face, and just a wee bit vulgar, which is pretty much what PG is most of the time. I liked that, unlike so many skimpy-but-”justified” costumes, it felt like she deliberately chose her outfit. As Tim Gunn said, she owned it. I liked it because I’m not always comfortable showing off my assets, but Peej can do it (again, deliberately, not just in a “my people have always worn bikinis” or whatever way), and still look like she’ll take your head off.
And the thing is…it wasn’t all that much cleavage. Less than the average Renn Faire costume. And just a small window of it, while being covered from throat-to-wrist otherwise. I think that’s why it felt deliberate on the character’s part, like it was less titillation and more playful.
It’s been said over and over, it’s not really the costumes (okay, sometimes it’s the costumes. Violet Lantern Wonder Woman, anyone?), it’s how they’re drawn.
Besides, the new costume is…it’s just awful. Not Harley Quinn levels of awful, where it manages to be bother gratuitous and oversexed, but also hideous, but…it’s pretty disco-riffic.
” I liked that, unlike so many skimpy-but-”justified” costumes, it felt like she deliberately chose her outfit.”
I agree with that. I would rather have fixed every other heroine’s costume and left hers alone, to stand as the example of the one (or at least, one of the few) heroines who deliberately choose to flaunt what they’ve got. (As opposed to using that excuse for EVERY heroine’s costume, regardless of how inappropriate it is for their personality.)
Interestingly, the biggest problem I have with the new PG design is her head. Her face is too damn soft looking–specifically, her chin is rounder–and her hair looks perfect. It’s weird.
I like the Amanda Conner version, is what I’m saying.
I’m sad to see the boob window go. I mean, there’s no rational justification for having it, but what else does the character have going for her? She’s a derivative character of a derivative character. She may have been a walking joke with the boob window, but at least that’s something. Now you can’t even make fun of her.
Power Girl has gone from “The super hero with a boob window” to “The super hero that used to have a boob window.” Big step up.
I mean, let’s be serious here. What’s the plan? Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?
Even if D.C. was capable of that, which they aren’t, there isn’t a character in their entire collection of trademarks less suited to the task.
On the other hand, the only time Huntress didn’t look completely absurd was when she was drawn with pants, so I’m glad that design is apparently still around.
“I mean, let’s be serious here. What’s the plan? Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?”
It sounds to me like you missed the series she had going there for a while. I’m not quite sure how “head of her own company that she’s quite qualified to run while having amusing and interesting adventures” wouldn’t appeal. Cripes, it appealed to me, and I’m not even the intended audience of which you speak. XD
They were already telling pretty great stories with her in Palmiotti and Gray’s Power Girl. Were it not for the fanservice it probably would’ve been the number one comic I’d recommend for female readers. Lots of focus on friendship, no contrived drama- just a really fun comic.
I’m a huge Power Girl fan and I love her old costume, but I’m glad it was changed so that the character will be able to appeal to a broader audience.
Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?
Even if D.C. was capable of that, which they aren’t, there isn’t a character in their entire collection of trademarks less suited to the task.
What about the Palmiotti/Conner series? That did a pretty good job of setting Peej up as her own character and drawing an audience with more-than-the-usual-number of women. PG has a definite personality to her that makes her a distinctive character. Most characters that aren’t the Core Five can be dismissed as joking B-list characters by people who don’t read them.
Here is what I think. The not really all that gratuitous boob window sort of told me alot about her personality. So has the new outfit…but it is not quit the same personality, I am hopeful she keeps her old personality and it really is just a new look. I have the same problem with the new Harley Quinn and Starfire. The looks don’t match the characters I know. I may be being asked to think of them as new characters but why not then just make them new characters?
Vulnerability – probably not a good trait in a superhero. I mean, “oooooh, I’m a super hero, I’m sooooooooooooooooooo vulnerable.” Cops don’t dress to be vulnerable. Soldiers don’t dress to be vulnerable.
Actually, for a while there they had her keep it open because she was comfortable with herself, and if others drooled, well, that was their hang-up. (And on one level, she’s right. It was just cleavage.)
It’s really annoying how this Willis frames some of his complaints sometimes. It’s getting to Minimum Security level extremism, where anyone who disagree is automatically a bigot or something.
Fanaticism is bad, you’d think someone who watched Beast Machines would have learned that lesson…
Well this wouldn’t be a very entertaining comic if Willis poked fun at the middle ground. That’s what Amber and Leslie are there to represent. Those people don’t need to be called on their shit. Extremists do.
I agree, but Willis himself can be counted among the extremists here; he’s framing the comic in such a way that says “this fat, unattractive man is what represents anyone who disagrees with me.” It’s about as honest as a Fox News Broadcast.
There are those of us who disagree with the way the New 52 is handled, but also disagree with those on the other side who just lob tomatoes and throw out straw man arguments. There’s plenty on both sides, but this webcomic only depicts the views of one particular side.
It’s not very entertaining as it is. Me thinks Willis needs to talk to Randy Milholland about how to properly do “stupid people saying absurd things” strips.
The only real difference between this strip and one of Randy’s is that Amber and Leslie don’t verbally rip him a new anal cavity and instead sound pretty reasonable. That’s the problem here. If Amber and Leslie were also caricatures from the other extreme then this would just be absurdest comedy. As it is now, this sounds a whole lot more like moralization than comedy. Of only people who agree (at least a little) with the idiot stand-in in the comic will think this though. Personally, I think DC is just trying to sell cheesecake to kids who aren’t old enough to hit the porn shop yet. If they’re trying to tell deep stories they seem to be using the most shallow tools to do it.
That would be true is kids actually bought comics. Their actual market is definitely old enough to legally buy porn (and has been able to for more than a decade).
Never said it was wrong. I just didn’t want him to fall into the trap of fanaticism/hypocrisy.
I think of myself as someone who tries to reconcile differences, I just wanted to state that Willis’ works hovers dangerously close to being equally as fanatic as those he despises.
You’re the worst kind of troll, you know that? You’re using your insistence that you’re trying to avoid conflict to stir up shit. That’s just fucked upt.
Whatever. I’m done feeding you. Have a pleasant night.
Be aware of the Golden Mean fallacy; the middle ground is not always correct. It is probably more often correct than an extreme point of view though.
That said, there are, of course comics that are better than the New 52, and there are comics that are not sexist at all (and not just independent comics). That said, the majority of comics, especially in classic series, do objectify women overall, at least in my experience, and it is often to the detriment of the story, as well as potentially alienating readers.
Sorry, but fanaticism? For what? For doing the right thing?
If a sexist bigot doesn’t care about the feelings of the women they offend, I fail to see the part where other people MUST care about the sexist bigot’s feelings, too.
Yep, definitely golden mean fallacy, with a bit of tone trolling/concern trolling thrown in for spice. You may see yourself as a resolver of disputes but you don’t seem to have asked the fundamental question: who says all disputes should be resolved via compromise?
Actually CommentSpawn I don’t think there’s any correlation between truth and whether it’s perceived as extreme by the social group in question. That kind of sounds like a watered-down version of the golden mean fallacy itself.
Really. It’s Willis’ comic. You’re allowed to disagree with him, but it’s no use getting your panties in a twist.
On the other hand, you’re free to comment on it. Even if you do it poorly.
You talk about taking the “middle” in this and suggesting that the other side need their opinion heard. That’s not really true. A lot of the times, the opposing opinion is stupid and needs to be disregarded.
In this case, the sexist morons who think all women need to be wearing as little as possible are wrong and stupid. I don’t speak as some sort of feminist, but as a person who has had actual interaction with real women.
It’s less about having the other side having their opinion heard than it is being better than the other side, not stooping to their level, being the bigger men/women, etc. If we are to assume the moral high ground we can’t be depicting the other side as walking stereotypes; that just does us, and by extension our causes, a disservice.
I can assume the moral high ground quite easily here. The other side deserves the stereotypes they get, because their point of view is one that needs to be derided.
It’s not about finding some sort of compromise. I don’t do myself a disservice by being against bigotry or by supporting bigots being depicted as fat, stupid and awful people. They need to be marginalized and cut out of society like a cancer.
LograyX nailed it. It’s the same reason Mel Brooks put stupid Nazis and bigots in so many of his best movies–he said he wanted to do his part to make those ideas look so utterly stupid that no one would take them seriously again.
This guy isn’t as strawman as you might think. DCWKA is a tumblr specifically about what’s going on with DC women, good or bad, and not a week goes by that some jerkoff (or many jerkoffs) doesn’t comment about how everyone there is just whining, and that they need to shut up, because they already whined about this thing, and it didn’t change, so clearly no one important cares about their opinion.
These people and their opinions are stupid and a hindrance toward making good entertainment, which really, means they’re a hindrance toward making a better society (a culture is shaped by its stories, after all). They need to be mocked until nobody thinks their opinion that “women need to shut up” and “comics are for men” have any value.
What I meant is you’re not reaching anyone by making them out to be some sort of bigot – yes, there are bigots out there, and yes, there are people who can be narrow-minded, if unconsciously. The big problem is that people on both sides talk PAST each other rather than talk WITH each other. They try to make it a zero sum game, where you HAVE to be on one side or you HAVE to be on the other.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in life, it’s that trying to go on the offensive and yelling at people until they understand NEVER works. Nobody is going to read this comic strip and say “I see! I’m a fat slob who hates women… I never knew this!” It makes for a funny comic, sure, but all it does is contribute to the larger problem.
If you’re asking me to provide a solution, then I can’t. It’s much bigger than that. But I will say that I’ve had much more success when I explain to people point by point WHY this type of discrimination is bad and hurts everyone than by calling them pissants and making them out to be retards.
That’s all well and good – sometimes. But when people are demonstratably wrong, there’s no reason to pull punches. It really isn’t meant to convince someone, because you can’t argue with the kind of belief.
You’re right, no one is going to look at it and see themselves. Misogynists and racists don’t see themselves as bigots, and even subtle bigots fail to see their ideas for the vitriol that they are.
So what do you do when you can’t convince someone that their opinion is actually wrong? You mock the hell out of them.
*sigh* I have argued with people who said exactly the same things that Tokenism Guy up there did. People like this exist, and they are horrible and deserve to be called on their shit. What Willis is doing is taking the premises of these arguments and exposing the points they’re really intended to get across. That’s not a strawman argument: that’s satire. You just can’t look far enough beyond your passive aggressive bullshit to see the difference.
Who’s being passive-aggressive? Not me. I’m trying to have a mature discussion here WITHOUT insulting anyone, implicitly or explicitly. If I’ve wrote anything that can be interpreted as an insult, I apologize, that was not my intent.
The fact that people here, Willis included, are jumping down my throat for DARING to suggest anything that isn’t completely parallel to their opinions is actually kind of telling, and really only serves to make my point for me – that this kind of hyperaggressive attitude is not exclusive solely to the ‘misogynist bigots.’
We should work to curb discrimination, but we shouldn’t become that which we hate in order to do so. That only leads to more discrimination.
I think Willis’ point in this comic was that whenever female comics fans voice their concern about sexism, certain male comics fans show up to dismiss the issue through accusations of reading to much into things or being to ‘extreme‘ in their criticisms.
In a comment above you argued that we should be talking with each other. Amber and Leslie are trying to do that with Arch, and he won’t listen, he just dismisses them as being ridiculous. That is the problem, one side is not listening. Insisting on taking the middle ground is a passive aggressive way of silencing the people who are complaining about is sexism and it is anextreme insult to the entire female comics readership. You’re proving Willis’ point over and over again without even realizing it. You will likely do what the stereotypical comics fanboy represented by Arch up there does and will continue commenting on this thread until you’ve worn us all out.
Sorry to break this to you, dude, but you are what Arch represents. His words are just hidden between the lines of your civilly worded comments.
Take what holyalmost said and look a bit further: Amber and Leslie weren’t originally talking to the guy. They were talking to each other. They were having a conversation with each other about an issue that concerns them as women who read comics. Then this guy pushed in and said he doesn’t want to hear about this.
THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. This has happened in every single gender discussion about the new 52. Instead of ignoring these discussions, countless men pushed their way into the conversation to tell women to stop talking about it. No debate, no intellectual discussion, just a demand to stop clogging up the intertubes with all this woman talk.
And anyway, equating all this with Fox News is silly and reactionist. This is a comic. It is not pretending to be news.
Your original point, that Willis frames his characters in a certain way that makes their points look absurd right from the beginning, is a good one. While it is entertaining to see somebody in the comic being so stupid in the same way people in real life are wont to behave, it also becomes tiring to not see anybody voice those opinions in a way that actually shows the basis of their side, flimsy though it may be. That’s why I’m glad to have a comments section here, where people can voice their own opinions without undermining them immediately.
I think it’s really the prolonged discussion here where other people take your point wrong or just disagree with it. Then you and others defend it in an overly reactionary way where, instead of explaining the point in more detail to discourage further argument, you begin to argue in a way that distracts people from your original point and makes it look like you overreacted when others disagreed with your statement.
12:46 AM: Trying to put words in my mouth only shows that you’re as ignorant as those the comic is deriding.
1:11 AM: I’m trying to have a mature discussion here WITHOUT insulting anyone, implicitly or explicitly.
Someone’s been telling porkies.
In my experience, no one of even modest intelligence bothers to look for “middle ground” when it comes to bigotry. Those who feign neutrality and claim to be doing so are usually squirming in their own skin because someone, to borrow a phrase from you, hit a little too close to home. The guy barking “extremism” and “fanaticism” over someone harmlessly poking at misogynists is being forced to look at his own misogynistic attitudes 100% of the time.
Or I could actually be neutral on an issue because I see validity in both sides of the issue. He said “I am trying to have,” not “I am having.” There is also no reason to antagonize him because he wants to be, or is, trying to be neutral.
No one who calls others “ignorant” is “trying to have a mature discussion without insulting anyone,” and no one who would attempt to defend such nonsense can be taken seriously. If you see validity in the ravings of a bigot, you’re not neutral. You’ve already taken a side, even if you lack the integrity to admit it.
I dunno if this is a big deal. Those women who used to spend money on DC probably weren’t only spending their money on DC, but also Marvel and the independents or smaller companies. So now they shift their comic money over to other companies. IE The invisible hand of the market works it’s magic and forces companies to change their tone. If DC doesn’t then they lose market share to companies that do independent or otherwise.
Not sure you’re using the term “invisible hand” correctly; I think that applies to entities acting in their own best interest making things better for everyone. Regardless, hopefully you’re right and female readers won’t feel they need to give up on comics entirely, since there are plenty of good, less objectifying comics out there.
And, as a Marvel fan, I hope they read more Marvel.
CommentSpawn, can you suggest some good, less objectifying comics? Sadly, I’ve been reading less comics because of this debacle, and most of the comics I tend to read these days are comics published years ago recommended to me by friends who have my tastes in mind.
I’ll pipe in while CS works on a reply – Pretty much anything by Phil Phoglio but especially “Girl Genius” – Works by AAron Williams – Alina Pete – Travis Hanson – uhm …. any of the new and up and coming artist in the Palladium stable.
In DC’s new set, Batwoman and Demon Knights do a brilliant job with all of their characters (Demon Knights also has an ambiguously gendered character, of sorts, which as far as I know, is a first in a mainstream comic. Or at least, happens only infrequently.)
Xavin, from Marvel’s Runaways is sort of ambiguously gendered, though s/he doesn’t show up until part way through the second volume. Actually, if I recall correctly, Runaways was pretty good at not objectifying its characters, though I read it before I was as tuned in to the issue as I am now.
Since I vouched for Marvel, I’ll suggest some of their series, and let more informed people talk about independent comics. Of the ongoing series I read, Generation Hope seems to be the least objectifying and I rather like it, though I’ve really only read the first story arc. New Mutants, which I’ve read more of, is also pretty good on this front, and I think the plot is generally stronger, though that might just be because I’m more familiar with the characters. It does tend to cross-over with major X-events though, so you’d probably have to read some of the X-men core titles to know what’s going on.
I hate to sound like a troll, but I’m disappointed in this strip. I swear this is like the third “woman in comics” strip a little over a month. It’s not that I don’t agree with the point, but you’re kinda beating a dead horse at this point.
Glad you took the point of “you did that opinion, now I’m over it” so seriously. Because you’re right, why would you bring up (what you feel is) an important social issue more than once? There’s probably no reason for you to do that! /sarcasm
If you want to make social commentary, you probably shouldn’t do it in a way that antagonizes pretty much everyone who doesn’t have 100% identical beliefs.
Fun fact, the tone argument generally translates into English as “I can’t actually disprove what you’re saying, so I’m going to attack the way you said it instead.”
Never tried to disprove anything. Trying to put words in my mouth only shows that you’re as ignorant as those the comic is deriding. But then again, I suppose you’ll just be blind and deaf to those who try to take the middle ground. Have fun contributing to the problem.
You’re the one who’s worried about offending the sensibilities of people with demonstrably sexist attitudes. Pretty sure that’s contributing more to the problem than daring to call such sexism as the bullshit it is.
All you said, in fact, was that it doesn’t really help the issue in the slightest to attack somebody for saying that they dislike the overuse of this type of strip; I am getting kind of tired of this type of strip because they don’t address the subject very well, thus negating one possible point to them, and they slowly stop being funny, negating the other point of comedy.
Not that you care, or will agree with me, but the reason he does that, is that people who don’t have “100% identical beliefs”, that women are people, whose issues deserve consideration, and that comics have a huge, real, actual problem in this area? Those people are WRONG. You claim earlier up that you’re bothered by this “fanaticism” because you occupy “the middle ground”, but that doesn’t exist here. Either the comics industry (as a whole, clearly not every book or creator or company) have a problem with how they depict women, or they don’t. The middle ground on that issue is what? Not all issues have multifaceted points of debate where common ground can be reached. The first way to get through the issue of women in comics is to acknowledge the issue exists, and a lot of fans basically refuse to do so. It’s not that saying “ugh, enough already” makes you a misogynist, but it makes it easier for the misogynists to hold on to their awful bullshit beliefs. So stop doing that, please.
You can’t really antagonize someone who’s decided to take on the antagonist role already. Some points of view DO NOT deserve to be respected as though they have some valid standpoint. There’s a few rare occasions where someone is so completely and utterly wrong that there can be no middle ground or diplomatic take – nor would such individuals respond well to any sort of dialogue anyways.
It doesn’t antagonize “pretty much everyone who doesn’t have 100% identical beliefs.”
It antagonizes you. You’re the one taking issue with it.
And making someone angry isn’t automatically counterproductive. Look at any classroom and you’ll find it’s plenty possible to get a point across without being nice about it.
To be fair, though, you could stand to address the subject a bit better. These comics do nothing to explain why, for example, marketing and popularity issues somewhat dissuade companies from replacing old well-known female characters with, or introducing alongside, or rewriting as, new female characters who have stronger and less sexist roles.
Uhh, but if you’ve been following the entire “new 52″ debate, you’ll know that DC didn’t just continue on with well-known female characters, but actually made them more sexy, stamped out many of their already-established personalities, and axed a bunch of them completely. And you’ll also know that there is a compelling argument for not alienating a massive potential market (because girls do read sci fi and fantasy–they are driving the YA genre right now and making it more lucrative than it has ever been) when your current target audience has been dwindling for decades, especially when you are doing a “reboot” and claiming that it is intended to draw in new readers. So… I don’t really know what you are trying to say, to be honest.
I wouldn’t say they unilaterally made all the women in the 52 “more sexy.” Just a few. Batgirl’s the same. Wonder Woman’s the same. Batwoman’s the same. Poison Ivy wears MORE clothes. In fact, the entirety of the Birds of Prey are respectfully dressed.
So I’ve heard, so I stand corrected. I think that if the stats about female readership dropping are true, however, it probably has a lot to do with those specific problematic portrayals. If I keep hearing horror stories about Starfire and Harley and Catwoman, I’m not really going to seek out the out the ones that are okay.
Fwiw, Gail Simone is skeptical of those poll results. Not that her opinion invalidates anything, but we should maybe take them with a grain of salt.
That also doesn’t have anything to do with the point of the comic, which is that anybody should be able to discuss the results without harassment, but still, somewhat relevant?
When there are no REAL issues of inequality just like we no longer make light of or argue the merits of Bleeding/Beheading/Torture/Slavery in a civilized and modern society ….. [damn, and I was so close too ]
Terry Pratchett’s point about “privilege” literally meaning “private law” wasn’t just a good point, people! It’s also a mnemonic device! It’s spelled without the d, like the word “legal!”
If that news is true, it doesn’t surprise me in the least after seeing most of the new 52 comics and their portrayal of women and all the controversy that came with it.
They would never admit it, but it’s like they’re trying to lose female readers, even with their supposedly female oriented books like Catwoman.
At least Birds of Prey hasn’t done anything overtly offensive to women (that I’m aware of), and all the characters are properly attired for crime fighting.
I’ve only been reading Batman though, and that one has been gooooood.
The new Catwoman was never marketed as a female-oriented book. It was clear from the get-go that it was a book for menfolk.
Now, Batwoman, that’s a book for…well, for everyone, really.
But yeah, that’s what stings. When 52 was first announced, before the 18-35-year-old-men thing, when all we knew was it was going to be a reboot to draw new readers in (ha…?), it seemed like that would’ve been the perfect time to address those markets that the Old Ways didn’t allow for. But…welp. Here we are.
I was honestly a little surprised Catwomen was written by a man and not a women with a female readership in mind.
Honestly try reading it, the only people I know who are actively paying money for it right now are 3 women… but they are the same kinda women who enjoy Rocky Horror, Barbarella, and only even gave Buffy the vampire slayer a chance after seeing the nasty fun sex.
I know I’ll get flamed to hell and back for this, but I really find it kind of ironic that Willis can act like a champion for female rights here, then on his other webcomic draw girls in sundresses, bathing suits, and cleavage-revealing tanktops while his fanbase rally around him here and drool over his girl characters there.
Then again he also is the one who just drew Danny without a shirt in DoA while also having some plenty of man service in It’s Walky and Joyce And Walky. You just seem to be taking some things and pointing them out without looking at his whole work. Now is Willis a saint, no but he is a lot better than most.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with women being sexy. The difference between Willis and a lot of people drawing for DC is that he treats his female characters as people, not sex props. He doesn’t draw them contorted in impossible positions to cash in on cheap titillation. He allows sexiness to arise naturally out of the situation and doesn’t force it. He treats the women he writes about with respect. He understands gender issues a hell of a lot better than the folks at DC, and a damn sight better than you.
Drawing girls in bathing suits isn’t automatically sexist. I do see your point, but having girls in revealing clothes doesn’t automatically make it sexist.
I think the writing of the characters comes into play as well. Since Willis is good at balancing characters and writing them really well, and making them seem like real, relatable people, that helps.
So when you see that character in a bathing suit, it’s just because she’s at a beach. If you see her start to remove a shirt, it’s because she’s about to have sex because people do that.
But if every strip had cleavage and scantily-clad women, then I think that would cross the line into fan service and into sexism. But he doesn’t do that.
Of course it’s entirely possible I have no idea what I’m talking about.
I would agree, but Willis plays to his fanbase shamelessly. Almost every character at the beach had on a bikini. There is nothing wrong with that, but it smacks of just a little hypocrisy in my eyes.
When you see people here screaming epithets then go there and yell out for Billie/Sal pairings… seriously, that’s kind of much.
So people in fictional works that attempt to be feminist – or at least not actively offensive to women – should not have their characters wear swimsuits…at the beach? I’m sorry, that’s a terrible argument.
The characters in DoA are sexed up and fanservicey. It’s a fact. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been a giant banner of them all in their swimsuits, and there wouldn’t be a large fangasm of “oh oh this girl/girl pairing would rock!” type of comments.
What is the biggest complaint of THe New 52? It’s sexist to women because they’re all sexed up. I just find the dichotomy between the messages here and the messages there interesting, is all.
The fact that Willis is getting angry at my observations and interprets them as attacks also makes me think that I may have hit a bit close to home…
See, now there’s your problem. You’ve misunderstood what the basic complaints were. The problem people have with the New 52 isn’t that the women are all sexed up, it’s that the women are all sexed up AND have no real personality AND the men are almost never sexed up AND the women tend to be sexed up to ludicrous levels that break willing suspension of disbelief.
None of which apply to Shortpacked! or Dumbing of Age. So, no hypocrisy here.
Have you read any of the New 52? THe initial issues sucked, but some (like the one that featured Starfire) seemed to have gotten better in the ‘characters’ department. So…
Not that I’m defending the New 52, but to lump all of it in this manner is somewhat disingenuous. I’m operating off of things I’ve heard my friends tell me about the New 52, so I can only guess at how things are now. Regardless, like I said, only making an observation there.
That’s sort of the point, though. A lot of people didn’t read past the initial issues. Because the initial issues sucked, and put them off reading more.
Here’s the thing, they announced the “New 52″ well in advance, this wasn’t sprung on the writers as “just do it, we can improve it later.” They had weeks, maybe months, of planning to make the changes they did. One in particular I didn’t was that the fans got a petition going to make DC get Wonder Woman’s issue numbers back to where they should be, then with #600 rebooted the franchise, then decided that she needed to be rebooted again as a part of the “new 52.” All the hubbub I heard about the whole post-Flashpoint reboot was basically DC’s version of Marvel’s Ultimates universe so that “all that old continuity” was gone and “writers could tell fresh, new tales with old characters.” Of course, right out of the gate they gave us one where a character gets hit with the dumb ray so that she doesn’t care anymore, and another gets hit with the nympho ray and “does it” on a roof with her part-time nemesis.
Starfire and Catwoman aren’t the entire 52. I am really sick of books as good as Wonder Woman and Batwoman (and the female majority Demon Knights) getting ignored because of the bad stuff.
Pretty sure Batwoman and Wonder Woman outsell Catwoman and RHATO, so at least people are voting with their wallets.
I’m not 100% on Wonder Woman yet… I want to see how the arc ends.
One thing I DO love is casually adding “can walk on water” to her powerset. It’s not that she can DO much with it, in practical terms? But it’s nicely distinctive and has a lot of flavor to it.
But seeing how some people will jump down my throat here for making these observations, then go over there and do that… it’s odd, is all. I think it also kind of enables this kind of rampant extremism that doesn’t particularly benefit anyone.
Anyway, I’ve said my peace. I didn’t want to offend anyone, I just wanted to put this out there.
I LIKE fanservice, to be honest. I don’t dislike what Willis creates, but I also want to point out the problems that are caused by the two seemingly conflicting messages in the comics he draws.
You claim to be middle ground, yet you assume that there is no room between a feminist and someone who appreciates drawing a bit of (equal opportunity, might I add.) fanservice every now and then?
If Willis only ever did cheesecake, then you’d have a point. But he doesn’t. He’s drawn a lot of beefcake, too.
Don’t assume that because Willis is taking a shot at New 52, he’s being a Puritan by extension. That’s a huge leap in logic to make, and you know it.
I like this world where you can post 30 times on this page, but me posting once to correct a falsehood makes me “defensive” and means you “hit too close to home.”
Two characters were in bikinis. Dorothy was in a one-piece, Joyce and Dina were wearing shirts and shorts, and Walky was wearing swimming trunks. Each outfit was decided in accordance with their personality.
If you’re going to attack me, don’t make up lies to do so. It looks really desperate.
Don’t really feel the need to attack you. I was making an observation is all. Your defensiveness and overall snarky demeanor is puzzling.
I checked again, and you’re right. But the dichotomy still exists – your other comic has elements that you blast here. Again, I’m not attacking you, just making a statement.
You’re making a statement that is deeply insulting. And dropping the h-bomb on top of it makes it worse. You can’t seriously think those aren’t attacks on his character — suggesting that he’s pandering AND lying about it.
And the fact that it’s both insulting and wrong pretty much makes any response disagreeing with it unavoidable defensive.
I apologize for the use of the word hypocrisy, and I didn’t actually want to accuse Willis of it – I was merely stating that his two comics seemed to be at odds and it seemed to be somewhat of a slippery slope.
Also, I don’t find anything wrong with fan pandering – without fans, media creators are nothing. So doing stuff for the fans is A-OK, in my book.
Hey, you don’t need to apologize to ME. I’m just making conversation.
I only think it’s weird that you can’t remember any of the sexy shenanigans going on in this comic’s archives. DOA might have a little more going on in it (it does take place largely in a co-ed college dorm building, though)… but there’ve definitely been sexy times in this comic, too. And will be again, I’m rather certain.
To respond in part to The Sound Defense… None of the DoA characters are aliens, with an alien approach to sexuality. Though i did see Seven of Nine do something like that to Harry Kim once.
But seriously, if we’re getting rid of the sexist new 52, can we replace it with something like BPRD or Hellboy? I would love to see some Liz Sherman up in here.
I think your interpretation of any female baring skin as pandering cheesecake says more about you than it does about Willis, Leyviur. As a nearly straight female, I notice the guy fanservice a lot more than the girly stuff. And anyway, the women of DoA all have healthy, realistic body types and dress to suit their personalities and situations. So do the guys. If you can’t see the difference between this http://bit.ly/A6QinW and this http://bit.ly/xiiUf6, your perception is seriously skewed.
You weren’t making an observation; you were forcing an inherently invalid comparison. Crying “hypocrisy” over something that wasn’t at all how you described it makes it obvious that you were just looking for an excuse to say something negative about the artist. You clearly haven’t grasped the reasons DC’s books received so much criticism, either.
You’re…wow. I honestly can’t tell if you’re a troll, or if you legitimately don’t understand the difference between sexy and objectification.
Drawing characters in bikinis=sexist? I’m the only one of my friends who wears a one-piece, and that’s because I’ve been too lazy to go swimsuit shopping for years. Women wear these. Drawing women who are sexy isn’t automatically sexist. Harley Quinn is sexy. Catwoman is sexy. Starfire is sexy.
The problem is whenever the characters are drawn, consistently, as nothing more than sexual objects. Like, three pages of boobs and butt before seeing Catwoman’s face in her number-one issue. I don’t care if the book “gets better.” That kind of bullcrap? That lets me know, right off the bat, that the writer has no respect for the character, and views her first and foremost, as a sexual object.
It’s a kind of terrifying attitude that equates “woman in sexy clothes” with “woman as sexual object” automatically. It’s the sort of mindset that leads to the infamous “she was asking for it” defense.
Here’s the thing about Willis: he writes this strip, Shortpacked. The majority of the main characters are women. They’re well-rounded, realistic women who exhibit many different characteristics. Some are straight, some are gay, some are bi. Some are in relationships, some are single. Some are sweet, some are horrible people. But every single one of them is a dynamic character. Because when Willis writes a character, he writes them as a person.
So, no. No one with a brain is going to cry “sexist” when Willis draws his own characters in bikinis. Few people object to a little good-natured, respectful cheesecake. It’s a thing that exists.
There’s no dichotomy here. There’s Willis who, on an unrelated note, as you point out, has drawn women in bikinis, bringing up the fact that every time people (not even just women) try to talk about the comic industry’s problem with women as characters and customers–and there is a problem–Angry FanBoy voices shout them down as being unimportant. And, of course, people like you tell them, ever so politely, to shut up, because their anger with being marginalized would certainly be more productive if they were just a little more considerate of the feelings of the people with all the power.
For the record…we’re a little tired of being polite about this. Women were taught for years to shut up and not make a fuss. It doesn’t get you as far as you’d think; it just makes it easier for folks to dismiss our problems.
Anyway, if you need help sussing out why liking characters in bikinis but hating objectification of women doesn’t make someone a hypocrite here’s as good an article as any to get you started.
“The problem is whenever the characters are drawn, consistently, as nothing more than sexual objects. Like, three pages of boobs and butt before seeing Catwoman’s face in her number-one issue.” I disagree strongly. I think those first few panels really helped capture what sort of character she is and it pretty much nails her personality. To be blunt, the sexy strip show has been one of her defining traits for longer then I have been alive. I think the bigger problem would be if that was all she was allowed to be and that is clearly not the case unlike with say Starfire.
Her personality is boobs and bra? Or her personality is being attacked while she just happens to be getting dressed? No soap. Catwoman’s been able to be sexy as hell for years without resorting to something that cheap. Those three pages were nothing but a wink at the audience to let them know what they’re in for and to set the tone. If the writer didn’t mean to set the tone of “this here is a comic about boobs and boobs and sexy chicks with boobs” then there was a helluva lot of fail.
I want to be reading Catwoman, but I have no interest in this Catwoman. I’ll be picking it up when the creative team changes.
Umm her personalty has a lot to do with boobs yes. the first few pages set her up as a very sexual creature who is fun, loves taking risks and pushing the edge… and yah very sexual. Change that intro and you fundamentally change the first impression of her. “Catwoman’s been able to be sexy as hell for years without resorting to something that cheap” What was so cheap about it? The comic was not fundamentally different then other Catwomen comics I have seen and yah the tone would be “sexy kickass fun antihero with boobs” and with that in mind I would say those first pages did wonders to set the tone. I’m sorry to say it, folks but if you don’t want a woman who is overtly sexual and sexualized you probably shouldn’t be reading Catwoman. I would have thought the kinky whip and fetishistic outfit would have given that away before hand.
No. Those first three pages set her up as boobs. They do nothing to show her fun, sexy, playful side. It’s a voyeuristic moment where we’re seeing Catwoman’s boobs not because she’s showing them off, but because the scene happens to take place while she’s in a state of undress. I’d even argue that the cover does a decent job of showing her as a fun, sensual character because she’s participating in the show, if that makes sense–she’s posed and smiling at the camera, having a private moment. The opening is just an action sequence in which the camera has been placed so it can focus on her assets and never her face for three freaking pages.
Cooke and Brubaker’s Catwoman was a sexy gal, but they never had to do something like that. And it was cheap. The fact that you can look at three pages that exist primarily to show off the T&A and say: “Yup, that reads like every other Catwoman book out there” is kind of horrifying. Maybe when you look at a woman, all you really do see is the T&A. I guess that would explain the inability to understand the difference between this and what we had in better days.
“No. Those first three pages set her up as boobs.”
So I did not find personality and am mistaken?
I looked at the first few pages and found the tone and start of a full personality of a women, where you only found boobs and ass.
Feel free to be horrified about my opinion on women, because I think I can live with that.
Actually, the comment of about “when you look at a woman” was stupidly out of line, and I apologize.
I didn’t see it as her personality because it didn’t feel like she was engaging the reader, it looks like we dropped in on her at an opportunistic moment for the chance to see her breasts, if that makes sense. I really do have a problem with a big, company-wide relaunch designed to bring in new readers taking one of the few female comic characters that the average non-comic-reading public knows, and, in her very first comic, in the very first three pages, they introduce her not by her face, but by her breasts, the the focus squarely on her assets. That’s problematic to me. I’m not even talking about the writing, which was not terrible, but not good enough to keep me buying. I’m just talking visuals.
To be fair, our introduction to nuStarfire had Jason Todd declaring her bra size following up with “I banged her.”
That’s pretty fucking egregious, especially on top of the new, more revealing outfit and erasing her personality.
The flaw in that argument is that those three pages were not Catwoman acting sexy because she enjoys it, or to distract a baddie before kicking his ass. It was the artists and writers going “Hey, boobs!”
The first shows what kind of character Selena is. The second is the creators making the character all about cheesecake instead of being a character.
Yes the artist and writers going hey this comic is going to have alot of sexy boobs… is not really a problem for me.
Movies and comics with this much sexuality are inherently voyeuristic. Someone is watching and the artist knows that. everything she dose will be for the readers enjoyment.
So I ask you. Why not cheesecake AND character? Why do you think it must be one or the other? Do you think less of her for having a red bra? When she is savagely beating the shit out of a guy out of pure rage and vengeance are you just thinking about how much cleavage she has?
If you want someone who is pure cheesecake then we have starfire but if you want someone who is cheesecake AND character I recommend catwomen #1. However if you think cheesecake cheapens a character I am just going to have to disagree.
I do like the fact that the guy who asserted a false dichotomy is the same one who was handwringing about Willis rejecting the middleground higher up in the thread.
I want to see the Venn diagram for “people who think sundresses are scandalous” and “people who don’t shun all modern technology”, the overlap this guy is in to be posting here must be tiny.
LOL. Willis acts like a feminist and then draws his female characters… wearing normal fashionable clothes that women would wear in those circumstances. Instead of what? Burqas? Not drawing women at all because you might accidentally do a sexist drawing? Your argument is stupid and nonsensical and bears no resemblance to the gender issues of the New 52.
What’s being missed here is that the assignment of gender roles today isn’t an issue that only affects women. Men are equally at risk of being boxed into a world where conflict can only be approached with violence, feelings are something to be ashamed of, and communication skills are unimportant. Yes, we need to move beyond a world where girls can only find themselves in the kitchen or on the arm of a man, but we also need to move beyond a world where a man is expected to solve every issue with violence.
People of all genders have a stake in making this world better.
Wow, way to steer the conversation back to men’s rights while looking like you’re supportive. Sometimes we need to just stop and focus on women for a while, alright?
My intent was not to steer the issue back towards men’s rights, but rather to make the point that everyone has a stake. There isn’t anyone who is “unaffected” by this and it is everyone’s responsibility to learn as much as they can.
I’m wishing this were facebook or tumblr so I could like that comment. Questions of equality, even–or especially–in media and entertainment, which shapes are perceptions as a culture, are everyone’s concern.
That was the problem I had with the Pepsi 10 commercial. I’ve moved past being told that Women Can’t Enjoy Manly Things, but my (male) roomate told me he was kind of uncomfortable with the implication that Men Must Never Diet! And drinking diet drinks makes you *gasp* a sissy!
Not gonna lie, women still get the worst of it if only because it’s a question of who holds the most power. Not to mention that the problem (oh, I want to say dichotomy, but the word’s been ruined for me) comes from the idea that “manly” stuff and manly ways are superior, so if a woman is doing something stereotypically manly, then she’s risen above her lot in life, good for her, but “feminine” actions/emotions/etc are considered weaker and less desirable. So if a woman is acting feminine, well, then, of course, she can’t help it, but if a man is acting feminine, what on earth is wrong with him?
That progresso soup commercial does the same thing. All these women call female progresso employees to thank them for how much weight they lost. Then one of them gets a male employee and he’s like “Dur…?” and she asks to speak to a woman instead.
What scares me the most about commercials is not the one’s telling men how to be men and women how to be women, but the ones that tell girls how to be girls and boys how to be boys. Advertising directed at children shapes their beliefs about how they are supposed to behave and act before they have even had the opportunity to learn differently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZn_lJoN6PI&list=UU7Edgk9RxP7Fm7vjQ1d-cDA&index=16&feature=plcp
True. Kids start learning gender roles about the time they start actually noticing what’s on tv, and when they’re young, they’re surprisingly militant about it, even in families that don’t enforce stereotypes. “No, that’s for boys/girls!” is something a lot of four-year-olds will say when presented with the wrong toy.
It was something that bugged me about the whole Lego “girls line.” Instead of making a whole line of not-Legos, they could have just made a handful of the same awesome Lego commercials, but with girls and boys playing with the Legos. A lot of girls grow up thinking that Legos are only a “boy’s toy” and it’s not because of what the sets make (because lemme tell ya, even girls like pirate ships. And beach houses. And castles.): it’s because in all those commercials, they never once saw a girl having fun with Legos.
All too true – an aunt gave my nieces a couple of those pink/lavender atrocities with the modified charter blocks – their dad gave em just one set to shere between them and they can not get enough of it – The Castle. I have a Duplo Pirate ship squirreled away for next years Christmas. The have Barbies/Disney process, Hotwheels and Lego, plus each has their own DS [ I'm so jealous]
You know, I never even thought of Legoes as a boy or girl toy, I just thought of them as toys all kids played with. I even remember my female friends playing with them back then. Was this really an annomily?
I never played with them myself growing up, but they seemed pretty gender neutral to me. It was actually the source of multiple arguments though. Most adults agreed with me but very few children.
The lines children draw can be surprisingly stringent. Why I remember on one occasion as a child I gave a girl glow in the dark star/planet stickers as part of a low budget gift exchange. She practically spat in my face because I’d given her a boy present. The class’s consensus was that she was right, girl’s don’t like space stuff. It was totally bizarre.
I had some smaller sets, but none of the other girls I knew had any (that I saw. I didn’t play with many girls growing up). I’ve heard mothers tell their daughters “that’s a boy toy” though. There are some mothers who want to make sure their little angel grows up as girly as possible, and discourage any kind of building toy, since building toys are almost exclusively the domain of boys.
Dr. Pepper 10, there is no Pepsi 10.
Man that commercial was SO BAD. It appealed to NO ONE I KNOW. Not even the ones who LIKE Dr. Pepper to begin with.
I have to agree with beeftony, it’s not that we’re missing the male gender role side of things, it’s that acknowledging it in this particular conversation only serves to diminish the importance of the woman’s side of things.
I’m not saying that men’s gender issues aren’t important. I do agree with you that gender role assignment can have negative effects for both genders involved. For instance, the cultural ideal that a man is expected to shoulder’s the full financial pressures and responsibilites for his children and homemaker wife alone. But we are discussing one specific issue here and, honestly, what possible negative effect would the male audience experience from allowing the female fans to discuss their concerns about sexism and objectification in comics without interruption or criticism about the topic’s validity? The potential for less scantily clad eye candy to gawk at?
In addition to force-ably ending the conversation like Arch has, changing the conversation to assess a different issue is another technique frequently used as a way to completely dismiss women’s concerns in these kinds of discussions. I truly believe this wasn’t your intent, but it is a frequent occurrence both online and off. When a person gets called out for doing this, they always backtrack and say they didn’t mean to do it, but it keeps happening wherever we women folk try to talk about the sexist stuff that upsets us. As Laura said above, I’m tired of being polite about this. I just want more people to be aware of what they’re really saying when they engage in these discussions in order to help the conversation to keep moving along and not screech to a halt.
I’m going to take the risk of elaborating on my opinion:
I feel that one of the biggest problems facing the goal of equal treatment for all genders is the idea that this is a fight only for women. I agree that any almost any woman is better qualified to discuss the sexist treatment of women than almost any man, but if we try and treat the issue as one that only affects women then we alienate half the human population. That is something that this movement can not afford to do. Feminism has had major advances in the past several decades, but it has also had crippling setbacks from males who wish to undermine the validity of their cause. This is obvious from the number of women who preface their discussion of gender discrimination with the phrase “Well, I’m not a feminist but…” simply because modern culture has made so many attempts to portray feminists as crazy, extremist, lesbians who can’t recognize how good they have it (which I don’t agree with, just in case anyone got confused).
The reason I mentioned men is not because I want to undermine the cause of women, but because I want to help reinforce it. What will really help this cause is for people to wake up and realize that there are no spectators. Everyone has a stake and everyone has a responsibility. Even if you don’t want to become actively involved, you at least have the responsibility to learn as much as you can.
I read what you were saying as “these kind of shitheads screw over guys as well as girls.” Is that correct?
No one likes to be shoved into a culture-box and told what they can and can’t be by idiots who claim to speak for the majority.
I’d just like to add that there are cases where treating equality only as a women’s fight actually makes it harder for women to win, not just because of alienation but also because wins in one area can reinforce stereotypes that affect multiple areas. Take allegations of rape and domestic abuse- it used to be that people would almost always either justify or ignore the man’s actions, whereas now they’re almost always taken seriously, but the way that fight was handled has now made it so that abused men have an uphill battle in court and can even get charged with abuse after reporting it (especially if their abuser had a bruise when the police came) because it only strengthened the idea that the woman is always weaker and thus the victim, so police, judges, and juries will go into the case with a serious bias. That bias also lets women get an upper hand in custody fights, divorces, etc. by falsely alleging abuse, because the default assumption is almost always that the woman was the victim regardless of evidence, her mental health record, the man’s criminal record (or lack thereof), etc. For an extreme example, Google Louis Gonzalez III- after 83 days in jail and missing his son’s 6th birthday because his ex got a restraining order keeping him away from the boy, he was declared innocent by a judge because his lawyers found proof that he physically couldn’t have been at her house at the time of the alleged attack. Prior to that, the detective who had been working his case told the prosecution he wasn’t comfortable testifying in it because even without that particular piece of evidence the charges were incredibly implausible (the timing didn’t work at all unless it was assumed that he drove insanely fast, and even then it was a stretch).
“No, you already voice your opinion. NOW YOU HAVE TO SHUT UP FOREVER!”
Brother, ain’t it the truth. Same with “nobody important cares.” Those are so painfully, word-for-word accurate that I’m only laughing because I’ve used up my monthly quota of shouting.
It’s a thing of beauty, Willis, how you can distill so much vitriol and bile into just a few panels. Cheers.
Yes! Anyone who does not get why this is great has not had to try to make “that” argument. The one where no matter what you say you are being too aggressive, too trivial, too one-sided, too much of an ideo-nazi, whatever.
I wish this argument had taken place in the Lego isle, so I could just sorta ignore the yelling and look at box art of cool toys. Though I must say the box art on those games is extremely well done, it’s just not Lego
AND we all know why it dropped. Starfire and Catwoman!!!! >:O Plus DC turned their continuity into confusing batshit insanity. How exactly is Barbara Gordon walking again?
We all miss stuff from the previous continuity. All we can do is focus on the new stuff we like and hope some of the old stuff comes back. Worst case sinereo, we just revisit our older comics. I mean, I never threw away my Steph Batgirl books, so I can reread them whenever I want.
I can see that. It’s fanservice-y but it’s nowhere near as bad as RHATO. I only read the first issues, but with Catwoman I just didn’t like the comic, whereas Outlaws made me feel uncomfortable as a female reader. I feel kind of bad the two always get lumped together, but I’m guilty of doing it too.
I hate to post on a tangential topic, but can I start a campaign here, if only in THIS SPACE, the comments on THIS WEBCOMIC, to reclaim the idea of feminism?
Feminism means championing the personhood and equal humanity of women. It is not a bad thing. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is not something people should feel the need to disclaim in order to be taken seriously (or at least think they’ll be taken more seriously; personally I know my opinion of someone drops as soon as they whip out the “I’m not a feminist or anything like that, but…” line.) Feminism does not have to be extreme. Feminism does not mean the hatred, diminutization, or emasculation of men. These I’m-not-a-feminist-buts hold views on the equality of women that 1920s suffragettes could only ever dream of, and yet they feel the need to claim that they don’t believe in the rights of women, not /really./
Willis is a feminist. I am a feminist. Many of the other commenters here are feminists. THIS IS A GOOD THING IT IS NOT A BAD THING IT IS A GOOD THING.
I don’t want to be a feminist. I believe in equal rights for the sexes, but if I call myself a feminist, that carries extra weight I don’t want to bear.
Anyway, once you get past having equal rights and move into engineering a better world by stamping out that which offends you, that’s where feminism loses me. And I don’t want to call myself a “feminist” and then constantly have to justify why I don’t live up to someone else’s feminist standards. ~Anon mouse
You make a good point about defining one’s self as a feminist, by cutting out all the dogma and assigning a clear, objective definition to the word… but the yes you are essay is really not that simple.
So how about it… Can I like the sexy new Starfire and still be a feminist?
Feminism means “stamping out that which offends you?” I have no freaking idea where you got that. It certainly wasn’t from my post. If you want to be a feminist, you certainly don’t need my or anyone else’s stamp of approval. There’s nothing stopping you from using the word except your own perception that it’s some sort of manhating club that you’d have to sacrifice your principles to gain admittance to.
I have no interest in saying who’s “disallowed” to call themselves a feminist based on what they do or don’t believe. My gripe is with people who believe in equality of the sexes — just as you say you do — and yet think that feminism is a dirty word — just as you seem to.
This “I just don’t want to use other people’s ~labels~” thing is a bullshit excuse. There is not a damn thing wrong with being a feminist and no one should be ashamed to identify themselves as such. Like the word “liberal,” it’s been so slandered in the media that people started shrinking away from it, and that hastened its radicalization because the only people who were brave enough to call themselves by that name were the ones who were the most angry, and, yes, the most extreme. There are extremists in every movement, but they do not represent the whole of that movement, and they only define that movement if we let them. I don’t feel the need, every time I go into a discussion of race, to disclaim “But I don’t consider myself one of those, y’know, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS,” in order to gain the respect of the bigots I’m arguing with. And this demonization of the word “feminism” is just as bullshit.
As liberal-leaning as I am, I’m not likely to let some right-wing talk show gasbag implant “feminazi” in my head.
It’s feminists themselves that make me not want to be labeled a feminist; it’s feminists who, it is my impression, largely reject me as being a feminist. ~Anon Mouse
Feminism is a political movement with its own baggage. You want to see some hardcore hate and feminists telling people who would call themselves feminists that they are not spend some time in a Sex-positive feminism vs. anti-pornography feminism debate. http://www.facebook.com/agirlsguidetotakingovertheworld/posts/240426886026428
This site with over 50k likes called me a rapist and banned me for thinking consensual S&M sex was ok… I don’t really want to be mistaken as being the same flavor of feminist as they are or the same flavor as the SCUM manifesto.
I understand your point that everyone should want to be a feminist as feminism is all about equality… but it is just not that simple and I would not think less of someone who wished to avoid all the politics and baggage by not identifying as a feminists.
EMERGENCY CLARIFICATION!
For those not familiar with Simon Furman, I was not declaring myself to be a furry!
(Not that there’s anything wrong with Therianthropy.)
So why the sphincter-clench? I consider myself a bit of a hardcore feminist (I once read a book on feminism one time!) but I also read a webblog with the heading catwomen/starfire now a slut/ho and find myself more then a little clenched. and I find myself inclined to wonder what comic book guy is feeling or what my wife is feeling when she also suffers a SC. I think the answer to that question is “If this thinking becomes popular the sexy will be taken away”.
I think comic book guy has cause to be concerned.
Just because stories of superheroics focus on the stories of superheroics won’t mean that you’ll lose all the magazines that are *supposed* to be like that.
And who gets to decide what is *supposed* to be like that? Maybe comic book guy has no interest in those magazines, but he likes his naughty comics just the way they are. Comics have been doing it longer then FHM after all. Decency standards are a private and personal responsibility imo and if it comes to groups of angry people trying to keep the sexy were it is “supposed” to be then I think I would be finding CBG more sympathetic.
And what if we liked Catwoman the way that she was before? Sexy and fun, but not plastered on the page like a centerfold? What if girls grew up liking Starfire as she was in the show, or as she was in the Teen Titans comic? Cute and loving and kind and, yes, sexy. No one’s demanding a end to sexy times. We just want the characters that we grew up loving to be treated with respect.
Although I still hold that there would be a lot less complaining if it was equal opportunity fanservice. Even the Catwoman/Batman scene at the end of Catwoman #1 managed to cover up anything sexy about Bruce, leaving it to Selina to do the heavy lifting. Er…well…wait. But seriously, there’s not a heckuva lot of male cheesecake out there, and these are muscular guys in form-fitting clothing too.
Wanting something is cool. Just understand that wanting something runs both ways. My wife is a big Catwomen fan and she thinks the new Catwomen IS treated with respect and it really reminds her of her favorite Catwomen comics that she grew up with. (the one in the purple outfit were her house gets blown up in the first issue).
Hell I got a sneaking suspicion that the new awful Starfire might have been a badly botched attempted at a feminist character.
Honestly think about it, the average comic reader is like what 40 something… when was the last time YOU paid for porn? I can find porn of pretty much anything with less effort then it is taking me to say that. Those fanboys are not shelling out 3+ bucks a pop just for T&A unless they have honestly yet to figure out google. The T&A is no doubt a fun bonus but all 20 of DC’s readers are staying for the characters they love. Or that is my take anyway.
Thank you for continuing to make comics about this! The fact that the comments always contain at least one person who has to start with “Yes, BUT-” or similar kind of means in my mind that they’re still needed.
Cripes, what’s with all the hate? Sorry Willis, but the strip just wasn’t funny. The particular topic is irrelevant, he could be going on about anything and it wouldn’t change anything. The whole strip is just an unbelievably stupid guy saying unbelievably stupid things. Who cares?
Why is Amber humoring him by even talking to him?
What’s the point? And more importantly, what’s the punchline?
Stupidity has never been a source of comedy ever. As such, unintelligent people have no place in a comedic work. We should have thoughtful characters having intelligent discussions about the weighty matters that concern the thinking man. Like what exactly does one do with an excess of tossed salads and scrambled eggs?
The best part of this is the way Amber isn’t even offended by the manpolyp, because he’s just not that significant. Mostly she’s confused, like a talking fish just rolled out on a skateboard and started reciting Shakespeare in a Nyew Joisey accent. He’s not even relevant enough to rate annoyance.
Oh? Is that the joke?
…because viewed from angle it’s pretty darn funny, given his uninvited injection into their conversation. And I guess that fits with “your conversation is unimportant” being the punchline, by pacing.
Straw man argument = a weak argument that no one ACTUALLY uses, chosen to discredit the legitimate points of a side.
This = something that happens for real all the time. If it seems stupid to you, that’s because it is but it still happens. So accusing Willis of inventing a straw man is stupid. You can see this argument being used in THIS comment section!
That makes no sense. A straw man argument is, by definition, a misrepresentation of your opponent’s arguments. Are you saying that if a person makes a stupid enough argument, it recursively misrepresents itself?
@Charagon the point is that people take offense at people taking offense. No matter the subject someone is going to complain. Two girls are talking about sales dropping at DC and someone not in the conversation wants to point out that their opinion is not important or relevant. The responses to this comic are funnier than the comic itself. Willis wants to express his dislike at DC’s reinvention of its characters on his own website and people are acting like he is not allowed.
I think some of the comments are as funny as the strip.
“I just wanted to say that the fat guy was right and we should all just shut up about this topic. It was discussed once and any more than that is extremism”
Nevermind that the sales dropping is a new point that needs to explored or that Willis is not calling for any action whatsoever, not even a boycott.
I agree with the subject, and it’s not just in comics, either. After watching yet another Final Fantasy commercial, I actually yelled out loud “if you want me to take your female lead seriously, the best way to start is to stop dressing her like a whore!”
I don’t think that’s true.
If a woman dresses a certain way and someone tells her to stop dressing like a whore, that’s slut-shaming.
If a man invents a female character and dresses her like a whore, particularly if she’s a character with a shy or meek personality, that is another thing entirely. There is not a real person being shamed. There is a bad behavior (designing a character as a sex object and calling it a normal girl, thus creating a confusing, sexism-reinforcing template for impressionable youths of both genders to see) and it really ought to be called out.
Granted, if LSCoK shouted this in his/her own home, the call-out probably had little effect, but whatever.
The problem with that argument is that if you can’t slut-shame then how can you objectify?
In both situations you are being given a person and asked to imagine them as real, and those that do think of them as having agency would be correct in pointing out that dressing provocatively (ie like a whore as it is offensivly put) is in deed being used to devalue women based on sexuality… or slut shaming as it is called.
No matter who makes the character, man or women the (fake) agency is still important imo.
I agree, there is a difference between a real person and a character. A character cannot choose their outfit, the creator does. Whether or not it’s sexual objectification or just a character wearing certain kinds of clothing depends on the situation, how it’s shown, if the clothes make sense with the characters’ personality and situation, etc. Also, how the character is treated- fanservice or parody is one thing, but is the character constantly being treated and shown like a visual object, but none of the other characters are? Etc.
The problem I have here is the sentence ‘dressing like a whore’ or the word ‘whore’ period. Those words are inherently sexist and slut-shaming, no matter what you’re talking about.
“I agree, there is a difference between a real person and a character”
Yes but when you notice the difference the writer has failed imo. I am not asked to like Mike because I like his writer, but because I like his character. he can do things that are out of his personality and I would notice. I know he is not a real person any more then Conquest is a real person. However if I think of conquest as less of a human because of her (fake) sexuality then I am also slut shaming and being sexist.
Then those writers have probably failed in LSCoK’s opinion.
The way Starfire contorted herself on the infamous sex talk page of the new 52 was both sexist and bad writing. She was presenting herself to us, the readers, while talking to whatshisface. There was no reason in the story for her to do that.
Given that most actual women are not parodies, most terribly sexist writing will be pretty bad writing – it’ll present characters in ways that aren’t particularly believable by non-misogynistic readers.
The exception (sometimes, anyway) being actual parody.
Gotcha.
I gave the word “whore” a few minutes of thought. It strikes me that the big lie that makes the word inherently sexist is that through consistent cultural misuse it’s come to be presented as meaning a set of decisions (perhaps even “life choices”) when in fact it’s more typically a kind of victimization. People don’t tend to become prostitutes because they feel like they have a lot of options and agency in their lives.
Which means even calling someone engaged in prostitution a whore is likely to be inaccurate.
Granted using the word whore is rather loaded with the bad. At the same time though, I want a single word that encapsulates the ideas of being overly sexual and utterly ridiculous in general. Sexdiculous? No… a single word having the sounds ‘sex’ and ‘dick’ in it is clearly not the answer.
‘Cheesecake’ used to be that word, but it’s become too positive, so to speak. When people say ‘It’s really cheesecake-y’ most people react with ‘yaaaay!’ and associate it with regular awesomesauce fanservice, not unnecessary sexification to the point of ridiculousness (and therefore bad/lazy and probably sexist writing/art, unless it is parody).
Then again, what else was expected? You can’t give a bad thing the same name of a delicious dessert and expect people to not start associating it with good thoughts. It’s just not possible.
If another word for it is made, it can’t bring to mind stuff that will make you think it’s a good thing, like cheesecake, but not something that could become a weapon for people who just want to slut-shame/virgin-shame/insult women or female characters.
What’s the opposite side of “Fewer women are reading these comics now”?
Amber didn’t even really express any beliefs in this one. She observed that female readership of DC is down, Arch cuts her off before she can give her thoughts on this, and the remainder of the strip is about whether or not Amber SHOULD have any thoughts about it.
It’s less about the issue in question, and more about the reaction Willis got last time he addressed it.
It remains to be seen if we’ll get a strip a few months from now about people’s reaction to this one.
Well one could ask where the results are coming from? Who took that study and what is it based on? Simply readership, sales? Logically speaking, it makes little sense that DC is selling more than ever but there’s less females reading it. I doubt there were so many girls reading DC compared to now to actually be noticed as a drop in readership. It really makes no sense, it sounds more like quoting a sound byte without doing the proper research (and even then, most of those sorts of polls are barely scientific).
Huh? So – he should be asking for scientific data when polls aren’t scientific? He’s not a satire of rational people asking about statistics – he’s a satire of the people who consistently try to shut up anyone who questions the status quo in comic books.
As pointed out – he wasn’t part of Amber and Leslie’s conversation; he busted his way in to tell them to shut up about their rational concern. That somehow them “rocking the boat” by simply discussing what they’d heard was stupid and wrong and because they’ve said it before they have no right to say it now. Even if the statistics and figures where incorrect (Leslie even says “if they’re true”) it does not change the fact that comic books are often offensive in portrayals of women.
He dismisses the idea that women’s opinions matter in women’s issues and assumes his feelings are all that matter.
This is a real opinion being satirized – there is no middle grounds or justifications for his opinion because he is blatantly WRONG.
The only real complaint one could make is he looks like a basement dweller stereotype. Otherwise he’s quite real in personality.
Also it is quite possible that they are selling more yet losing female customers…
The only way they could be selling more but losing females is if the female readers were so vast in number before the New 52 that even with all of the new readers, there were less females than before. And the only way that’d be logically possible is if women were the majority of DC readers before the reboot.
Obviously, that isn’t the case. So the “poll” is useless, pointless, and shouldn’t really come up in conversation. I would have also busted into this conversation if I heard it, except to point out that a poll means nothing. It’s a soundbyte people use to support their opinion, but it’s based on nothing.
In little crummy Wheeling, WV’s local comic shop, there are about a dozen young, cute girls that never read comics before the New 52 and have been buying books every month since then (including the “bad” ones). Over in California where my girlfriend lives, not only has she JUST started buying comics at the New 52, but she also says that she sees girls at the comic shop every week that the owner says were never there before the New 52.
There is no way female readership can be lower than before if sales are up. The only possible thing the poll could take into consideration is if they are JUST polling the women who read DC comics BEFORE but not now, but then you could make the same claim about male readership for DC comics being down.
So Amber’s point is based on nothing and shouldn’t be a point. THAT is what the guy in the comic should have been saying. But clearly, Willis IS Amber in this comic, so only his side is shown.
Amber didn’t claim female readership is down. She merely claimed she read that the percentage of female readers out of the whole is down. Even if readership overall increases substantially, female readership percentage could still get smaller. This would mean more females are reading, but they grew in number at a smaller rate than the men.
I think folks would do better to argue with what Amber actually says rather than what they want her to have said.
Not that it’s incredibly relevant to the strip’s focus. As Doctor Who said, it’s not about the issue in question, it’s about Arch’s reaction to it being discussed in the first place. I purposefully tried to choose the least controversial news for Amber to spew at the beginning, because it wasn’t the important part and I didn’t want it to distract. That, of course, is a losing proposition. Anything said about women’s anything gets dudes SO ANGRY.
(And for the record, no, this strip isn’t about anything that happened on my site. But this has been a very popular strip because it’s a thing that sadly happens everywhere.)
Thank you for clarifying what you meant originally. But even then, when anything geek related increases fans I could almost say with full confidence that the male demographic will get more new customers than female regardless of anything. Sales for DC are up, in a big way, due to new readers. There are many more new guys than new girls, but that still means nothing regarding the issue at hand.
It proves nothing, means nothing, and Amber is clearly listening/re-stating to that soundbite only because she opposes how female characters are being portrayed. As opposed to actually using logical reasoning.
And to be clear I’m not “so angry” about women anything coming up (not that I’m saying you were directing that at me). While I do disagree with that side on this specific issue, my problem with this was that Amber had nothing stand on in this strip due to a faulty poll/reason. And instead of someone logical hearing this, it had to be the “crazy other side strawman” who couldn’t make a point himself.
I am not going to be sympathetic to the real-life stupid bigots that really exist. The entirety of society is ALREADY overwhelmingly structured in their favor. If you want a webcomic that presents their side, I suggest finding another damn webcomic.
When the other sides argument is “I wanna see hot girls act like sex objects even if it’s to the demerit of the story”, “I don’t like how you’re commenting on a fact about the comic industry’s (and the media’s) treatment of women so shut up”, and “women’s (and plenty of men’s) issues and complaints about the treatment of women are irrelevant” I think their argument becomes moot and they have no “good points” in their argument.
That’s a shame, because there is still some stellar work coming out from DC that does a good job of respecting all of their potential readers. Batwoman is an amazing comic, both in writing and art. Demon Knights is a good, fun time. Birds of Prey has been fun, as has Justice League Dark. And in spite of the initial wariness a lot of folks, women especially had, VooDoo is turning out to be a pretty cool book as well.
Forgoing all of a company’s offerings is one approach. But if we buy the stuff that we like, we encourage DC to make more books like that.
Honestly, I’ve just been getting the occasional glimpse of Batman and whatever books Starfire is in. Every single panel caused me to wish death on those who wrote it. I’m kind of astonished; usually, I have at least some tolerance. It was just so . . . vile. Hateful.
Then…Batwoman. I keep saying it, but that’s because that art is like a freaking religious experience. J.H. Williams is a craftsman, and sometimes his work is so good it just makes me cry.
But at the same time, it doesn’t overwhelm the story.
Sadly, he’s bowing out for the next arc, but the replacement artist, Amy Reeder, is also an excellent artist.
I can understand your stance… and I agree with you. But to be honest, I’ve always followed Teen Titans more than anything, although I’ve dabbled in reading other titles. But Teen Titans? I’ve always been hardcore about. So when *that* happened to Starfire, you can imagine how DC became dead to me. I am sure there are some good titles out right now. For instance, I’ve heard great things about Red Hood & The Outlaws… but my enthusiasm in general has just degenerated. My boyfriend has always been more of a Marvel fan… I think I’ll start reading more of those
Basically, I think if this guy didn’t look like a nolife asshat most people wouldn’t have had a problem with the depiction. It’s the combined visual with what he’s saying – I’ve heard people who look quite athletic and have traditional good looks spout shit like this, you don’t have to be obese and have a neckbeard. In fact, it kind of folds in with the issue at hand – women good or bad being depicted only to satisfy the baser urges, likewise with strawmen always being physically unpleasant to make people hate them more on a base level.
Some of the coolest people I know are fat nolife neckbeards. :{
Otherwise I agree with Amber and applaud the comic – I am one of those people who felt bad and somehow smaller/less important because of jerks like this stating I didn’t need to read comics or play games and I was ruining these hobbies for them. It feels good when put into this context, that it’s completely okay to want this depiction of women to change and that I’m not a huge party-pooper for expressing that.
As a related note, my husband thought Harley’s costume in Arkham Asylum was fine – I started playing it myself, the first scene she was really in I pointed at her and said “really? you think so? Not just the clothes, she’s taking every pose possible to show off the goods. You didn’t notice this when you played?” “Guess I wasn’t really paying attention…”
It’s fine to not pay attention, but if it isn’t really grabbing and keeping attention, and instead just makes a beloved character look tacky and slutty, there’s no need to do this. Sure, make them attractive and interesting, but showing the bra and garters and all poses being something out of the leadup scene in a softcore porn, really if anyone wants to see that they can just go to redtube. That’s all I want to say to anyone who designs characters or models in comics and games.
When last Willis posted a controversial issue, he addressed this same complaint. Go back to “Sphincter Clench!” and you will find a wide variety of people who have given horrible straw- and/or tin-man opinions (possibly some flying monkey opinions), in this comic – several of whom are totally normal-looking.
I always found Harley to be an incredibly asexual character (in relation to the Joker.) I always got a sense of ‘pantomime’ to her overt sexuality. (Which fits the character.)
Of course I’m gay so YMMV.
That’s a really interesting way of looking at it. A pantomime of sexuality, I mean. That could also explain a lot about her relationship with Ivy–Harley is just naturally a flirtatious and joyfully romantic character, that everything seems like a come-hither smile.
I never figured her for truly asexual. The Joker I can see as that, though.
So by the basic line of a lot of folks’ arguments here, he’s not only a hypocrite, but a misogynist AND a misandrist! It’s good to know he covers all his bases.
JSYK, this is basically the best valentine I received all day. Every single time you post one of these strips I pass it around to my ~~ladyfriends~~ and you pick up a few new readers.
I love how some people want Incredibly Stupid Idiot to be portrayed as just a normal guy with a different but rational viewpoint and the arguments to back it up. It’s like wanting Incredibly Evil Villain to be portrayed as just a normal guy with a different way of doing good. (No, really, kicking puppies helps their growth, and chopping people’s heads off purifies their souls!)
So, having read a few of the new DC comics, they’re fricking radioactive. I’d never recommend them to any human being. Every woman is drawn in a way that is totally incompatible with human anatomy, and they’re all written by either Ayn Rand, men who’ve never touched a woman, or both. DC has gone from “enh” to “I hate these people and want them to stop making any product whatsoever” in my head.
I recommend Birds of Prey, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, and Batgirl. All those artists are respectful of female anatomy, and I can guarantee at least one of the writers has touched a woman by virtue of being one.
Just out of curiosity, How many Starfires has DC or marvel got that are not evil, and has the new Starfire ever turned down sex sense her launch?
One more question, Has Catwomen expressed any sexual interest in anyone other then Batman?
–You know, it occurs to me that if guys really dislike how stereotypically hard it is to find female geeks and comic fans and stuff, then it’d be in their own best interests to want to encourage them to stick around. And part of that is not chasing them away with stupidity like this, eh?
And to the couple of people who think there should be a balanced, middle ground presented between “shut up you don’t matter” and “hey, how about giving my gender more equal treatment with the way you present the male ones”, here’s a quick litmus test for you to find that middle ground: replace the word “gender” with “race”.
Hmm. Let’s see… PoC being told to shut up about not liking how offensive they find the usual depiction of their race to be, and that their opinions don’t matter…
Yeah, not finding a lot of “middle ground” there. Sorry. Maybe they should just be grateful they’re being included at all? Or something? :-/
I think the freaking out and telling people to shut up is more a reactionary fear that there comic will be changed.
Anyway you find assholes like this all over the place on many topics, politics comes to mind real fast. I don’t think this is limited to the much mocked fanboy.
How about this:
A bunch of comics with the women heroes in skimpy outfits for the readers who like their cheesecake.
A second bunch of comics with the men heroes in skimpy outfits for the female readers who like their beefcake.
A third batch of comics where all the heroes are fully clothed in no cake poses for people who don’t want to see that sort of stuff.
Keep the three segregated and then no one has to deal with anything they don’t like.
I’m not being snarky, I’m really asking if people would prefer comics this way.
No. Not really. Because the issue isn’t “they’re TOO sexy.” It’s just that “sexy” becomes the defining characteristic of most female heroes.
I think most people just want to see good stories well told. Sexy’s fine, if it serves the story and the characters. Weirdly out of place “sexy” like Starfire’s contortions during her conversation with Roy (and, well, the conversation too) and Catwoman’s intro…it’s less good. From a storytelling standpoint, what was happening with Kory was just lousy, without even getting into arguments regarding “taste.”
That’s why I used Kory’s contorting as the better example. I really think the Catwoman #1 was lousy (it might be worth mentioning, though, that I have never liked March’s artwork–I find his characters too angular and sickly to be attractive, and his storytelling always blocky and wanting), but it’s something I’m willing (after a lot of yelling) to accept that other folks might find merit in.
But I can’t think a single excuse for the visual storytelling in RHatO. Just abysmal, and more than a little 90′s-a-rrific.
….. honestly I thought the story was spectacularly stupid when the priest pulled the total recall disguise nonsense. The hidden bow in the middle of a gun fight sure did not help. Add to all that a lack of any sort of plot and I honestly thought the ONLY remotely interesting event was Starfire being so active in hunting down sex, I thought she might have been a mockery of real women pursuing sex at first tell I saw a quoit of his that made me think Starfire might have been his attempted to fight the “good girls don’t” stereotype. However even that was so poorly done that I think reading the comic gave me cancer.
Well the reason I ask is because it’s hard to gauge what is considered tasteful. All the discussion here proves that something one person has no problem with, someone else could find totally innapropriate.
My solution would be more black and white. Say, a Wonder Woman series where she wears her star spangled bikini and any impulses the DC writers and artists have which may be considered sexist would be funneled there. Another Wonder Woman series where she is fully clothed and skews to a more conservative or PC mindset. The writing could be good in both and readers can purchase both sets if they feel like it, but if someone is offened by the way WW is acting they are not denied a WW comic. Same would go for Batman. Ladies who want to see a hunky Batman bending over his bat computer now have an outlet.
Good writing is a tricker thing. Saying “I simply want better writing” is ideal but hard to quantify. This would be a more tangable solution without pentalizing or judgeing people for what they want to see or not see in their comics.
Well call my radical but I think I would rather just not encourage anything sexist as opposed to sticking what someone might think is sexist it in one book. The problem pops up when two people don’t agree with what is sexist. The problem is amplified because it is so easy to just label the opposition as sexist and ignore them (many times this is even the right answer) in stead of listening.
Just look at the sex wars in the feminist movment, both sides want equality and are working for the same goal but both sides will attack each other like the other is the embodiment of all sexism or something.
What your really describing here is one real story and then another sanitized copy of that story.
Well, like you said: it’s difficult for any two people to agree on what is “sexist”. That becomes even more difficult when whatever is “sexist” is censored altogether. The stakes are higher. This way, anything anyone is unsure about can just be dumped in one book and the other book can stay free.
The reason I’m for this option is because it seems the most sympathetic to everyone. Women readers who don’t want to see their heroes reduced to pinups shouldn’t have to. On the other hand, many people who really don’t care about, say, Power Girl’s cleavage window, or Starfire’s sexual habits or who actually like them aren’t excluded either. And sure, we could just say those people are pervs and screw them but I really don’t want to get into a world of labeling and judging. It leads us down a bad path when we start dictating whose tastes are right and wrong, especially when there is a simple solution to make everyone happy.
Here is what i would do if I had money or talent. I would be gender swapping comics like crazy. I tend to mentally do that anyway when watching movies as a character building exercise.
Anyway as fun as your answer might be there is no way DC would do it….but you could try the experiment anyway with photoshop and Catwomen #1.
This is one woman who took DC’s New 52 as her first “in” to comics. I’ve love Batwoman and Wonder Woman. I saw enough about Red Hood and Catwoman to know those weren’t the ones for me. Focusing on the positive, I guess.
Um… The amount of women the review shows a decline in was 1%… Thats statistically unsound. It is literally not considered a statistical change at all (especially given the initial group size & the subset group size). Come on folks this is the basis of statistical analysis: I know a lot of you are going to be as dumb as mud (that can’t be helped), but at least pretend you have a secondary education.
As for the Strawman of the male comic book reader, lets stop being intellectually dishonest & pretending we are being clever…. We should indeed shut up; FOREVER! Because at this point we aren’t pointing out issues with the industry, we are making up issues with the industry & then when the industry tries to adapt to our bitching, we still don’t buy the books we were bitching about.
Frankly if i were DC i wouldn’t pander to our demographic either: We constantly make excuses for not buying things & demand they change, an then when they do we just go on complaining & still not buying anything.
Why would someone demand a change if they don’t really want a change? I fully believe that those that said the introduction of catwomen in her #1 offended them were in fact offended.
Sure, you can be offended by anything you like… You don’t however have the right to demand it change. Its like me demanding that guy on guy gay porn be changed, because i would be offended by watching it… Yet i never intended on purcahsing it & i don’t intend to purchase it if they change it, so why is it important that they listen because i’m offended.
Same goes for Catwoman. I personally have no interest in it as a property, but to demand that DC fix something i never intended to purchase, so i can pretend i will purchase it, is silly.
So to answer your question of why would someone demand a change if they don’t really want a change? Because its easier to complain about something then it is to just admit you don’t enjoy the material & just move on. As women we have become very socially enabled: We seem to think that the universe exists for us & that anything we don’t specifically like should cease to exist.
Heck, i’ve found myself doing this & i’ve taken a step back and said to myself “is this really an issue, or am i just being a bit of a self entitled bitch.” an quite often the answer is “i’m being a self entitled bitch.” Using your Catwoman example: Why should someone who like the style of the work have to miss out because i dont personally like the style of the work? There’s nothing morally wrong with it, nor anything legally wrong with it, its in no way sexist (never misstake sexy for sexist, the two are not the same thing) & its not out of character for the character… So why should it not exist on the basis that i am not deriving enjoyment out of it?
“Same goes for Catwoman. I personally have no interest in it as a property, but to demand that DC fix something i never intended to purchase, so i can pretend i will purchase it, is silly.”
But what if they do intent to purchase it if it is changed?
Lets take Starwars. I will not buy any new DVD’s unless Solo shoots first. Don’t I have to make myself known loudly and often if there is to be any hope of me getting what I want?
“Using your Catwoman example: Why should someone who like the style of the work have to miss out because i dont personally like the style of the work?”
errr this tends to be my argument about the Catwomen comic so you won’t get any argument from me on that.
Still my wife and I enjoy it and others want it changed, don’t we both have the right to express are wants and downplay the opposition?
“But what if they do intent to purchase it if it is changed?”
Then tough luck you miss out. You either like the product or you don’t. Its like me demanding that romance novels ditch the romance so i can purchase them as well. It doesn’t matter how many times this argument is made, it is up to you to decide what you dod & do not want to read, and how much offensiveness you are willing to take. For example i wanted to watch that last Torchwood series, but i did not want homosexual sex sprung on me in the middle of it (i have no problem with homosexual sex, but its like seeing your parents have sex, its something i don’t necessarily want to see).
Its not up to the producers to remove it because i may be offended, its up to me to decide if i want to continue to watch it & frankly if you want to read catwoman but decide not to because of the art work, then in the end that is your power of choice.
Its the equiviliant of me getting a support group of people offended by the colour blue & yelling online that DC should remove the colour blue from there comics because then i can read them. Heck i can read them now, as there is nothing offensive about the colour blue… Because there is a difference between offensive & being offended.
I see your point but still have to disagree with this part.
“Then tough luck you miss out. ”
Providing feedback on something you want changed IS important, very much so to something that is continuing to evolve and change like comic.
I don’t begrudge those that want Catwomen changed nor do I think they should be quit. I do however like Catwomen just the way she is and I am willing to “duke it out” so to say.
However as someone who has a different opinion on what is sexist, cry’s for change based on what I see as flawed morality tend to rub me the wrong way and get challenged by me.
“Making up issues…” Really? You honestly don’t believe there’s an issue with what happened to Starfire? On such a big scale. That DC said, flat-out, that their focus is on the male audience, and that DD became hostile whenever questioned about the cut in female creators (doubly odd, because DC or any company head, I would have expected some soothing flim-flam that everyone knew was a lie, but at least sounded like they made the effort.)
No, hon. We’re not “making up” issues, we are, in fact, pointing them out. And if it sounds redundant, well, that’s because the same issues keep happening. No one is asking to be “pandered to.” Comics and movies made to “pander to women” often come out more insulting and awful than the regular kind, because those doing the pandering don’t actually understand what they’re doing.
We’re asking to be considered. To be counted as a part of the audience, as a demographic that the company is after as surely as they’re after the 18-35 year-old male category.
Oh, and we’re asking for the practice of portraying comic book women as sex objects first and foremost to maybe start dying off. Or coming to a slow.
As someone who thinks a trip to the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas makes for a great vacation, as a feminist who thinks raunch culture is overall a good thing, as someone who thinks this new awful Starfire might have been a botched try at a feminist character, as someone who has radically different opinions on sexy in entertainment then Laura,…. I got to agree with Laura. But I would be very interested in seeing you back up your argument if you can.
Heartwarming, ain’t it, how two folks with drastically different opinions can still come together to say that that DC needs to check itself before it wrecks itself.
Seriously, though. I did mean it–the apology, I mean. I was out of line and acting like a jerk, and you’ve been nothing but polite on this whole heated thing. Just had to say it again–I’m sorry for going overboard.
I honestly thought you were very respectful. I never thought you were ignoring what I said or talking over me, just disagreeing and explaining why you disagreed.
I also know I am not very good at communicating what I am thinking (english is not my first language) and I know I can come off trollish… however the important thing to remember here is that I am right and you are wrong =D
” Really? You honestly don’t believe there’s an issue with what happened to Starfire?”
Not a gender based one. If you want to say “this is a crappy representation of this previous character” then sure you can say that. But to say “this is sexism & negatively impacts us as women” then no, you’d be wrong.
“That DC said, flat-out, that their focus is on the male audience”
Of course it is, since more then 80% of the purchasing public is male.
“and that DD became hostile whenever questioned about the cut in female creators”
Of course he got hostile, because it was a stupid question: Never mistake absense for exlcusion. Right now there are no men in my room, nor black people, nor people in wheel chairs… In fact i’ll extend that to the rest of the house too. That doesn’t make me racist, sexist & ablist, it just means there is an absence of said groups: Because absence does not denote exclusion. The fact is that the stats used where ocmplete bullshittery… They were made up. Of course just like with this 1% drop in female comic readership, we jump on the interwebbernets & try to pass off a correlation (sometimes a completely made up one) as a causation.
“Oh, and we’re asking for the practice of portraying comic book women as sex objects first and foremost to maybe start dying off. Or coming to a slow.”
But they aren’t & this is one of those things where we need to stop talking bullshit. 99% of female characters are not being treated as sex objects. This has been demonstrably shown over and over and over again. People have demonstrably gone through on a month by month basis & show cased that this observation is wrong & nothing more then “observation bias” on the behalf of the people who make that claim.
Heck, i’ve personally showcased this before. If you want to pick any random month & we count the characters being represented as a sex object versus those who aren’t i’ll be willing to crunch the numbers with you. But the fact remains that it can be & has been demonstrably proven ad nuseum that women in comics are not predominately shown as sex objects. Sure you can point at Harley & Starfire (both characters i hate in the new DCU), but thats not the same thing as possessing a trend.
“Not a gender based one. If you want to say “this is a crappy representation of this previous character” then sure you can say that. But to say “this is sexism & negatively impacts us as women” then no, you’d be wrong.”
Can you tell us why they would be wrong? I also think the portrayal of starfire was not sexist, just really bad writing but I want your explanation if that is ok.
Sexism is a noun, of which sexist is the adjective. The definition of sexism is
1.Discrimination based on gender
2.Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
This no more does either of those things then Amanda Conner was being sexist when she drew Vartox in Power Girl.
This sexism ideal when put beside Starfire, enspoused by many other female readers is essentially the same logic that allows people to praise Gail Simones WIR site (a list that only shows that women in comics don’t possess plot immunity by gender), yet those same people ignore Gails own fridgings in Birds of Prey.
Sure the representation of Starfires personality is pretty bad, but in the reboot 90% of characters fall under the “crappy writing” descriptor.
“1.Discrimination based on gender”
You don’t see the men striking such sexual poses or showing off sexy manbody’s.
I suppose the counter argument to that would be….
True, but we do see other women fully clothed not striking a sexual pose (errr do we?). This suggests that the sexy is a character trait/stick and therefor not sexist.
2.Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Like Starfire only being a sexual prop?
Counter argument
stereotyping of social roles like men are studs and women are whores?
Here we have a sexually aggressive women who wants sex for her pleasure.
Female sexual remorse is such a cliché it fills a whole stock photo repository! Don’t you think it is about time we got a god damn hero who gets to be heroic and bone the shit out of anyone SHE likes?
I think it is pretty easy to tell what side of the debate I fall on here but I also think the other side has a strong point. That makes it worthy of arguing and challenging both views imo.
I’m glad that one enterprising person has gone through all the comics themselves and determined that everyone wasn’t actually offended by everything. Thanks, one person! You keep on telling us how we feel.
How you feel is inmaterial to demonstrable fact. I’m sure the first people to sail around the world were terrified of falling of the edge of the earth…. Didn’t mean that the earth had an edge though.
Feelings are completely immaterial to a conversation about demonstrable facts. 1+1=2 because it demonstrably equals 2; it does not equal 2 because i have a warm fuzzy feelings about the number 2.
They’re gone. I have no patience at all for anyone who holds up their own emotional reaction as “demonstrable fact” and everyone else’s emotional reactions as lies. There is no possible way in the world to converse with a person like that, and I refuse to pay for the bandwidth required to store their narcissism.
…Malaya and Roz should team up to ruin this dude. With Ronnie, of course. Can’t have too much bitch power without someone sane or intelligent to balance it out.
Haven’t been getting enough comments and trolls lately?
If Willis hooks this guy up with Malaya, he’ll be able to roast marshmallows over his comments section
.
Malaya has higher standards.
I think Malaya would maul him, though.
He might like that.
Enjoy that mental image.
Misandrist.
She’d wipe her ass with him. Literally.
There’s always room for more you know.
I was just thinking that he just wanted his shitstorm early this week.
Yes. Important issues are irrelevant. Everyone knows this.
“Arch, The Wizard of Oz movie called, they want their Straw man back.”
lol. I actually intended for that to be a pun in light of tonight’s strip. but if you want to fantasize about amber and leslie’s potentially plastic boobs I will not stop you.
ahh shit posted a reply in the wrong section. To heck with these overlaping identical gravitars!!!
It would be a strawman if these exact phrases (maybe not “shut up forever” but everything else) didn’t frequently pop up from haters in the DCWKA tumblr, as well as other message boards.
Not our fault they’re living straw man.
Amber’s opponents so ridiculous that it makes mockery of her ‘victory’ over him.
But then, so did 6 straight panels of *sphincter clench*
I don’t even know what that strip was trying to say but it seriously undermined my ability to take anything he’s saying on the subject seriously.
A moral argument built on sand will not stand. And you don’t build a house out of straw. …straw house on sand = bad combo.
Not all opinions deserve to be taken seriously.
When the opinion cannot be taken seriously, there is nothing serious to say about it.
I have been trying to find a way to word this sentiment, thank you for saving me the trouble.
While strawmen usually refers to representive characters with huge flaws you can easily argue against, real-life strawmen can be anyone who while claiming to represent a certain group, is seen as a kind of a ‘black sheep’ by that group as this person makes the group look bad.
And when the entire group is like that, it just means that you should probably stop giving them money and a platform.
That’s kinda the point. You can schadenfreudeby kicking real-life strawmen in the balls… it’s a lot of fun! …but it’s also mastubatory. You don’t score points for it.
Dismantling a living strawman’s argument is like winning an argument with a six year old. Yeah, you can do it… but it’s not an accomplishment.
Except for the part where it’s opinion’s like this guy’s that seem to hold the most power in real life. Heck, just a flashback to last year’s SDCC showed plenty of people ready to jump on the “you already said you’re unhappy, and we promised to do absolutely nothing about it, now shut up because you don’t matter!” train.
Don’t care. The POV he’s presenting is so flimsy it’s like kicking over a styrofoam cup.
It doesnt’ MATTER that this is a real POV… you need to build up his POV, add more justifications or false-arguments or appeal-to-imaginary-masses so that there’s something THERE to dismantle.
Amber needs to punt this guy like a football. How far can you kick a styrofoam cup?
You need a more substantive argument– something with more mass to kick– or it just makes it look like Amber’s Winning Again through no merit of her own.
Or maybe that’s what Willis was going for. I mean… she IS his Stephanie Meyer stand-in. Maybe the antagonists are supposed to take a fall for before Bella’s self-inserted awesomeness.
tldr; How is she supposed to take him down a notch if he’s already at the bottom?
Laura: “This is a real-life problem that’s directly relevant to people.”
Derik: “Don’t care.”
And now we have the comic.
And just like the comic, it’s a flimsy argument presented by an overbearing dude with lots of volume. Derik just really likes proving my comics 100% correct.
Your entire premise sounds weird to me. It’s like you’re placing the Buckets of Blood guy into the role of a primary antagonist and then complaining because it wasn’t intellectually stimulating enough when Ethan conquered him, dismantled his opinions and proved his entire paradigm to be fundamentally flawed.
And now we have the comic.
Now you have a sequence of events.
That is not the same as a narrative.
Key difference: Buckets of Blood managed to be funny.
I derived no entertainment from this. If its value instead lies in being “a very special” Shortpacked! where a lesson is learned I think its message was muddy.
And David, the realness of the problem does not make it impossible for you to do a comic about it that isn’t very good. Saying that the problem automatically make any statement on the problem deep and profound is, itself, a corollary problem. (A much less important one, admittedly.)
Maya Angelou is awesome… but that doesn’t stop Fiona Apple from sounding like a dumbass when she talks about her. The subject and the speaker are not one.
No offense, but your opinion on this particular strip is worthless to me. I value more the opinion of the people who actually live this strip every day, who did find it had a punchline with value, even if it was bittersweet. If they find worth in it, then I succeeded in my goal.
You didn’t find it entertaining? That’s too bad for you. You are not my only reader. Surprise, you found a comic that’s not actually about you. I’m incredibly sorry.
Okay, that’s legitimate!
I quite enjoy Shortpacked! 98% of the time. I didn’t ‘get’ both strips with Arch, but whatever.
Please don’t take my inability to figure out what’s going on in this particular strip as a disenjoyment of your work overall. I guess this onw just falls in my blindspot.
Also, I should probably reiterate I was calling Fiona Apple a dumbass, not you. Lovely music though.
(No reason we can’t be civil at the end of the day.)
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.
To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position
True, phrases like “nobody important cares” are used way too often in internet forum debate for this to be a case of straw man.
I love you, Amber. You’re the best!
Well, that just summed up some aspect of First World Society in a nutshell, but, i’m not quite sure which.
Ya know I remember not buying the original fable because you couldn’t be a chick in it and thinking to myself, so if I play it once evil and once as good, and the developers are not trying to reach out to my fiance playing it at all, I’ll have spent $40 for a game that might get played twice by me (cause that second play through was never gonna happen) and not at all by the girl that is living with me.
So when playing Resident Evil: Code Veronica, did you have to wait for her to finish the Claire portion of the game before you could start the Chris portion?
I’ve never played Fable so maybe I’m thinking of the wrong game, but… don’t you make your own character in Fable?
That’s a little different from a game with a defined hero–or one with multiple protagonists representing both sexes.
Not really. In the original game you get what you get. In fable 2 and 3 you can play as a girl or a guy, and you can dye their hair, but that’s about it. I haven’t played the new Kinect one.
I’m not really a gamer but I love the Fable series. In fact, we finally bought 2 and 3 last night so now we actually own the first three.
(They’re super cheap now, too.)
I actually never liked the resident evil games, because when people were telling me they were so awesome they had shit control schemes. I hear the 4th one finally fixed that.
I’m pretty sure that this fanboy is the only real boob in this strip.
Are you saying that Amber and Leslie have silicone parts?
This is so sadly true.
“People are interpreting something in a way I don’t like! NOT ON MY WATCH!”
I’m really happy that DC has FINALLY closed up Power Girl’s boob window. Her new costume is a little goofy, but at least she’s dressed marginally less like cheesecake.
And yes, I know, people are gonna go “ooh! Ooh! But teh comic gave her a justification that showed how VULNERABLE she was!” To that I say… nah, i’m glad it’s gone. Having someone hastily patch it with “she couldn’t think of a logo because she admired Superman, so she let ‘em swing in the breeze” is really silly.
Didn’t Huntress also recapture her pants? Could it be that sometimes some of the women characters will wear clothes when they fight crime now? How crazy would that be??
And I was happy when they put pants on Wonder Woman. Too bad the boo-hooing of the sexist bigots made DC take them off her again.
Seriously, is not objectifying women THAT bad?
Many female (and non-sexist male) Wonder Woman fans also hated the pants, but it’s the “classic costume” so it’s going to have fans regardless of gender politics.
I liked the culottes she was wearing in the first issue, where the hell did they go?!
I like the pants. The classic costume…it’s so damn hard to take seriously, even by superhero costume standards. I also really liked the straps, I wish those had at least been kept.
I didn’t like the pants because it doesn’t fit with Wondy, and I think the same thing about the bathing suit. She should wear a greco-roman skirt or a toga skirt; it makes more sense and won’t be turned into a thong like the bathing suit bottom does.
If the pants dont fit she should have bought them on a larger size!
I liked it when the bottom of the bathing suit was basically short-shorts. Something sporty and athletic. Though a greco-roman-type skirt looks pretty fitting too.
I liked when she wore pteruges. It’s like a skirt, but practical and culturally appropriate.
I just take issue with people redesigning costumes for redesigning costume’s sake. Especially when they can’t do it well. (Really, all they had to do was close the window. There was NOTHING ELSE wrong with that costume. Unless you wanna start taking issue with the way gymnasts dress.)
Also I take issue with making her skinny, since I absolutely loved Amanda Conner’s interpretation, but that’s something else entirely.
Power Girl’s new costume is objectively a worse design than her classic one, boob window or no boob window.
Vulnerability? The explanation I heard was that she purposefully used it to distract crooks.
Of course, because crooks have the time to ogle cleavage (not boobs, just cleavage) while trying to escape crime fighters.
They had three different explanations over time.
A) “I can’t think of a logo, therefore boobs”
B) “I’m sensitive and vulnerable, therefore boobs”
C) “Hey, criminals, look! Boobs!”
Of course, all it really shows is that the writers can’t make up their boobs, and were so intent on having boobs that they’d boobs any excuse they could boobs with.
Mammary glands.
*Clap clap clap clap clap* Bravo!
See, and I’m a little sad to see it go. For one, it seems like…I dunno how to put this. Like small potatoes (er) compared to what’s happening characterwise to Starfire and Catwoman. Or more specifically, I have no faith in an editorial mandate that says to cover up an iconic character design, but keeps Harley Quinn in her new godawful WHAT IS THAT costume. It seems unbalanced, and fewer folk were crying out for a closing of the boob window.
Me, personally, I liked it. And not so much for the “vulnerable moment” with the reason behind it. I liked it because it was bold, in-your-face, and just a wee bit vulgar, which is pretty much what PG is most of the time. I liked that, unlike so many skimpy-but-”justified” costumes, it felt like she deliberately chose her outfit. As Tim Gunn said, she owned it. I liked it because I’m not always comfortable showing off my assets, but Peej can do it (again, deliberately, not just in a “my people have always worn bikinis” or whatever way), and still look like she’ll take your head off.
And the thing is…it wasn’t all that much cleavage. Less than the average Renn Faire costume. And just a small window of it, while being covered from throat-to-wrist otherwise. I think that’s why it felt deliberate on the character’s part, like it was less titillation and more playful.
It’s been said over and over, it’s not really the costumes (okay, sometimes it’s the costumes. Violet Lantern Wonder Woman, anyone?), it’s how they’re drawn.
Besides, the new costume is…it’s just awful. Not Harley Quinn levels of awful, where it manages to be bother gratuitous and oversexed, but also hideous, but…it’s pretty disco-riffic.
” I liked that, unlike so many skimpy-but-”justified” costumes, it felt like she deliberately chose her outfit.”
I agree with that. I would rather have fixed every other heroine’s costume and left hers alone, to stand as the example of the one (or at least, one of the few) heroines who deliberately choose to flaunt what they’ve got. (As opposed to using that excuse for EVERY heroine’s costume, regardless of how inappropriate it is for their personality.)
Interestingly, the biggest problem I have with the new PG design is her head. Her face is too damn soft looking–specifically, her chin is rounder–and her hair looks perfect. It’s weird.
I like the Amanda Conner version, is what I’m saying.
I can’t think of a comic fan that didn’t like the Amanda Conner version.
So +1 on that.
I’m sad to see the boob window go. I mean, there’s no rational justification for having it, but what else does the character have going for her? She’s a derivative character of a derivative character. She may have been a walking joke with the boob window, but at least that’s something. Now you can’t even make fun of her.
Power Girl has gone from “The super hero with a boob window” to “The super hero that used to have a boob window.” Big step up.
I mean, let’s be serious here. What’s the plan? Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?
Even if D.C. was capable of that, which they aren’t, there isn’t a character in their entire collection of trademarks less suited to the task.
On the other hand, the only time Huntress didn’t look completely absurd was when she was drawn with pants, so I’m glad that design is apparently still around.
“I mean, let’s be serious here. What’s the plan? Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?”
It sounds to me like you missed the series she had going there for a while. I’m not quite sure how “head of her own company that she’s quite qualified to run while having amusing and interesting adventures” wouldn’t appeal. Cripes, it appealed to me, and I’m not even the intended audience of which you speak. XD
They were already telling pretty great stories with her in Palmiotti and Gray’s Power Girl. Were it not for the fanservice it probably would’ve been the number one comic I’d recommend for female readers. Lots of focus on friendship, no contrived drama- just a really fun comic.
I’m a huge Power Girl fan and I love her old costume, but I’m glad it was changed so that the character will be able to appeal to a broader audience.
Make Power Girl a legitimate character? Use her to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broad female audience?
Even if D.C. was capable of that, which they aren’t, there isn’t a character in their entire collection of trademarks less suited to the task.
What about the Palmiotti/Conner series? That did a pretty good job of setting Peej up as her own character and drawing an audience with more-than-the-usual-number of women. PG has a definite personality to her that makes her a distinctive character. Most characters that aren’t the Core Five can be dismissed as joking B-list characters by people who don’t read them.
Here is what I think. The not really all that gratuitous boob window sort of told me alot about her personality. So has the new outfit…but it is not quit the same personality, I am hopeful she keeps her old personality and it really is just a new look. I have the same problem with the new Harley Quinn and Starfire. The looks don’t match the characters I know. I may be being asked to think of them as new characters but why not then just make them new characters?
Vulnerability – probably not a good trait in a superhero. I mean, “oooooh, I’m a super hero, I’m sooooooooooooooooooo vulnerable.” Cops don’t dress to be vulnerable. Soldiers don’t dress to be vulnerable.
Actually, for a while there they had her keep it open because she was comfortable with herself, and if others drooled, well, that was their hang-up. (And on one level, she’s right. It was just cleavage.)
It’s really annoying how this Willis frames some of his complaints sometimes. It’s getting to Minimum Security level extremism, where anyone who disagree is automatically a bigot or something.
Fanaticism is bad, you’d think someone who watched Beast Machines would have learned that lesson…
But people talk like this! Read any given Comics Alliance article about gender issues, and then read the comments. It’s awful.
I’m not saying people don’t. I’m saying that taking those examples then running the opposite way recklessly is being just as irresponsible.
A middle ground always exists, and those of us who are there just sigh as the extremists become representatives for all the issues.
Well this wouldn’t be a very entertaining comic if Willis poked fun at the middle ground. That’s what Amber and Leslie are there to represent. Those people don’t need to be called on their shit. Extremists do.
I agree, but Willis himself can be counted among the extremists here; he’s framing the comic in such a way that says “this fat, unattractive man is what represents anyone who disagrees with me.” It’s about as honest as a Fox News Broadcast.
There are those of us who disagree with the way the New 52 is handled, but also disagree with those on the other side who just lob tomatoes and throw out straw man arguments. There’s plenty on both sides, but this webcomic only depicts the views of one particular side.
You do have a point, but as was pointed out, it wouldn’t be very entertaining if everybody was being diplomatic about it.
There’s nothing funny about diplomacy. But ranting and arguing with stupid people = comedy gold.
It’s not very entertaining as it is. Me thinks Willis needs to talk to Randy Milholland about how to properly do “stupid people saying absurd things” strips.
The only real difference between this strip and one of Randy’s is that Amber and Leslie don’t verbally rip him a new anal cavity and instead sound pretty reasonable. That’s the problem here. If Amber and Leslie were also caricatures from the other extreme then this would just be absurdest comedy. As it is now, this sounds a whole lot more like moralization than comedy. Of only people who agree (at least a little) with the idiot stand-in in the comic will think this though. Personally, I think DC is just trying to sell cheesecake to kids who aren’t old enough to hit the porn shop yet. If they’re trying to tell deep stories they seem to be using the most shallow tools to do it.
That would be true is kids actually bought comics. Their actual market is definitely old enough to legally buy porn (and has been able to for more than a decade).
Well, that’s kinda the point of an opinion, isn’t it? If you disagree, that’s fine, but don’t try to make it sound like he’s wrong to have it.
Never said it was wrong. I just didn’t want him to fall into the trap of fanaticism/hypocrisy.
I think of myself as someone who tries to reconcile differences, I just wanted to state that Willis’ works hovers dangerously close to being equally as fanatic as those he despises.
You’re the worst kind of troll, you know that? You’re using your insistence that you’re trying to avoid conflict to stir up shit. That’s just fucked upt.
Whatever. I’m done feeding you. Have a pleasant night.
Up* Sorry, this thing cuts off text once you get to a certain density.
Be aware of the Golden Mean fallacy; the middle ground is not always correct. It is probably more often correct than an extreme point of view though.
That said, there are, of course comics that are better than the New 52, and there are comics that are not sexist at all (and not just independent comics). That said, the majority of comics, especially in classic series, do objectify women overall, at least in my experience, and it is often to the detriment of the story, as well as potentially alienating readers.
Sorry, but fanaticism? For what? For doing the right thing?
If a sexist bigot doesn’t care about the feelings of the women they offend, I fail to see the part where other people MUST care about the sexist bigot’s feelings, too.
You only get what you give.
Yep, definitely golden mean fallacy, with a bit of tone trolling/concern trolling thrown in for spice. You may see yourself as a resolver of disputes but you don’t seem to have asked the fundamental question: who says all disputes should be resolved via compromise?
Actually CommentSpawn I don’t think there’s any correlation between truth and whether it’s perceived as extreme by the social group in question. That kind of sounds like a watered-down version of the golden mean fallacy itself.
Dude, if you think that Willis is being a fanatical SJW then you haven’t spent nearly enough time on LJ.
…You MAY be reading too much into this
Really. It’s Willis’ comic. You’re allowed to disagree with him, but it’s no use getting your panties in a twist.
On the other hand, you’re free to comment on it. Even if you do it poorly.
You talk about taking the “middle” in this and suggesting that the other side need their opinion heard. That’s not really true. A lot of the times, the opposing opinion is stupid and needs to be disregarded.
In this case, the sexist morons who think all women need to be wearing as little as possible are wrong and stupid. I don’t speak as some sort of feminist, but as a person who has had actual interaction with real women.
It’s less about having the other side having their opinion heard than it is being better than the other side, not stooping to their level, being the bigger men/women, etc. If we are to assume the moral high ground we can’t be depicting the other side as walking stereotypes; that just does us, and by extension our causes, a disservice.
I can assume the moral high ground quite easily here. The other side deserves the stereotypes they get, because their point of view is one that needs to be derided.
It’s not about finding some sort of compromise. I don’t do myself a disservice by being against bigotry or by supporting bigots being depicted as fat, stupid and awful people. They need to be marginalized and cut out of society like a cancer.
LograyX nailed it. It’s the same reason Mel Brooks put stupid Nazis and bigots in so many of his best movies–he said he wanted to do his part to make those ideas look so utterly stupid that no one would take them seriously again.
This guy isn’t as strawman as you might think. DCWKA is a tumblr specifically about what’s going on with DC women, good or bad, and not a week goes by that some jerkoff (or many jerkoffs) doesn’t comment about how everyone there is just whining, and that they need to shut up, because they already whined about this thing, and it didn’t change, so clearly no one important cares about their opinion.
These people and their opinions are stupid and a hindrance toward making good entertainment, which really, means they’re a hindrance toward making a better society (a culture is shaped by its stories, after all). They need to be mocked until nobody thinks their opinion that “women need to shut up” and “comics are for men” have any value.
What if it was a woman who was advocating the scantily-clad female characters in comics?
a) what if it was?
b) it’s a vast misunderstanding to think it’s just skimpy costumes. It’s more about how they’re portrayed and drawn.
” I don’t speak as some sort of feminist”
Yes, the author is an extremeist himself. He also takes shots at himself in the comic as well, just not in every strip.
I *honestly* cannot parse what you’re trying to say. Literally cannot.
“I’m saying that taking those examples then running the opposite way recklessly is being just as irresponsible.”
Please explain this sentence to me. And assume you’re talking to an idiot, because you just might be.
What I meant is you’re not reaching anyone by making them out to be some sort of bigot – yes, there are bigots out there, and yes, there are people who can be narrow-minded, if unconsciously. The big problem is that people on both sides talk PAST each other rather than talk WITH each other. They try to make it a zero sum game, where you HAVE to be on one side or you HAVE to be on the other.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in life, it’s that trying to go on the offensive and yelling at people until they understand NEVER works. Nobody is going to read this comic strip and say “I see! I’m a fat slob who hates women… I never knew this!” It makes for a funny comic, sure, but all it does is contribute to the larger problem.
If you’re asking me to provide a solution, then I can’t. It’s much bigger than that. But I will say that I’ve had much more success when I explain to people point by point WHY this type of discrimination is bad and hurts everyone than by calling them pissants and making them out to be retards.
That’s all well and good – sometimes. But when people are demonstratably wrong, there’s no reason to pull punches. It really isn’t meant to convince someone, because you can’t argue with the kind of belief.
You’re right, no one is going to look at it and see themselves. Misogynists and racists don’t see themselves as bigots, and even subtle bigots fail to see their ideas for the vitriol that they are.
So what do you do when you can’t convince someone that their opinion is actually wrong? You mock the hell out of them.
When you put it like that though, it sounds a tad counter-productive.
Perhaps not productive, but to be counter-productive it would have to hinder yourself in some way.
*sigh* I have argued with people who said exactly the same things that Tokenism Guy up there did. People like this exist, and they are horrible and deserve to be called on their shit. What Willis is doing is taking the premises of these arguments and exposing the points they’re really intended to get across. That’s not a strawman argument: that’s satire. You just can’t look far enough beyond your passive aggressive bullshit to see the difference.
Who’s being passive-aggressive? Not me. I’m trying to have a mature discussion here WITHOUT insulting anyone, implicitly or explicitly. If I’ve wrote anything that can be interpreted as an insult, I apologize, that was not my intent.
The fact that people here, Willis included, are jumping down my throat for DARING to suggest anything that isn’t completely parallel to their opinions is actually kind of telling, and really only serves to make my point for me – that this kind of hyperaggressive attitude is not exclusive solely to the ‘misogynist bigots.’
We should work to curb discrimination, but we shouldn’t become that which we hate in order to do so. That only leads to more discrimination.
No one discriminates against bigots.
That said, I would not mind a restaurant with a “No Racists Allowed” sign in the window.
I think Willis’ point in this comic was that whenever female comics fans voice their concern about sexism, certain male comics fans show up to dismiss the issue through accusations of reading to much into things or being to ‘extreme‘ in their criticisms.
In a comment above you argued that we should be talking with each other. Amber and Leslie are trying to do that with Arch, and he won’t listen, he just dismisses them as being ridiculous. That is the problem, one side is not listening. Insisting on taking the middle ground is a passive aggressive way of silencing the people who are complaining about is sexism and it is anextreme insult to the entire female comics readership. You’re proving Willis’ point over and over again without even realizing it. You will likely do what the stereotypical comics fanboy represented by Arch up there does and will continue commenting on this thread until you’ve worn us all out.
Sorry to break this to you, dude, but you are what Arch represents. His words are just hidden between the lines of your civilly worded comments.
Take what holyalmost said and look a bit further: Amber and Leslie weren’t originally talking to the guy. They were talking to each other. They were having a conversation with each other about an issue that concerns them as women who read comics. Then this guy pushed in and said he doesn’t want to hear about this.
THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. This has happened in every single gender discussion about the new 52. Instead of ignoring these discussions, countless men pushed their way into the conversation to tell women to stop talking about it. No debate, no intellectual discussion, just a demand to stop clogging up the intertubes with all this woman talk.
And anyway, equating all this with Fox News is silly and reactionist. This is a comic. It is not pretending to be news.
Your original point, that Willis frames his characters in a certain way that makes their points look absurd right from the beginning, is a good one. While it is entertaining to see somebody in the comic being so stupid in the same way people in real life are wont to behave, it also becomes tiring to not see anybody voice those opinions in a way that actually shows the basis of their side, flimsy though it may be. That’s why I’m glad to have a comments section here, where people can voice their own opinions without undermining them immediately.
I think it’s really the prolonged discussion here where other people take your point wrong or just disagree with it. Then you and others defend it in an overly reactionary way where, instead of explaining the point in more detail to discourage further argument, you begin to argue in a way that distracts people from your original point and makes it look like you overreacted when others disagreed with your statement.
Well, the important thing is that you’ve found a way to feel superior to both.
12:46 AM: Trying to put words in my mouth only shows that you’re as ignorant as those the comic is deriding.
1:11 AM: I’m trying to have a mature discussion here WITHOUT insulting anyone, implicitly or explicitly.
Someone’s been telling porkies.
In my experience, no one of even modest intelligence bothers to look for “middle ground” when it comes to bigotry. Those who feign neutrality and claim to be doing so are usually squirming in their own skin because someone, to borrow a phrase from you, hit a little too close to home. The guy barking “extremism” and “fanaticism” over someone harmlessly poking at misogynists is being forced to look at his own misogynistic attitudes 100% of the time.
Or I could actually be neutral on an issue because I see validity in both sides of the issue. He said “I am trying to have,” not “I am having.” There is also no reason to antagonize him because he wants to be, or is, trying to be neutral.
No one who calls others “ignorant” is “trying to have a mature discussion without insulting anyone,” and no one who would attempt to defend such nonsense can be taken seriously. If you see validity in the ravings of a bigot, you’re not neutral. You’ve already taken a side, even if you lack the integrity to admit it.
I dunno if this is a big deal. Those women who used to spend money on DC probably weren’t only spending their money on DC, but also Marvel and the independents or smaller companies. So now they shift their comic money over to other companies. IE The invisible hand of the market works it’s magic and forces companies to change their tone. If DC doesn’t then they lose market share to companies that do independent or otherwise.
Not sure you’re using the term “invisible hand” correctly; I think that applies to entities acting in their own best interest making things better for everyone. Regardless, hopefully you’re right and female readers won’t feel they need to give up on comics entirely, since there are plenty of good, less objectifying comics out there.
And, as a Marvel fan, I hope they read more Marvel.
Actually, the “invisible hand” has nothing to do with making things better for everyone.
CommentSpawn, can you suggest some good, less objectifying comics? Sadly, I’ve been reading less comics because of this debacle, and most of the comics I tend to read these days are comics published years ago recommended to me by friends who have my tastes in mind.
I’ll pipe in while CS works on a reply – Pretty much anything by Phil Phoglio but especially “Girl Genius” – Works by AAron Williams – Alina Pete – Travis Hanson – uhm …. any of the new and up and coming artist in the Palladium stable.
*Foglio.
And yes, “Girl Genius” is amazing– and online!
In DC’s new set, Batwoman and Demon Knights do a brilliant job with all of their characters (Demon Knights also has an ambiguously gendered character, of sorts, which as far as I know, is a first in a mainstream comic. Or at least, happens only infrequently.)
Xavin, from Marvel’s Runaways is sort of ambiguously gendered, though s/he doesn’t show up until part way through the second volume. Actually, if I recall correctly, Runaways was pretty good at not objectifying its characters, though I read it before I was as tuned in to the issue as I am now.
Since I vouched for Marvel, I’ll suggest some of their series, and let more informed people talk about independent comics. Of the ongoing series I read, Generation Hope seems to be the least objectifying and I rather like it, though I’ve really only read the first story arc. New Mutants, which I’ve read more of, is also pretty good on this front, and I think the plot is generally stronger, though that might just be because I’m more familiar with the characters. It does tend to cross-over with major X-events though, so you’d probably have to read some of the X-men core titles to know what’s going on.
I hate to sound like a troll, but I’m disappointed in this strip. I swear this is like the third “woman in comics” strip a little over a month. It’s not that I don’t agree with the point, but you’re kinda beating a dead horse at this point.
Glad you took the point of “you did that opinion, now I’m over it” so seriously. Because you’re right, why would you bring up (what you feel is) an important social issue more than once? There’s probably no reason for you to do that! /sarcasm
If you want to make social commentary, you probably shouldn’t do it in a way that antagonizes pretty much everyone who doesn’t have 100% identical beliefs.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want to offend all the misogynists.
Thanks for proving my point.
Fun fact, the tone argument generally translates into English as “I can’t actually disprove what you’re saying, so I’m going to attack the way you said it instead.”
Again, you’re proving my point.
Never tried to disprove anything. Trying to put words in my mouth only shows that you’re as ignorant as those the comic is deriding. But then again, I suppose you’ll just be blind and deaf to those who try to take the middle ground. Have fun contributing to the problem.
You’re not taking the middle ground.
You’re trying to appear that way by claiming that you’re taking the middle ground.
You’re the one who’s worried about offending the sensibilities of people with demonstrably sexist attitudes. Pretty sure that’s contributing more to the problem than daring to call such sexism as the bullshit it is.
I never said that. Lots of straw men here.
All you said, in fact, was that it doesn’t really help the issue in the slightest to attack somebody for saying that they dislike the overuse of this type of strip; I am getting kind of tired of this type of strip because they don’t address the subject very well, thus negating one possible point to them, and they slowly stop being funny, negating the other point of comedy.
Jaaames? It’s possible to agree with Walky while also finding this strip poorly-constructed, smug, self-congratulatory and alienating.
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it, and I can object ot the how without disagreeing with the root argument.
Except what you’re doing is essentially dismissing the validity of the what.
Not that you care, or will agree with me, but the reason he does that, is that people who don’t have “100% identical beliefs”, that women are people, whose issues deserve consideration, and that comics have a huge, real, actual problem in this area? Those people are WRONG. You claim earlier up that you’re bothered by this “fanaticism” because you occupy “the middle ground”, but that doesn’t exist here. Either the comics industry (as a whole, clearly not every book or creator or company) have a problem with how they depict women, or they don’t. The middle ground on that issue is what? Not all issues have multifaceted points of debate where common ground can be reached. The first way to get through the issue of women in comics is to acknowledge the issue exists, and a lot of fans basically refuse to do so. It’s not that saying “ugh, enough already” makes you a misogynist, but it makes it easier for the misogynists to hold on to their awful bullshit beliefs. So stop doing that, please.
I like you.
The OP didn’t say anything about the issue being insignificant, they only said that Willis’ addressal of the issue was not very enjoyable to them.
You can’t really antagonize someone who’s decided to take on the antagonist role already. Some points of view DO NOT deserve to be respected as though they have some valid standpoint. There’s a few rare occasions where someone is so completely and utterly wrong that there can be no middle ground or diplomatic take – nor would such individuals respond well to any sort of dialogue anyways.
It doesn’t antagonize “pretty much everyone who doesn’t have 100% identical beliefs.”
It antagonizes you. You’re the one taking issue with it.
And making someone angry isn’t automatically counterproductive. Look at any classroom and you’ll find it’s plenty possible to get a point across without being nice about it.
Man, I’m glad someone showed up to prove the guy in the strip isn’t a strawman.
Lets be honest here; we all knew it was coming.
I’m just sad that it seems he’s given up. Very inconsiderate.
If you offer to let yourself get sodomized on a message board, you should at least have the follow through to let everyone finish.
It’s a tough row to hoe, though. I mean, keep it up longer than five posts and a lot of people assume you’re just there to troll.
To be fair, though, you could stand to address the subject a bit better. These comics do nothing to explain why, for example, marketing and popularity issues somewhat dissuade companies from replacing old well-known female characters with, or introducing alongside, or rewriting as, new female characters who have stronger and less sexist roles.
Uhh, but if you’ve been following the entire “new 52″ debate, you’ll know that DC didn’t just continue on with well-known female characters, but actually made them more sexy, stamped out many of their already-established personalities, and axed a bunch of them completely. And you’ll also know that there is a compelling argument for not alienating a massive potential market (because girls do read sci fi and fantasy–they are driving the YA genre right now and making it more lucrative than it has ever been) when your current target audience has been dwindling for decades, especially when you are doing a “reboot” and claiming that it is intended to draw in new readers. So… I don’t really know what you are trying to say, to be honest.
I wouldn’t say they unilaterally made all the women in the 52 “more sexy.” Just a few. Batgirl’s the same. Wonder Woman’s the same. Batwoman’s the same. Poison Ivy wears MORE clothes. In fact, the entirety of the Birds of Prey are respectfully dressed.
So I’ve heard, so I stand corrected. I think that if the stats about female readership dropping are true, however, it probably has a lot to do with those specific problematic portrayals. If I keep hearing horror stories about Starfire and Harley and Catwoman, I’m not really going to seek out the out the ones that are okay.
Fwiw, Gail Simone is skeptical of those poll results. Not that her opinion invalidates anything, but we should maybe take them with a grain of salt.
That also doesn’t have anything to do with the point of the comic, which is that anybody should be able to discuss the results without harassment, but still, somewhat relevant?
At what point do we stop bringing up issues of inequality?
When there are no REAL issues of inequality just like we no longer make light of or argue the merits of Bleeding/Beheading/Torture/Slavery in a civilized and modern society ….. [damn, and I was so close too ]
Simple, when they no longer exsit.
Nice comic shop guy, though. Just need to turn the beard up a little.
Mine goes to eleven.
That’s guy’s totally wrong. Issues aren’t important unless they affect ME.
Meanwhile, still outselling Marvel. And selling more han this time last year.
Which really has nothing to do with anything except Marvel’s having too many books. And some suckage.
except marvel has the majority of the revenue share.
so to sum it up
DC has more Comics but Marvel has more money
anyway The Real fight comes this summer
Yes, this is relevant to my interests.
Also, in panel 3, that should be “tendency.”
Yes, but have you noticed how many people on comic forums in general misspell that word, to begin with? That, and “priviledge”, among others.
And separate. God damn separate.
Terry Pratchett’s point about “privilege” literally meaning “private law” wasn’t just a good point, people! It’s also a mnemonic device! It’s spelled without the d, like the word “legal!”
If that news is true, it doesn’t surprise me in the least after seeing most of the new 52 comics and their portrayal of women and all the controversy that came with it.
They would never admit it, but it’s like they’re trying to lose female readers, even with their supposedly female oriented books like Catwoman.
At least Birds of Prey hasn’t done anything overtly offensive to women (that I’m aware of), and all the characters are properly attired for crime fighting.
I’ve only been reading Batman though, and that one has been gooooood.
The new Catwoman was never marketed as a female-oriented book. It was clear from the get-go that it was a book for menfolk.
Now, Batwoman, that’s a book for…well, for everyone, really.
But yeah, that’s what stings. When 52 was first announced, before the 18-35-year-old-men thing, when all we knew was it was going to be a reboot to draw new readers in (ha…?), it seemed like that would’ve been the perfect time to address those markets that the Old Ways didn’t allow for. But…welp. Here we are.
I was honestly a little surprised Catwomen was written by a man and not a women with a female readership in mind.
Honestly try reading it, the only people I know who are actively paying money for it right now are 3 women… but they are the same kinda women who enjoy Rocky Horror, Barbarella, and only even gave Buffy the vampire slayer a chance after seeing the nasty fun sex.
I know I’ll get flamed to hell and back for this, but I really find it kind of ironic that Willis can act like a champion for female rights here, then on his other webcomic draw girls in sundresses, bathing suits, and cleavage-revealing tanktops while his fanbase rally around him here and drool over his girl characters there.
Odd dichotomy, no?
Shh, don’t interrupt the circlejerking.
No.
Then again he also is the one who just drew Danny without a shirt in DoA while also having some plenty of man service in It’s Walky and Joyce And Walky. You just seem to be taking some things and pointing them out without looking at his whole work. Now is Willis a saint, no but he is a lot better than most.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with women being sexy. The difference between Willis and a lot of people drawing for DC is that he treats his female characters as people, not sex props. He doesn’t draw them contorted in impossible positions to cash in on cheap titillation. He allows sexiness to arise naturally out of the situation and doesn’t force it. He treats the women he writes about with respect. He understands gender issues a hell of a lot better than the folks at DC, and a damn sight better than you.
Drawing girls in bathing suits isn’t automatically sexist. I do see your point, but having girls in revealing clothes doesn’t automatically make it sexist.
I think the writing of the characters comes into play as well. Since Willis is good at balancing characters and writing them really well, and making them seem like real, relatable people, that helps.
So when you see that character in a bathing suit, it’s just because she’s at a beach. If you see her start to remove a shirt, it’s because she’s about to have sex because people do that.
But if every strip had cleavage and scantily-clad women, then I think that would cross the line into fan service and into sexism. But he doesn’t do that.
Of course it’s entirely possible I have no idea what I’m talking about.
I would agree, but Willis plays to his fanbase shamelessly. Almost every character at the beach had on a bikini. There is nothing wrong with that, but it smacks of just a little hypocrisy in my eyes.
When you see people here screaming epithets then go there and yell out for Billie/Sal pairings… seriously, that’s kind of much.
Every female character had a bikini, I should say. Walky in a bikini would not sit well with my lunch.
So people in fictional works that attempt to be feminist – or at least not actively offensive to women – should not have their characters wear swimsuits…at the beach? I’m sorry, that’s a terrible argument.
And who’s screaming epithets?
Erm… no.
The characters in DoA are sexed up and fanservicey. It’s a fact. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been a giant banner of them all in their swimsuits, and there wouldn’t be a large fangasm of “oh oh this girl/girl pairing would rock!” type of comments.
What is the biggest complaint of THe New 52? It’s sexist to women because they’re all sexed up. I just find the dichotomy between the messages here and the messages there interesting, is all.
The fact that Willis is getting angry at my observations and interprets them as attacks also makes me think that I may have hit a bit close to home…
See, now there’s your problem. You’ve misunderstood what the basic complaints were. The problem people have with the New 52 isn’t that the women are all sexed up, it’s that the women are all sexed up AND have no real personality AND the men are almost never sexed up AND the women tend to be sexed up to ludicrous levels that break willing suspension of disbelief.
None of which apply to Shortpacked! or Dumbing of Age. So, no hypocrisy here.
Have you read any of the New 52? THe initial issues sucked, but some (like the one that featured Starfire) seemed to have gotten better in the ‘characters’ department. So…
Not that I’m defending the New 52, but to lump all of it in this manner is somewhat disingenuous. I’m operating off of things I’ve heard my friends tell me about the New 52, so I can only guess at how things are now. Regardless, like I said, only making an observation there.
That’s sort of the point, though. A lot of people didn’t read past the initial issues. Because the initial issues sucked, and put them off reading more.
Here’s the thing, they announced the “New 52″ well in advance, this wasn’t sprung on the writers as “just do it, we can improve it later.” They had weeks, maybe months, of planning to make the changes they did. One in particular I didn’t was that the fans got a petition going to make DC get Wonder Woman’s issue numbers back to where they should be, then with #600 rebooted the franchise, then decided that she needed to be rebooted again as a part of the “new 52.” All the hubbub I heard about the whole post-Flashpoint reboot was basically DC’s version of Marvel’s Ultimates universe so that “all that old continuity” was gone and “writers could tell fresh, new tales with old characters.” Of course, right out of the gate they gave us one where a character gets hit with the dumb ray so that she doesn’t care anymore, and another gets hit with the nympho ray and “does it” on a roof with her part-time nemesis.
Starfire and Catwoman aren’t the entire 52. I am really sick of books as good as Wonder Woman and Batwoman (and the female majority Demon Knights) getting ignored because of the bad stuff.
Pretty sure Batwoman and Wonder Woman outsell Catwoman and RHATO, so at least people are voting with their wallets.
Haven’t read too much of either of them, but I’ve really been enjoying Supergirl.
I do love Demon Knights, though it is kinda funny how the most gender diverse team book is the one taking place in the Dark Ages.
I’m not 100% on Wonder Woman yet… I want to see how the arc ends.
One thing I DO love is casually adding “can walk on water” to her powerset. It’s not that she can DO much with it, in practical terms? But it’s nicely distinctive and has a lot of flavor to it.
To be fair, any fan pairing of female characters is just that, done by the fans in the comments. Not by Willis himself.
I realize this!
But seeing how some people will jump down my throat here for making these observations, then go over there and do that… it’s odd, is all. I think it also kind of enables this kind of rampant extremism that doesn’t particularly benefit anyone.
Anyway, I’ve said my peace. I didn’t want to offend anyone, I just wanted to put this out there.
People like sex. People like boobs. People like weiners. We all just need to get over it.
Yes, we all do.
I LIKE fanservice, to be honest. I don’t dislike what Willis creates, but I also want to point out the problems that are caused by the two seemingly conflicting messages in the comics he draws.
You claim to be middle ground, yet you assume that there is no room between a feminist and someone who appreciates drawing a bit of (equal opportunity, might I add.) fanservice every now and then?
If Willis only ever did cheesecake, then you’d have a point. But he doesn’t. He’s drawn a lot of beefcake, too.
Don’t assume that because Willis is taking a shot at New 52, he’s being a Puritan by extension. That’s a huge leap in logic to make, and you know it.
I like this world where you can post 30 times on this page, but me posting once to correct a falsehood makes me “defensive” and means you “hit too close to home.”
Be carefull, Willis. There’s a dichotomy.
A wild Dichotomy appeared!
Derrida used Deconstruct. It’s super effective! Dichotomy fainted.
You seem to have missed all the sweet manchest he also drew to shamelessly titillate women/gay dudes/everyone else attracted to men.
Two characters were in bikinis. Dorothy was in a one-piece, Joyce and Dina were wearing shirts and shorts, and Walky was wearing swimming trunks. Each outfit was decided in accordance with their personality.
If you’re going to attack me, don’t make up lies to do so. It looks really desperate.
Don’t really feel the need to attack you. I was making an observation is all. Your defensiveness and overall snarky demeanor is puzzling.
I checked again, and you’re right. But the dichotomy still exists – your other comic has elements that you blast here. Again, I’m not attacking you, just making a statement.
Dichotomy was on your word of the day calander. Wasn’t it?
Word of the day calander? Is that a real thing? I’ve heard people mention them, but I’ve never actually seen one.
They’re real! But I prefer history fact a day calendars more.
You’re making a statement that is deeply insulting. And dropping the h-bomb on top of it makes it worse. You can’t seriously think those aren’t attacks on his character — suggesting that he’s pandering AND lying about it.
And the fact that it’s both insulting and wrong pretty much makes any response disagreeing with it unavoidable defensive.
I apologize for the use of the word hypocrisy, and I didn’t actually want to accuse Willis of it – I was merely stating that his two comics seemed to be at odds and it seemed to be somewhat of a slippery slope.
Also, I don’t find anything wrong with fan pandering – without fans, media creators are nothing. So doing stuff for the fans is A-OK, in my book.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WOmPrsIpDNM/ToP1B0dnM_I/AAAAAAAALwA/3pLJBwOtrc0/s400/red-hood-1316645040.jpg
Can you show me any female DoA characters that act like this?
Hey, you don’t need to apologize to ME.
I’m just making conversation.
I only think it’s weird that you can’t remember any of the sexy shenanigans going on in this comic’s archives. DOA might have a little more going on in it (it does take place largely in a co-ed college dorm building, though)… but there’ve definitely been sexy times in this comic, too. And will be again, I’m rather certain.
You didn’t want to use the word.
You were just trying to save Willis from the dark path he was walking.
If only we’d listen to you, everything would have been fine…but the consequences will never be the same now. We are lost!
To respond in part to The Sound Defense… None of the DoA characters are aliens, with an alien approach to sexuality. Though i did see Seven of Nine do something like that to Harry Kim once.
Dude you are making the misogynists look bad.
But seriously, if we’re getting rid of the sexist new 52, can we replace it with something like BPRD or Hellboy? I would love to see some Liz Sherman up in here.
He dropped a hydrogen bomb?
*snort*
I think your interpretation of any female baring skin as pandering cheesecake says more about you than it does about Willis, Leyviur. As a nearly straight female, I notice the guy fanservice a lot more than the girly stuff. And anyway, the women of DoA all have healthy, realistic body types and dress to suit their personalities and situations. So do the guys. If you can’t see the difference between this http://bit.ly/A6QinW and this http://bit.ly/xiiUf6, your perception is seriously skewed.
You weren’t making an observation; you were forcing an inherently invalid comparison. Crying “hypocrisy” over something that wasn’t at all how you described it makes it obvious that you were just looking for an excuse to say something negative about the artist. You clearly haven’t grasped the reasons DC’s books received so much criticism, either.
You’re…wow. I honestly can’t tell if you’re a troll, or if you legitimately don’t understand the difference between sexy and objectification.
Drawing characters in bikinis=sexist? I’m the only one of my friends who wears a one-piece, and that’s because I’ve been too lazy to go swimsuit shopping for years. Women wear these. Drawing women who are sexy isn’t automatically sexist. Harley Quinn is sexy. Catwoman is sexy. Starfire is sexy.
The problem is whenever the characters are drawn, consistently, as nothing more than sexual objects. Like, three pages of boobs and butt before seeing Catwoman’s face in her number-one issue. I don’t care if the book “gets better.” That kind of bullcrap? That lets me know, right off the bat, that the writer has no respect for the character, and views her first and foremost, as a sexual object.
It’s a kind of terrifying attitude that equates “woman in sexy clothes” with “woman as sexual object” automatically. It’s the sort of mindset that leads to the infamous “she was asking for it” defense.
Here’s the thing about Willis: he writes this strip, Shortpacked. The majority of the main characters are women. They’re well-rounded, realistic women who exhibit many different characteristics. Some are straight, some are gay, some are bi. Some are in relationships, some are single. Some are sweet, some are horrible people. But every single one of them is a dynamic character. Because when Willis writes a character, he writes them as a person.
So, no. No one with a brain is going to cry “sexist” when Willis draws his own characters in bikinis. Few people object to a little good-natured, respectful cheesecake. It’s a thing that exists.
There’s no dichotomy here. There’s Willis who, on an unrelated note, as you point out, has drawn women in bikinis, bringing up the fact that every time people (not even just women) try to talk about the comic industry’s problem with women as characters and customers–and there is a problem–Angry FanBoy voices shout them down as being unimportant. And, of course, people like you tell them, ever so politely, to shut up, because their anger with being marginalized would certainly be more productive if they were just a little more considerate of the feelings of the people with all the power.
For the record…we’re a little tired of being polite about this. Women were taught for years to shut up and not make a fuss. It doesn’t get you as far as you’d think; it just makes it easier for folks to dismiss our problems.
Anyway, if you need help sussing out why liking characters in bikinis but hating objectification of women doesn’t make someone a hypocrite here’s as good an article as any to get you started.
*applause* Thank you. You said what I’ve been trying to say, but you said it better and in more detail.
“The problem is whenever the characters are drawn, consistently, as nothing more than sexual objects. Like, three pages of boobs and butt before seeing Catwoman’s face in her number-one issue.” I disagree strongly. I think those first few panels really helped capture what sort of character she is and it pretty much nails her personality. To be blunt, the sexy strip show has been one of her defining traits for longer then I have been alive. I think the bigger problem would be if that was all she was allowed to be and that is clearly not the case unlike with say Starfire.
Her personality is boobs and bra? Or her personality is being attacked while she just happens to be getting dressed? No soap. Catwoman’s been able to be sexy as hell for years without resorting to something that cheap. Those three pages were nothing but a wink at the audience to let them know what they’re in for and to set the tone. If the writer didn’t mean to set the tone of “this here is a comic about boobs and boobs and sexy chicks with boobs” then there was a helluva lot of fail.
I want to be reading Catwoman, but I have no interest in this Catwoman. I’ll be picking it up when the creative team changes.
Umm her personalty has a lot to do with boobs yes. the first few pages set her up as a very sexual creature who is fun, loves taking risks and pushing the edge… and yah very sexual. Change that intro and you fundamentally change the first impression of her. “Catwoman’s been able to be sexy as hell for years without resorting to something that cheap” What was so cheap about it? The comic was not fundamentally different then other Catwomen comics I have seen and yah the tone would be “sexy kickass fun antihero with boobs” and with that in mind I would say those first pages did wonders to set the tone. I’m sorry to say it, folks but if you don’t want a woman who is overtly sexual and sexualized you probably shouldn’t be reading Catwoman. I would have thought the kinky whip and fetishistic outfit would have given that away before hand.
No. Those first three pages set her up as boobs. They do nothing to show her fun, sexy, playful side. It’s a voyeuristic moment where we’re seeing Catwoman’s boobs not because she’s showing them off, but because the scene happens to take place while she’s in a state of undress. I’d even argue that the cover does a decent job of showing her as a fun, sensual character because she’s participating in the show, if that makes sense–she’s posed and smiling at the camera, having a private moment. The opening is just an action sequence in which the camera has been placed so it can focus on her assets and never her face for three freaking pages.
Cooke and Brubaker’s Catwoman was a sexy gal, but they never had to do something like that. And it was cheap. The fact that you can look at three pages that exist primarily to show off the T&A and say: “Yup, that reads like every other Catwoman book out there” is kind of horrifying. Maybe when you look at a woman, all you really do see is the T&A. I guess that would explain the inability to understand the difference between this and what we had in better days.
“No. Those first three pages set her up as boobs.”
So I did not find personality and am mistaken?
I looked at the first few pages and found the tone and start of a full personality of a women, where you only found boobs and ass.
Feel free to be horrified about my opinion on women, because I think I can live with that.
Actually, the comment of about “when you look at a woman” was stupidly out of line, and I apologize.
I didn’t see it as her personality because it didn’t feel like she was engaging the reader, it looks like we dropped in on her at an opportunistic moment for the chance to see her breasts, if that makes sense. I really do have a problem with a big, company-wide relaunch designed to bring in new readers taking one of the few female comic characters that the average non-comic-reading public knows, and, in her very first comic, in the very first three pages, they introduce her not by her face, but by her breasts, the the focus squarely on her assets. That’s problematic to me. I’m not even talking about the writing, which was not terrible, but not good enough to keep me buying. I’m just talking visuals.
To be fair, our introduction to nuStarfire had Jason Todd declaring her bra size following up with “I banged her.”
That’s pretty fucking egregious, especially on top of the new, more revealing outfit and erasing her personality.
Yah the new Starfire is awful as hell.
The flaw in that argument is that those three pages were not Catwoman acting sexy because she enjoys it, or to distract a baddie before kicking his ass. It was the artists and writers going “Hey, boobs!”
The first shows what kind of character Selena is. The second is the creators making the character all about cheesecake instead of being a character.
Yes the artist and writers going hey this comic is going to have alot of sexy boobs… is not really a problem for me.
Movies and comics with this much sexuality are inherently voyeuristic. Someone is watching and the artist knows that. everything she dose will be for the readers enjoyment.
So I ask you. Why not cheesecake AND character? Why do you think it must be one or the other? Do you think less of her for having a red bra? When she is savagely beating the shit out of a guy out of pure rage and vengeance are you just thinking about how much cleavage she has?
If you want someone who is pure cheesecake then we have starfire but if you want someone who is cheesecake AND character I recommend catwomen #1. However if you think cheesecake cheapens a character I am just going to have to disagree.
It’s the sort of mindset that leads to the infamous “she was asking for it” defense.
Bingo.
Laura, you are amazing and I agree on you on so many levels.
I do like the fact that the guy who asserted a false dichotomy is the same one who was handwringing about Willis rejecting the middleground higher up in the thread.
I want to see the Venn diagram for “people who think sundresses are scandalous” and “people who don’t shun all modern technology”, the overlap this guy is in to be posting here must be tiny.
LOL. Willis acts like a feminist and then draws his female characters… wearing normal fashionable clothes that women would wear in those circumstances. Instead of what? Burqas? Not drawing women at all because you might accidentally do a sexist drawing? Your argument is stupid and nonsensical and bears no resemblance to the gender issues of the New 52.
What’s being missed here is that the assignment of gender roles today isn’t an issue that only affects women. Men are equally at risk of being boxed into a world where conflict can only be approached with violence, feelings are something to be ashamed of, and communication skills are unimportant. Yes, we need to move beyond a world where girls can only find themselves in the kitchen or on the arm of a man, but we also need to move beyond a world where a man is expected to solve every issue with violence.
People of all genders have a stake in making this world better.
Wait, so doing my taxes by punching my broker repeatedly isn’t the answer?
You’ve shattered my world view sir.
Works fine for me!
Wow, way to steer the conversation back to men’s rights while looking like you’re supportive. Sometimes we need to just stop and focus on women for a while, alright?
Every time I focus on women, they call the cops…you just can’t win.
You need a better hiding spot.
And stop hitting the window, you’re leaving streaks.
I’ll keep that in mind.
http://michaelnorthrop.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/28-days-later-window.jpg
See. You need a hat made out of a bush or something. That way, no one will ever find out.
DUDE. I’m reading a few comics before bed…..and then I HAD to click on THAT.
….well played, sir, well played.
My intent was not to steer the issue back towards men’s rights, but rather to make the point that everyone has a stake. There isn’t anyone who is “unaffected” by this and it is everyone’s responsibility to learn as much as they can.
I’m wishing this were facebook or tumblr so I could like that comment. Questions of equality, even–or especially–in media and entertainment, which shapes are perceptions as a culture, are everyone’s concern.
That was the problem I had with the Pepsi 10 commercial. I’ve moved past being told that Women Can’t Enjoy Manly Things, but my (male) roomate told me he was kind of uncomfortable with the implication that Men Must Never Diet! And drinking diet drinks makes you *gasp* a sissy!
Not gonna lie, women still get the worst of it if only because it’s a question of who holds the most power. Not to mention that the problem (oh, I want to say dichotomy, but the word’s been ruined for me) comes from the idea that “manly” stuff and manly ways are superior, so if a woman is doing something stereotypically manly, then she’s risen above her lot in life, good for her, but “feminine” actions/emotions/etc are considered weaker and less desirable. So if a woman is acting feminine, well, then, of course, she can’t help it, but if a man is acting feminine, what on earth is wrong with him?
It cuts both ways, though. True.
That progresso soup commercial does the same thing. All these women call female progresso employees to thank them for how much weight they lost. Then one of them gets a male employee and he’s like “Dur…?” and she asks to speak to a woman instead.
Commercials are retarded. With very few exceptions.
An exception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2cs8gnb42A
…I just love any excuse to link that.
Oh my gosh, does that one piss me off. And it plays before every other video on the internet.
What scares me the most about commercials is not the one’s telling men how to be men and women how to be women, but the ones that tell girls how to be girls and boys how to be boys. Advertising directed at children shapes their beliefs about how they are supposed to behave and act before they have even had the opportunity to learn differently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZn_lJoN6PI&list=UU7Edgk9RxP7Fm7vjQ1d-cDA&index=16&feature=plcp
True. Kids start learning gender roles about the time they start actually noticing what’s on tv, and when they’re young, they’re surprisingly militant about it, even in families that don’t enforce stereotypes. “No, that’s for boys/girls!” is something a lot of four-year-olds will say when presented with the wrong toy.
It was something that bugged me about the whole Lego “girls line.” Instead of making a whole line of not-Legos, they could have just made a handful of the same awesome Lego commercials, but with girls and boys playing with the Legos. A lot of girls grow up thinking that Legos are only a “boy’s toy” and it’s not because of what the sets make (because lemme tell ya, even girls like pirate ships. And beach houses. And castles.): it’s because in all those commercials, they never once saw a girl having fun with Legos.
…Anyway.
All too true – an aunt gave my nieces a couple of those pink/lavender atrocities with the modified charter blocks – their dad gave em just one set to shere between them and they can not get enough of it – The Castle. I have a Duplo Pirate ship squirreled away for next years Christmas. The have Barbies/Disney process, Hotwheels and Lego, plus each has their own DS [ I'm so jealous]
You know, I never even thought of Legoes as a boy or girl toy, I just thought of them as toys all kids played with. I even remember my female friends playing with them back then. Was this really an annomily?
I never played with them myself growing up, but they seemed pretty gender neutral to me. It was actually the source of multiple arguments though. Most adults agreed with me but very few children.
The lines children draw can be surprisingly stringent. Why I remember on one occasion as a child I gave a girl glow in the dark star/planet stickers as part of a low budget gift exchange. She practically spat in my face because I’d given her a boy present. The class’s consensus was that she was right, girl’s don’t like space stuff. It was totally bizarre.
I had some smaller sets, but none of the other girls I knew had any (that I saw. I didn’t play with many girls growing up). I’ve heard mothers tell their daughters “that’s a boy toy” though. There are some mothers who want to make sure their little angel grows up as girly as possible, and discourage any kind of building toy, since building toys are almost exclusively the domain of boys.
Dr. Pepper 10, there is no Pepsi 10.
Man that commercial was SO BAD. It appealed to NO ONE I KNOW. Not even the ones who LIKE Dr. Pepper to begin with.
I’m still waiting for Pepsi Perfect.
I stopped buying Dr. Pepper, previously my go-to soft drink. I’m sure they miss my ten bucks a month…
I have to agree with beeftony, it’s not that we’re missing the male gender role side of things, it’s that acknowledging it in this particular conversation only serves to diminish the importance of the woman’s side of things.
I’m not saying that men’s gender issues aren’t important. I do agree with you that gender role assignment can have negative effects for both genders involved. For instance, the cultural ideal that a man is expected to shoulder’s the full financial pressures and responsibilites for his children and homemaker wife alone. But we are discussing one specific issue here and, honestly, what possible negative effect would the male audience experience from allowing the female fans to discuss their concerns about sexism and objectification in comics without interruption or criticism about the topic’s validity? The potential for less scantily clad eye candy to gawk at?
In addition to force-ably ending the conversation like Arch has, changing the conversation to assess a different issue is another technique frequently used as a way to completely dismiss women’s concerns in these kinds of discussions. I truly believe this wasn’t your intent, but it is a frequent occurrence both online and off. When a person gets called out for doing this, they always backtrack and say they didn’t mean to do it, but it keeps happening wherever we women folk try to talk about the sexist stuff that upsets us. As Laura said above, I’m tired of being polite about this. I just want more people to be aware of what they’re really saying when they engage in these discussions in order to help the conversation to keep moving along and not screech to a halt.
I’m going to take the risk of elaborating on my opinion:
I feel that one of the biggest problems facing the goal of equal treatment for all genders is the idea that this is a fight only for women. I agree that any almost any woman is better qualified to discuss the sexist treatment of women than almost any man, but if we try and treat the issue as one that only affects women then we alienate half the human population. That is something that this movement can not afford to do. Feminism has had major advances in the past several decades, but it has also had crippling setbacks from males who wish to undermine the validity of their cause. This is obvious from the number of women who preface their discussion of gender discrimination with the phrase “Well, I’m not a feminist but…” simply because modern culture has made so many attempts to portray feminists as crazy, extremist, lesbians who can’t recognize how good they have it (which I don’t agree with, just in case anyone got confused).
The reason I mentioned men is not because I want to undermine the cause of women, but because I want to help reinforce it. What will really help this cause is for people to wake up and realize that there are no spectators. Everyone has a stake and everyone has a responsibility. Even if you don’t want to become actively involved, you at least have the responsibility to learn as much as you can.
I read what you were saying as “these kind of shitheads screw over guys as well as girls.” Is that correct?
No one likes to be shoved into a culture-box and told what they can and can’t be by idiots who claim to speak for the majority.
I’d just like to add that there are cases where treating equality only as a women’s fight actually makes it harder for women to win, not just because of alienation but also because wins in one area can reinforce stereotypes that affect multiple areas. Take allegations of rape and domestic abuse- it used to be that people would almost always either justify or ignore the man’s actions, whereas now they’re almost always taken seriously, but the way that fight was handled has now made it so that abused men have an uphill battle in court and can even get charged with abuse after reporting it (especially if their abuser had a bruise when the police came) because it only strengthened the idea that the woman is always weaker and thus the victim, so police, judges, and juries will go into the case with a serious bias. That bias also lets women get an upper hand in custody fights, divorces, etc. by falsely alleging abuse, because the default assumption is almost always that the woman was the victim regardless of evidence, her mental health record, the man’s criminal record (or lack thereof), etc. For an extreme example, Google Louis Gonzalez III- after 83 days in jail and missing his son’s 6th birthday because his ex got a restraining order keeping him away from the boy, he was declared innocent by a judge because his lawyers found proof that he physically couldn’t have been at her house at the time of the alleged attack. Prior to that, the detective who had been working his case told the prosecution he wasn’t comfortable testifying in it because even without that particular piece of evidence the charges were incredibly implausible (the timing didn’t work at all unless it was assumed that he drove insanely fast, and even then it was a stretch).
yayyy more comics for us
LET THE TROLL BASHING BEGIN!!!!!!
*Sphincter-clench*
All this fanboying can’t be good for the baby…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA
“No, you already voice your opinion. NOW YOU HAVE TO SHUT UP FOREVER!”
Brother, ain’t it the truth. Same with “nobody important cares.” Those are so painfully, word-for-word accurate that I’m only laughing because I’ve used up my monthly quota of shouting.
It’s a thing of beauty, Willis, how you can distill so much vitriol and bile into just a few panels. Cheers.
Yes! Anyone who does not get why this is great has not had to try to make “that” argument. The one where no matter what you say you are being too aggressive, too trivial, too one-sided, too much of an ideo-nazi, whatever.
I wish this argument had taken place in the Lego isle, so I could just sorta ignore the yelling and look at box art of cool toys. Though I must say the box art on those games is extremely well done, it’s just not Lego
But had it happened in the Lego aisle then those completely insane Lego Friends toys would have gotten dragged in somehow.
No, the Lego Friends sets are going to be located in the pink “girl aisle.”
You’re not serious? They aren’t even going to put them with the rest of the Legos?
AND we all know why it dropped. Starfire and Catwoman!!!! >:O Plus DC turned their continuity into confusing batshit insanity. How exactly is Barbara Gordon walking again?
She got an experimental treatment from a clinic in South Africa, plus a lot of physical therapy. It’s in Batgirl #4.
Batgirl is an awesome book! It’s my favorite of the new 52 behind Scott Snyder’s Batman.
So just for everyone else’s benefit, Are you not calling for a boycott of DC and all of Time Warner by extension?
I have never suggested that, no. It would be dumb, and punishes the artists and writers who are actually working to make a difference.
Forgive me, Mr. Willis, I didn’t mean to seem like I was ranting. But I miss Oracle.
And I miss Stephine Brown.
We all miss stuff from the previous continuity. All we can do is focus on the new stuff we like and hope some of the old stuff comes back. Worst case sinereo, we just revisit our older comics. I mean, I never threw away my Steph Batgirl books, so I can reread them whenever I want.
My girlfriend’s favorite book is Catwoman. She also never bought her own comics before the New 52.
I can see that. It’s fanservice-y but it’s nowhere near as bad as RHATO. I only read the first issues, but with Catwoman I just didn’t like the comic, whereas Outlaws made me feel uncomfortable as a female reader. I feel kind of bad the two always get lumped together, but I’m guilty of doing it too.
Meh… My subculture largely considers itself post-gender, so huzzah for us!
You’re a furry?
A brony, perhaps?
A Borg!
7-of-9 was definitely NOT post-gender!
She also wasn’t a particularly representative Borg.
I’m not sure that’s possible, at least in the eyes of society at large.
Thus why they consider themselves. Screw society, what have it ever done for anyone?
Also, I guess Game Theoretician.
I hate to post on a tangential topic, but can I start a campaign here, if only in THIS SPACE, the comments on THIS WEBCOMIC, to reclaim the idea of feminism?
Feminism means championing the personhood and equal humanity of women. It is not a bad thing. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is not something people should feel the need to disclaim in order to be taken seriously (or at least think they’ll be taken more seriously; personally I know my opinion of someone drops as soon as they whip out the “I’m not a feminist or anything like that, but…” line.) Feminism does not have to be extreme. Feminism does not mean the hatred, diminutization, or emasculation of men. These I’m-not-a-feminist-buts hold views on the equality of women that 1920s suffragettes could only ever dream of, and yet they feel the need to claim that they don’t believe in the rights of women, not /really./
Willis is a feminist. I am a feminist. Many of the other commenters here are feminists. THIS IS A GOOD THING IT IS NOT A BAD THING IT IS A GOOD THING.
If I like the new Starfire do I still get to call myself a feminist?
Maybe.
Is that a joke answer or a real answer?
I don’t want to be a feminist. I believe in equal rights for the sexes, but if I call myself a feminist, that carries extra weight I don’t want to bear.
Anyway, once you get past having equal rights and move into engineering a better world by stamping out that which offends you, that’s where feminism loses me. And I don’t want to call myself a “feminist” and then constantly have to justify why I don’t live up to someone else’s feminist standards. ~Anon mouse
You make a good point about defining one’s self as a feminist, by cutting out all the dogma and assigning a clear, objective definition to the word… but the yes you are essay is really not that simple.
So how about it… Can I like the sexy new Starfire and still be a feminist?
Feminism means “stamping out that which offends you?” I have no freaking idea where you got that. It certainly wasn’t from my post. If you want to be a feminist, you certainly don’t need my or anyone else’s stamp of approval. There’s nothing stopping you from using the word except your own perception that it’s some sort of manhating club that you’d have to sacrifice your principles to gain admittance to.
I have no interest in saying who’s “disallowed” to call themselves a feminist based on what they do or don’t believe. My gripe is with people who believe in equality of the sexes — just as you say you do — and yet think that feminism is a dirty word — just as you seem to.
This “I just don’t want to use other people’s ~labels~” thing is a bullshit excuse. There is not a damn thing wrong with being a feminist and no one should be ashamed to identify themselves as such. Like the word “liberal,” it’s been so slandered in the media that people started shrinking away from it, and that hastened its radicalization because the only people who were brave enough to call themselves by that name were the ones who were the most angry, and, yes, the most extreme. There are extremists in every movement, but they do not represent the whole of that movement, and they only define that movement if we let them. I don’t feel the need, every time I go into a discussion of race, to disclaim “But I don’t consider myself one of those, y’know, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS,” in order to gain the respect of the bigots I’m arguing with. And this demonization of the word “feminism” is just as bullshit.
As liberal-leaning as I am, I’m not likely to let some right-wing talk show gasbag implant “feminazi” in my head.
It’s feminists themselves that make me not want to be labeled a feminist; it’s feminists who, it is my impression, largely reject me as being a feminist. ~Anon Mouse
Feminism is a political movement with its own baggage. You want to see some hardcore hate and feminists telling people who would call themselves feminists that they are not spend some time in a Sex-positive feminism vs. anti-pornography feminism debate.
http://www.facebook.com/agirlsguidetotakingovertheworld/posts/240426886026428
This site with over 50k likes called me a rapist and banned me for thinking consensual S&M sex was ok… I don’t really want to be mistaken as being the same flavor of feminist as they are or the same flavor as the SCUM manifesto.
I understand your point that everyone should want to be a feminist as feminism is all about equality… but it is just not that simple and I would not think less of someone who wished to avoid all the politics and baggage by not identifying as a feminists.
I’m a Furmanist. Can I like the new Starfire?
EMERGENCY CLARIFICATION!
For those not familiar with Simon Furman, I was not declaring myself to be a furry!
(Not that there’s anything wrong with Therianthropy.)
I swore I would never make “where’s the ‘Like’ button” comments, but I’m sorely tempted.
So why the sphincter-clench? I consider myself a bit of a hardcore feminist (I once read a book on feminism one time!) but I also read a webblog with the heading catwomen/starfire now a slut/ho and find myself more then a little clenched. and I find myself inclined to wonder what comic book guy is feeling or what my wife is feeling when she also suffers a SC. I think the answer to that question is “If this thinking becomes popular the sexy will be taken away”.
I think comic book guy has cause to be concerned.
Just because stories of superheroics focus on the stories of superheroics won’t mean that you’ll lose all the magazines that are *supposed* to be like that.
And who gets to decide what is *supposed* to be like that? Maybe comic book guy has no interest in those magazines, but he likes his naughty comics just the way they are. Comics have been doing it longer then FHM after all. Decency standards are a private and personal responsibility imo and if it comes to groups of angry people trying to keep the sexy were it is “supposed” to be then I think I would be finding CBG more sympathetic.
And what if we liked Catwoman the way that she was before? Sexy and fun, but not plastered on the page like a centerfold? What if girls grew up liking Starfire as she was in the show, or as she was in the Teen Titans comic? Cute and loving and kind and, yes, sexy. No one’s demanding a end to sexy times. We just want the characters that we grew up loving to be treated with respect.
Although I still hold that there would be a lot less complaining if it was equal opportunity fanservice. Even the Catwoman/Batman scene at the end of Catwoman #1 managed to cover up anything sexy about Bruce, leaving it to Selina to do the heavy lifting. Er…well…wait. But seriously, there’s not a heckuva lot of male cheesecake out there, and these are muscular guys in form-fitting clothing too.
Wanting something is cool. Just understand that wanting something runs both ways. My wife is a big Catwomen fan and she thinks the new Catwomen IS treated with respect and it really reminds her of her favorite Catwomen comics that she grew up with. (the one in the purple outfit were her house gets blown up in the first issue).
Hell I got a sneaking suspicion that the new awful Starfire might have been a badly botched attempted at a feminist character.
Honestly think about it, the average comic reader is like what 40 something… when was the last time YOU paid for porn? I can find porn of pretty much anything with less effort then it is taking me to say that. Those fanboys are not shelling out 3+ bucks a pop just for T&A unless they have honestly yet to figure out google. The T&A is no doubt a fun bonus but all 20 of DC’s readers are staying for the characters they love. Or that is my take anyway.
Oh and yah more sexy men in comics could only be a good thing imo. tell then maybe this will tide you over?
http://shirtless-superheroes.blogspot.com/
Thank you for continuing to make comics about this! The fact that the comments always contain at least one person who has to start with “Yes, BUT-” or similar kind of means in my mind that they’re still needed.
(Also it was funny.)
Cripes, what’s with all the hate? Sorry Willis, but the strip just wasn’t funny. The particular topic is irrelevant, he could be going on about anything and it wouldn’t change anything. The whole strip is just an unbelievably stupid guy saying unbelievably stupid things. Who cares?
Why is Amber humoring him by even talking to him?
What’s the point? And more importantly, what’s the punchline?
… Comically Missing the Point.
The point is that the topic IS irrelevant, yet people keep bringing it up. (I think.)
the point is that none of the characters in today’s strip are wearing pants.
“The whole strip is just an unbelievably stupid guy saying unbelievably stupid things. Who cares?”
I take it you don’t like Dilbert, then?
Stupidity has never been a source of comedy ever. As such, unintelligent people have no place in a comedic work. We should have thoughtful characters having intelligent discussions about the weighty matters that concern the thinking man. Like what exactly does one do with an excess of tossed salads and scrambled eggs?
They’re unbelievably stupid?
I thought the problem was that the things he said were believably stupid. Like reading 1984 when you’re living in China. It loses its impact a bit.
Dueling Captain Americas. I love it. Which one is Bucky Cap?
The best part of this is the way Amber isn’t even offended by the manpolyp, because he’s just not that significant. Mostly she’s confused, like a talking fish just rolled out on a skateboard and started reciting Shakespeare in a Nyew Joisey accent. He’s not even relevant enough to rate annoyance.
Oh? Is that the joke?
…because viewed from angle it’s pretty darn funny, given his uninvited injection into their conversation. And I guess that fits with “your conversation is unimportant” being the punchline, by pacing.
Maybe I’m just not getting the strip. *shrug*
These hardcore strawman arguments aren’t even funny. They really aren’t.
Straw man argument = a weak argument that no one ACTUALLY uses, chosen to discredit the legitimate points of a side.
This = something that happens for real all the time. If it seems stupid to you, that’s because it is but it still happens. So accusing Willis of inventing a straw man is stupid. You can see this argument being used in THIS comment section!
Sufficiently Advanced Stupidity is Indistinguisable from a Strawman.
It does not matter if the people saying this are real; if what they’re saying is dumb enough to constitute a strawman argument, it’s still a strawman.
That makes no sense. A straw man argument is, by definition, a misrepresentation of your opponent’s arguments. Are you saying that if a person makes a stupid enough argument, it recursively misrepresents itself?
@Charagon the point is that people take offense at people taking offense. No matter the subject someone is going to complain. Two girls are talking about sales dropping at DC and someone not in the conversation wants to point out that their opinion is not important or relevant. The responses to this comic are funnier than the comic itself. Willis wants to express his dislike at DC’s reinvention of its characters on his own website and people are acting like he is not allowed.
And thus in making this comic, Willis is taking offense at people taking offense at people taking offense. And I find that offensive. :p
You are right that the reaction has been funnier than the comic itself. But mostly because the comic just isn’t funny.
*munches popcorn*
thank you for the early strip, willis!
Wait, wait, wait.
Willis this was supposed to be tomorrow’s strip, right? And you posted it early?
And Amber mentions restricting her opinions to every second Tuesday?
::glances at calendar::
Well played. ::Applause::
I think I’ve caught the stupids. Please explain, derp.
(I know it’s Tuesday and Valentine’s today, if that’s relevant.)
It is, in fact, the second Tuesday of the month. Amber’s suggestion that this be the day she is allowed to express her opinions is thus appropriate.
And since this comic was supposed to run tomorrow, either it’s a remarkable coincidence that it got posted early, or Willis is messing with us.
Actually, Shortpacked explicitly doesn’t sell comic books. When Jacob asked, he was told no because they are trying to make a profit.
He sounds like the Republicans.
Shhh we don’t need a poliltical debate added to the mess
Lord, I’m looking at some of the comment here and am now just shaking my head.
I think some of the comments are as funny as the strip.
“I just wanted to say that the fat guy was right and we should all just shut up about this topic. It was discussed once and any more than that is extremism”
Nevermind that the sales dropping is a new point that needs to explored or that Willis is not calling for any action whatsoever, not even a boycott.
Pretty much.
SWEET CHRIST I FINALLY MADE IT TO THE BOTTOM.
I agree with the subject, and it’s not just in comics, either. After watching yet another Final Fantasy commercial, I actually yelled out loud “if you want me to take your female lead seriously, the best way to start is to stop dressing her like a whore!”
“Stop dressing her like a whore!”
Which is slut-shaming, which is just as sexist as sexual objectification of women.
Bingo jayne!
I don’t think that’s true.
If a woman dresses a certain way and someone tells her to stop dressing like a whore, that’s slut-shaming.
If a man invents a female character and dresses her like a whore, particularly if she’s a character with a shy or meek personality, that is another thing entirely. There is not a real person being shamed. There is a bad behavior (designing a character as a sex object and calling it a normal girl, thus creating a confusing, sexism-reinforcing template for impressionable youths of both genders to see) and it really ought to be called out.
Granted, if LSCoK shouted this in his/her own home, the call-out probably had little effect, but whatever.
The problem with that argument is that if you can’t slut-shame then how can you objectify?
In both situations you are being given a person and asked to imagine them as real, and those that do think of them as having agency would be correct in pointing out that dressing provocatively (ie like a whore as it is offensivly put) is in deed being used to devalue women based on sexuality… or slut shaming as it is called.
No matter who makes the character, man or women the (fake) agency is still important imo.
I agree, there is a difference between a real person and a character. A character cannot choose their outfit, the creator does. Whether or not it’s sexual objectification or just a character wearing certain kinds of clothing depends on the situation, how it’s shown, if the clothes make sense with the characters’ personality and situation, etc. Also, how the character is treated- fanservice or parody is one thing, but is the character constantly being treated and shown like a visual object, but none of the other characters are? Etc.
The problem I have here is the sentence ‘dressing like a whore’ or the word ‘whore’ period. Those words are inherently sexist and slut-shaming, no matter what you’re talking about.
“I agree, there is a difference between a real person and a character”
Yes but when you notice the difference the writer has failed imo. I am not asked to like Mike because I like his writer, but because I like his character. he can do things that are out of his personality and I would notice. I know he is not a real person any more then Conquest is a real person. However if I think of conquest as less of a human because of her (fake) sexuality then I am also slut shaming and being sexist.
Then those writers have probably failed in LSCoK’s opinion.
The way Starfire contorted herself on the infamous sex talk page of the new 52 was both sexist and bad writing. She was presenting herself to us, the readers, while talking to whatshisface. There was no reason in the story for her to do that.
Given that most actual women are not parodies, most terribly sexist writing will be pretty bad writing – it’ll present characters in ways that aren’t particularly believable by non-misogynistic readers.
The exception (sometimes, anyway) being actual parody.
Gotcha.
I gave the word “whore” a few minutes of thought. It strikes me that the big lie that makes the word inherently sexist is that through consistent cultural misuse it’s come to be presented as meaning a set of decisions (perhaps even “life choices”) when in fact it’s more typically a kind of victimization. People don’t tend to become prostitutes because they feel like they have a lot of options and agency in their lives.
Which means even calling someone engaged in prostitution a whore is likely to be inaccurate.
Fair point.
Granted using the word whore is rather loaded with the bad. At the same time though, I want a single word that encapsulates the ideas of being overly sexual and utterly ridiculous in general. Sexdiculous? No… a single word having the sounds ‘sex’ and ‘dick’ in it is clearly not the answer.
‘Cheesecake’ used to be that word, but it’s become too positive, so to speak. When people say ‘It’s really cheesecake-y’ most people react with ‘yaaaay!’ and associate it with regular awesomesauce fanservice, not unnecessary sexification to the point of ridiculousness (and therefore bad/lazy and probably sexist writing/art, unless it is parody).
Then again, what else was expected? You can’t give a bad thing the same name of a delicious dessert and expect people to not start associating it with good thoughts. It’s just not possible.
If another word for it is made, it can’t bring to mind stuff that will make you think it’s a good thing, like cheesecake, but not something that could become a weapon for people who just want to slut-shame/virgin-shame/insult women or female characters.
I thought that he would give this guy a chance to voice the opposite side and make a good point. Silly me.
What’s the opposite side of “Fewer women are reading these comics now”?
Amber didn’t even really express any beliefs in this one. She observed that female readership of DC is down, Arch cuts her off before she can give her thoughts on this, and the remainder of the strip is about whether or not Amber SHOULD have any thoughts about it.
It’s less about the issue in question, and more about the reaction Willis got last time he addressed it.
It remains to be seen if we’ll get a strip a few months from now about people’s reaction to this one.
Well one could ask where the results are coming from? Who took that study and what is it based on? Simply readership, sales? Logically speaking, it makes little sense that DC is selling more than ever but there’s less females reading it. I doubt there were so many girls reading DC compared to now to actually be noticed as a drop in readership. It really makes no sense, it sounds more like quoting a sound byte without doing the proper research (and even then, most of those sorts of polls are barely scientific).
Huh? So – he should be asking for scientific data when polls aren’t scientific? He’s not a satire of rational people asking about statistics – he’s a satire of the people who consistently try to shut up anyone who questions the status quo in comic books.
As pointed out – he wasn’t part of Amber and Leslie’s conversation; he busted his way in to tell them to shut up about their rational concern. That somehow them “rocking the boat” by simply discussing what they’d heard was stupid and wrong and because they’ve said it before they have no right to say it now. Even if the statistics and figures where incorrect (Leslie even says “if they’re true”) it does not change the fact that comic books are often offensive in portrayals of women.
He dismisses the idea that women’s opinions matter in women’s issues and assumes his feelings are all that matter.
This is a real opinion being satirized – there is no middle grounds or justifications for his opinion because he is blatantly WRONG.
The only real complaint one could make is he looks like a basement dweller stereotype. Otherwise he’s quite real in personality.
Also it is quite possible that they are selling more yet losing female customers…
The only way they could be selling more but losing females is if the female readers were so vast in number before the New 52 that even with all of the new readers, there were less females than before. And the only way that’d be logically possible is if women were the majority of DC readers before the reboot.
Obviously, that isn’t the case. So the “poll” is useless, pointless, and shouldn’t really come up in conversation. I would have also busted into this conversation if I heard it, except to point out that a poll means nothing. It’s a soundbyte people use to support their opinion, but it’s based on nothing.
In little crummy Wheeling, WV’s local comic shop, there are about a dozen young, cute girls that never read comics before the New 52 and have been buying books every month since then (including the “bad” ones). Over in California where my girlfriend lives, not only has she JUST started buying comics at the New 52, but she also says that she sees girls at the comic shop every week that the owner says were never there before the New 52.
There is no way female readership can be lower than before if sales are up. The only possible thing the poll could take into consideration is if they are JUST polling the women who read DC comics BEFORE but not now, but then you could make the same claim about male readership for DC comics being down.
So Amber’s point is based on nothing and shouldn’t be a point. THAT is what the guy in the comic should have been saying. But clearly, Willis IS Amber in this comic, so only his side is shown.
Amber didn’t claim female readership is down. She merely claimed she read that the percentage of female readers out of the whole is down. Even if readership overall increases substantially, female readership percentage could still get smaller. This would mean more females are reading, but they grew in number at a smaller rate than the men.
I think folks would do better to argue with what Amber actually says rather than what they want her to have said.
Not that it’s incredibly relevant to the strip’s focus. As Doctor Who said, it’s not about the issue in question, it’s about Arch’s reaction to it being discussed in the first place. I purposefully tried to choose the least controversial news for Amber to spew at the beginning, because it wasn’t the important part and I didn’t want it to distract. That, of course, is a losing proposition. Anything said about women’s anything gets dudes SO ANGRY.
(And for the record, no, this strip isn’t about anything that happened on my site. But this has been a very popular strip because it’s a thing that sadly happens everywhere.)
Thank you for clarifying what you meant originally. But even then, when anything geek related increases fans I could almost say with full confidence that the male demographic will get more new customers than female regardless of anything. Sales for DC are up, in a big way, due to new readers. There are many more new guys than new girls, but that still means nothing regarding the issue at hand.
It proves nothing, means nothing, and Amber is clearly listening/re-stating to that soundbite only because she opposes how female characters are being portrayed. As opposed to actually using logical reasoning.
And to be clear I’m not “so angry” about women anything coming up (not that I’m saying you were directing that at me). While I do disagree with that side on this specific issue, my problem with this was that Amber had nothing stand on in this strip due to a faulty poll/reason. And instead of someone logical hearing this, it had to be the “crazy other side strawman” who couldn’t make a point himself.
You keep using the term “strawman” incorrectly.
I am not going to be sympathetic to the real-life stupid bigots that really exist. The entirety of society is ALREADY overwhelmingly structured in their favor. If you want a webcomic that presents their side, I suggest finding another damn webcomic.
Poor sexists. Who will stand up for them?
When the other sides argument is “I wanna see hot girls act like sex objects even if it’s to the demerit of the story”, “I don’t like how you’re commenting on a fact about the comic industry’s (and the media’s) treatment of women so shut up”, and “women’s (and plenty of men’s) issues and complaints about the treatment of women are irrelevant” I think their argument becomes moot and they have no “good points” in their argument.
Both sides!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ
Leyviur is my favourite commentator if only for the popcorn effect.
Does Arch suffer from lockjaw by any chance?
THANK YOU, WILLIS, THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! I haven’t read a single DC issue since New 52 was released.
That’s a shame, because there is still some stellar work coming out from DC that does a good job of respecting all of their potential readers. Batwoman is an amazing comic, both in writing and art. Demon Knights is a good, fun time. Birds of Prey has been fun, as has Justice League Dark. And in spite of the initial wariness a lot of folks, women especially had, VooDoo is turning out to be a pretty cool book as well.
Forgoing all of a company’s offerings is one approach. But if we buy the stuff that we like, we encourage DC to make more books like that.
All of the art makes me want to claw my eyes out, and the dialogue is awful.
Out of curiousity, which books have you been reading?
Honestly, I’ve just been getting the occasional glimpse of Batman and whatever books Starfire is in. Every single panel caused me to wish death on those who wrote it. I’m kind of astonished; usually, I have at least some tolerance. It was just so . . . vile. Hateful.
Then…Batwoman. I keep saying it, but that’s because that art is like a freaking religious experience. J.H. Williams is a craftsman, and sometimes his work is so good it just makes me cry.
But at the same time, it doesn’t overwhelm the story.
Sadly, he’s bowing out for the next arc, but the replacement artist, Amy Reeder, is also an excellent artist.
I can understand your stance… and I agree with you. But to be honest, I’ve always followed Teen Titans more than anything, although I’ve dabbled in reading other titles. But Teen Titans? I’ve always been hardcore about. So when *that* happened to Starfire, you can imagine how DC became dead to me. I am sure there are some good titles out right now. For instance, I’ve heard great things about Red Hood & The Outlaws… but my enthusiasm in general has just degenerated. My boyfriend has always been more of a Marvel fan… I think I’ll start reading more of those
Basically, I think if this guy didn’t look like a nolife asshat most people wouldn’t have had a problem with the depiction. It’s the combined visual with what he’s saying – I’ve heard people who look quite athletic and have traditional good looks spout shit like this, you don’t have to be obese and have a neckbeard. In fact, it kind of folds in with the issue at hand – women good or bad being depicted only to satisfy the baser urges, likewise with strawmen always being physically unpleasant to make people hate them more on a base level.
Some of the coolest people I know are fat nolife neckbeards. :{
Otherwise I agree with Amber and applaud the comic – I am one of those people who felt bad and somehow smaller/less important because of jerks like this stating I didn’t need to read comics or play games and I was ruining these hobbies for them. It feels good when put into this context, that it’s completely okay to want this depiction of women to change and that I’m not a huge party-pooper for expressing that.
As a related note, my husband thought Harley’s costume in Arkham Asylum was fine – I started playing it myself, the first scene she was really in I pointed at her and said “really? you think so? Not just the clothes, she’s taking every pose possible to show off the goods. You didn’t notice this when you played?” “Guess I wasn’t really paying attention…”
It’s fine to not pay attention, but if it isn’t really grabbing and keeping attention, and instead just makes a beloved character look tacky and slutty, there’s no need to do this. Sure, make them attractive and interesting, but showing the bra and garters and all poses being something out of the leadup scene in a softcore porn, really if anyone wants to see that they can just go to redtube. That’s all I want to say to anyone who designs characters or models in comics and games.
When last Willis posted a controversial issue, he addressed this same complaint. Go back to “Sphincter Clench!” and you will find a wide variety of people who have given horrible straw- and/or tin-man opinions (possibly some flying monkey opinions), in this comic – several of whom are totally normal-looking.
I always found Harley to be an incredibly asexual character (in relation to the Joker.) I always got a sense of ‘pantomime’ to her overt sexuality. (Which fits the character.)
Of course I’m gay so YMMV.
That’s a really interesting way of looking at it. A pantomime of sexuality, I mean. That could also explain a lot about her relationship with Ivy–Harley is just naturally a flirtatious and joyfully romantic character, that everything seems like a come-hither smile.
I never figured her for truly asexual. The Joker I can see as that, though.
No, the guy’s appearance is not the problem. The fact that Amber is being given a hearing is the problem.
In other news, on today’s CBS The Price Is Right, the finalists were gals named Leslie and Amber, who even looked like our heroines.
Leslie overbid on her Showcase prize and lost (it was a Mazda Miata MX-5 and a vacation to New York City).
Amber was less than $2000 under with her bid and won a European vacation that included visits to Venice and Paris, plus a bicycle for two.
I’m just imagining all the havoc Mike could cause with a tandem bicycle.
+1
So by the basic line of a lot of folks’ arguments here, he’s not only a hypocrite, but a misogynist AND a misandrist! It’s good to know he covers all his bases.
Oh God. Here come the comments.
JSYK, this is basically the best valentine I received all day. Every single time you post one of these strips I pass it around to my ~~ladyfriends~~ and you pick up a few new readers.
Man, I love when this guy comes just to start bickering.
I love how some people want Incredibly Stupid Idiot to be portrayed as just a normal guy with a different but rational viewpoint and the arguments to back it up. It’s like wanting Incredibly Evil Villain to be portrayed as just a normal guy with a different way of doing good. (No, really, kicking puppies helps their growth, and chopping people’s heads off purifies their souls!)
DC has readers?
So, having read a few of the new DC comics, they’re fricking radioactive. I’d never recommend them to any human being. Every woman is drawn in a way that is totally incompatible with human anatomy, and they’re all written by either Ayn Rand, men who’ve never touched a woman, or both. DC has gone from “enh” to “I hate these people and want them to stop making any product whatsoever” in my head.
I recommend Birds of Prey, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, and Batgirl. All those artists are respectful of female anatomy, and I can guarantee at least one of the writers has touched a woman by virtue of being one.
Honestly, I don’t want to give DC any of my money, but I’ll keep your recommendations in mind in case it comes up.
Agree with your choices except for Birds of Prey, but that’s because I think the comic is a lot worse off after the New 52.
WW is everything a female lead should be, though.
Just out of curiosity, How many Starfires has DC or marvel got that are not evil, and has the new Starfire ever turned down sex sense her launch?
One more question, Has Catwomen expressed any sexual interest in anyone other then Batman?
–You know, it occurs to me that if guys really dislike how stereotypically hard it is to find female geeks and comic fans and stuff, then it’d be in their own best interests to want to encourage them to stick around. And part of that is not chasing them away with stupidity like this, eh?
And to the couple of people who think there should be a balanced, middle ground presented between “shut up you don’t matter” and “hey, how about giving my gender more equal treatment with the way you present the male ones”, here’s a quick litmus test for you to find that middle ground: replace the word “gender” with “race”.
Hmm. Let’s see… PoC being told to shut up about not liking how offensive they find the usual depiction of their race to be, and that their opinions don’t matter…
Yeah, not finding a lot of “middle ground” there. Sorry. Maybe they should just be grateful they’re being included at all? Or something? :-/
I think the freaking out and telling people to shut up is more a reactionary fear that there comic will be changed.
Anyway you find assholes like this all over the place on many topics, politics comes to mind real fast. I don’t think this is limited to the much mocked fanboy.
How about this:
A bunch of comics with the women heroes in skimpy outfits for the readers who like their cheesecake.
A second bunch of comics with the men heroes in skimpy outfits for the female readers who like their beefcake.
A third batch of comics where all the heroes are fully clothed in no cake poses for people who don’t want to see that sort of stuff.
Keep the three segregated and then no one has to deal with anything they don’t like.
I’m not being snarky, I’m really asking if people would prefer comics this way.
…yes
but I would also like a 4th option. Sexy/skimpy men and women all in one
well told story.
No that is a lie…. I want my 4th option just to be whatever the creator had in mind. sexy/unsexy warts and all.
No. Not really. Because the issue isn’t “they’re TOO sexy.” It’s just that “sexy” becomes the defining characteristic of most female heroes.
I think most people just want to see good stories well told. Sexy’s fine, if it serves the story and the characters. Weirdly out of place “sexy” like Starfire’s contortions during her conversation with Roy (and, well, the conversation too) and Catwoman’s intro…it’s less good. From a storytelling standpoint, what was happening with Kory was just lousy, without even getting into arguments regarding “taste.”
But what of the men and women who think the catwomen story WAS well told?
That’s why I used Kory’s contorting as the better example. I really think the Catwoman #1 was lousy (it might be worth mentioning, though, that I have never liked March’s artwork–I find his characters too angular and sickly to be attractive, and his storytelling always blocky and wanting), but it’s something I’m willing (after a lot of yelling) to accept that other folks might find merit in.
But I can’t think a single excuse for the visual storytelling in RHatO. Just abysmal, and more than a little 90′s-a-rrific.
….. honestly I thought the story was spectacularly stupid when the priest pulled the total recall disguise nonsense. The hidden bow in the middle of a gun fight sure did not help. Add to all that a lack of any sort of plot and I honestly thought the ONLY remotely interesting event was Starfire being so active in hunting down sex, I thought she might have been a mockery of real women pursuing sex at first tell I saw a quoit of his that made me think Starfire might have been his attempted to fight the “good girls don’t” stereotype. However even that was so poorly done that I think reading the comic gave me cancer.
Well the reason I ask is because it’s hard to gauge what is considered tasteful. All the discussion here proves that something one person has no problem with, someone else could find totally innapropriate.
My solution would be more black and white. Say, a Wonder Woman series where she wears her star spangled bikini and any impulses the DC writers and artists have which may be considered sexist would be funneled there. Another Wonder Woman series where she is fully clothed and skews to a more conservative or PC mindset. The writing could be good in both and readers can purchase both sets if they feel like it, but if someone is offened by the way WW is acting they are not denied a WW comic. Same would go for Batman. Ladies who want to see a hunky Batman bending over his bat computer now have an outlet.
Good writing is a tricker thing. Saying “I simply want better writing” is ideal but hard to quantify. This would be a more tangable solution without pentalizing or judgeing people for what they want to see or not see in their comics.
Well call my radical but I think I would rather just not encourage anything sexist as opposed to sticking what someone might think is sexist it in one book. The problem pops up when two people don’t agree with what is sexist. The problem is amplified because it is so easy to just label the opposition as sexist and ignore them (many times this is even the right answer) in stead of listening.
Just look at the sex wars in the feminist movment, both sides want equality and are working for the same goal but both sides will attack each other like the other is the embodiment of all sexism or something.
What your really describing here is one real story and then another sanitized copy of that story.
Well, like you said: it’s difficult for any two people to agree on what is “sexist”. That becomes even more difficult when whatever is “sexist” is censored altogether. The stakes are higher. This way, anything anyone is unsure about can just be dumped in one book and the other book can stay free.
The reason I’m for this option is because it seems the most sympathetic to everyone. Women readers who don’t want to see their heroes reduced to pinups shouldn’t have to. On the other hand, many people who really don’t care about, say, Power Girl’s cleavage window, or Starfire’s sexual habits or who actually like them aren’t excluded either. And sure, we could just say those people are pervs and screw them but I really don’t want to get into a world of labeling and judging. It leads us down a bad path when we start dictating whose tastes are right and wrong, especially when there is a simple solution to make everyone happy.
Here is what i would do if I had money or talent. I would be gender swapping comics like crazy. I tend to mentally do that anyway when watching movies as a character building exercise.
Anyway as fun as your answer might be there is no way DC would do it….but you could try the experiment anyway with photoshop and Catwomen #1.
This is one woman who took DC’s New 52 as her first “in” to comics. I’ve love Batwoman and Wonder Woman. I saw enough about Red Hood and Catwoman to know those weren’t the ones for me. Focusing on the positive, I guess.
Um… The amount of women the review shows a decline in was 1%… Thats statistically unsound. It is literally not considered a statistical change at all (especially given the initial group size & the subset group size). Come on folks this is the basis of statistical analysis: I know a lot of you are going to be as dumb as mud (that can’t be helped), but at least pretend you have a secondary education.
As for the Strawman of the male comic book reader, lets stop being intellectually dishonest & pretending we are being clever…. We should indeed shut up; FOREVER! Because at this point we aren’t pointing out issues with the industry, we are making up issues with the industry & then when the industry tries to adapt to our bitching, we still don’t buy the books we were bitching about.
Frankly if i were DC i wouldn’t pander to our demographic either: We constantly make excuses for not buying things & demand they change, an then when they do we just go on complaining & still not buying anything.
Why would someone demand a change if they don’t really want a change? I fully believe that those that said the introduction of catwomen in her #1 offended them were in fact offended.
Sure, you can be offended by anything you like… You don’t however have the right to demand it change. Its like me demanding that guy on guy gay porn be changed, because i would be offended by watching it… Yet i never intended on purcahsing it & i don’t intend to purchase it if they change it, so why is it important that they listen because i’m offended.
Same goes for Catwoman. I personally have no interest in it as a property, but to demand that DC fix something i never intended to purchase, so i can pretend i will purchase it, is silly.
So to answer your question of why would someone demand a change if they don’t really want a change? Because its easier to complain about something then it is to just admit you don’t enjoy the material & just move on. As women we have become very socially enabled: We seem to think that the universe exists for us & that anything we don’t specifically like should cease to exist.
Heck, i’ve found myself doing this & i’ve taken a step back and said to myself “is this really an issue, or am i just being a bit of a self entitled bitch.” an quite often the answer is “i’m being a self entitled bitch.” Using your Catwoman example: Why should someone who like the style of the work have to miss out because i dont personally like the style of the work? There’s nothing morally wrong with it, nor anything legally wrong with it, its in no way sexist (never misstake sexy for sexist, the two are not the same thing) & its not out of character for the character… So why should it not exist on the basis that i am not deriving enjoyment out of it?
“Same goes for Catwoman. I personally have no interest in it as a property, but to demand that DC fix something i never intended to purchase, so i can pretend i will purchase it, is silly.”
But what if they do intent to purchase it if it is changed?
Lets take Starwars. I will not buy any new DVD’s unless Solo shoots first. Don’t I have to make myself known loudly and often if there is to be any hope of me getting what I want?
“Using your Catwoman example: Why should someone who like the style of the work have to miss out because i dont personally like the style of the work?”
errr this tends to be my argument about the Catwomen comic so you won’t get any argument from me on that.
Still my wife and I enjoy it and others want it changed, don’t we both have the right to express are wants and downplay the opposition?
“But what if they do intent to purchase it if it is changed?”
Then tough luck you miss out. You either like the product or you don’t. Its like me demanding that romance novels ditch the romance so i can purchase them as well. It doesn’t matter how many times this argument is made, it is up to you to decide what you dod & do not want to read, and how much offensiveness you are willing to take. For example i wanted to watch that last Torchwood series, but i did not want homosexual sex sprung on me in the middle of it (i have no problem with homosexual sex, but its like seeing your parents have sex, its something i don’t necessarily want to see).
Its not up to the producers to remove it because i may be offended, its up to me to decide if i want to continue to watch it & frankly if you want to read catwoman but decide not to because of the art work, then in the end that is your power of choice.
Its the equiviliant of me getting a support group of people offended by the colour blue & yelling online that DC should remove the colour blue from there comics because then i can read them. Heck i can read them now, as there is nothing offensive about the colour blue… Because there is a difference between offensive & being offended.
I see your point but still have to disagree with this part.
“Then tough luck you miss out. ”
Providing feedback on something you want changed IS important, very much so to something that is continuing to evolve and change like comic.
I don’t begrudge those that want Catwomen changed nor do I think they should be quit. I do however like Catwomen just the way she is and I am willing to “duke it out” so to say.
However as someone who has a different opinion on what is sexist, cry’s for change based on what I see as flawed morality tend to rub me the wrong way and get challenged by me.
“Making up issues…” Really? You honestly don’t believe there’s an issue with what happened to Starfire? On such a big scale. That DC said, flat-out, that their focus is on the male audience, and that DD became hostile whenever questioned about the cut in female creators (doubly odd, because DC or any company head, I would have expected some soothing flim-flam that everyone knew was a lie, but at least sounded like they made the effort.)
No, hon. We’re not “making up” issues, we are, in fact, pointing them out. And if it sounds redundant, well, that’s because the same issues keep happening. No one is asking to be “pandered to.” Comics and movies made to “pander to women” often come out more insulting and awful than the regular kind, because those doing the pandering don’t actually understand what they’re doing.
We’re asking to be considered. To be counted as a part of the audience, as a demographic that the company is after as surely as they’re after the 18-35 year-old male category.
Oh, and we’re asking for the practice of portraying comic book women as sex objects first and foremost to maybe start dying off. Or coming to a slow.
As someone who thinks a trip to the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas makes for a great vacation, as a feminist who thinks raunch culture is overall a good thing, as someone who thinks this new awful Starfire might have been a botched try at a feminist character, as someone who has radically different opinions on sexy in entertainment then Laura,…. I got to agree with Laura. But I would be very interested in seeing you back up your argument if you can.
Heartwarming, ain’t it, how two folks with drastically different opinions can still come together to say that that DC needs to check itself before it wrecks itself.
It’s like that Arby’s commercial. *Snif*
Seriously, though. I did mean it–the apology, I mean. I was out of line and acting like a jerk, and you’ve been nothing but polite on this whole heated thing. Just had to say it again–I’m sorry for going overboard.
I honestly thought you were very respectful. I never thought you were ignoring what I said or talking over me, just disagreeing and explaining why you disagreed.
I also know I am not very good at communicating what I am thinking (english is not my first language) and I know I can come off trollish… however the important thing to remember here is that I am right and you are wrong =D
” Really? You honestly don’t believe there’s an issue with what happened to Starfire?”
Not a gender based one. If you want to say “this is a crappy representation of this previous character” then sure you can say that. But to say “this is sexism & negatively impacts us as women” then no, you’d be wrong.
“That DC said, flat-out, that their focus is on the male audience”
Of course it is, since more then 80% of the purchasing public is male.
“and that DD became hostile whenever questioned about the cut in female creators”
Of course he got hostile, because it was a stupid question: Never mistake absense for exlcusion. Right now there are no men in my room, nor black people, nor people in wheel chairs… In fact i’ll extend that to the rest of the house too. That doesn’t make me racist, sexist & ablist, it just means there is an absence of said groups: Because absence does not denote exclusion. The fact is that the stats used where ocmplete bullshittery… They were made up. Of course just like with this 1% drop in female comic readership, we jump on the interwebbernets & try to pass off a correlation (sometimes a completely made up one) as a causation.
“Oh, and we’re asking for the practice of portraying comic book women as sex objects first and foremost to maybe start dying off. Or coming to a slow.”
But they aren’t & this is one of those things where we need to stop talking bullshit. 99% of female characters are not being treated as sex objects. This has been demonstrably shown over and over and over again. People have demonstrably gone through on a month by month basis & show cased that this observation is wrong & nothing more then “observation bias” on the behalf of the people who make that claim.
Heck, i’ve personally showcased this before. If you want to pick any random month & we count the characters being represented as a sex object versus those who aren’t i’ll be willing to crunch the numbers with you. But the fact remains that it can be & has been demonstrably proven ad nuseum that women in comics are not predominately shown as sex objects. Sure you can point at Harley & Starfire (both characters i hate in the new DCU), but thats not the same thing as possessing a trend.
…this is getting really good
“Not a gender based one. If you want to say “this is a crappy representation of this previous character” then sure you can say that. But to say “this is sexism & negatively impacts us as women” then no, you’d be wrong.”
Can you tell us why they would be wrong? I also think the portrayal of starfire was not sexist, just really bad writing but I want your explanation if that is ok.
Sexism is a noun, of which sexist is the adjective. The definition of sexism is
1.Discrimination based on gender
2.Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
This no more does either of those things then Amanda Conner was being sexist when she drew Vartox in Power Girl.
This sexism ideal when put beside Starfire, enspoused by many other female readers is essentially the same logic that allows people to praise Gail Simones WIR site (a list that only shows that women in comics don’t possess plot immunity by gender), yet those same people ignore Gails own fridgings in Birds of Prey.
Sure the representation of Starfires personality is pretty bad, but in the reboot 90% of characters fall under the “crappy writing” descriptor.
“1.Discrimination based on gender”
You don’t see the men striking such sexual poses or showing off sexy manbody’s.
I suppose the counter argument to that would be….
True, but we do see other women fully clothed not striking a sexual pose (errr do we?). This suggests that the sexy is a character trait/stick and therefor not sexist.
2.Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Like Starfire only being a sexual prop?
Counter argument
stereotyping of social roles like men are studs and women are whores?
Here we have a sexually aggressive women who wants sex for her pleasure.
Female sexual remorse is such a cliché it fills a whole stock photo repository! Don’t you think it is about time we got a god damn hero who gets to be heroic and bone the shit out of anyone SHE likes?
I think it is pretty easy to tell what side of the debate I fall on here but I also think the other side has a strong point. That makes it worthy of arguing and challenging both views imo.
Number 5: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-8-stupidest-defenses-against-accusations-sexism/
I’m glad that one enterprising person has gone through all the comics themselves and determined that everyone wasn’t actually offended by everything. Thanks, one person! You keep on telling us how we feel.
How you feel is inmaterial to demonstrable fact. I’m sure the first people to sail around the world were terrified of falling of the edge of the earth…. Didn’t mean that the earth had an edge though.
Feelings are completely immaterial to a conversation about demonstrable facts. 1+1=2 because it demonstrably equals 2; it does not equal 2 because i have a warm fuzzy feelings about the number 2.
You are an abominable human being and I no longer want you on my website.
errr banhammer or just pissed?
They’re gone. I have no patience at all for anyone who holds up their own emotional reaction as “demonstrable fact” and everyone else’s emotional reactions as lies. There is no possible way in the world to converse with a person like that, and I refuse to pay for the bandwidth required to store their narcissism.
…Malaya and Roz should team up to ruin this dude. With Ronnie, of course. Can’t have too much bitch power without someone sane or intelligent to balance it out.