Superheroes and Their Fans

Just to say upfront, my intention is not to bash any of the feminist game/comic/movie critics. I agree with them most of the time. Women in superhero comics, in video games, action films, horror films--hell, most everything in general--are generally portrayed poorly. Just as everyone has bitched before: They’re too flat, too one-dimensional, too sexy, too booby, too unrealistic, too much fanservice, too little girth, too stupid, too slutty/perfect, so on and so forth. This is the same with minorities, homosexuality, transgender, those with physical or mental disorders, etc.

My problem is that there seems to be two camps here. Those of us who are “inside” and those who are “outside” the fandom/community being criticised. You see this rampart with the gaming community calling out many “gamer grrls” for being casuals--basically claiming that these grrls are pretending to be gamer girls; they don’t know a FPS from an RTS. These "hardcore gamers" take glee in citing examples of these girls making ignorant comments on facebook. There’s also the pretty cosplay women who get heckled and jeered at conventions for being attention whores dressing as characters they only know about through a google search. And there’s tons of great articles and arguments about these issues all over the internet, but that’s not where I want to focus.

I’m concerned with superheroes and the superhero universes in comics. What I particularly love about superhero comics is that they’re complex, they're ongoing, and they have an amazing amount of history--though the history is extremely contradictory, often rewrites itself, and nothing is ever sacred--but the beauty is just that: it’s ever changing, ever growing, and no one is ever really dead, and if they fuck up your favorite character... well, you can always hope that someday a better writer will come along and fix it. Meanwhile, you can keep in your head and heart the image and personality of your favorites intact. (This is where you hear all the “Not MY *Name of Superhero*!” when a new writer changes something drastic in a character. Case in point: Daniel Way’s Deadpool.) 
 
You can pick and choose what you like from the “canon” and build your perfect Spider-man, Batman, Catwoman, or Captain Marvel. This also why, when you talk to a hardcore fan about a superhero, you’ll hear them say things like: “O’Neil’s run on The Question was a work of art” or “I like the original Jack Kirby Hulk over anything written after Peter David left and World War Hulk is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.” These people all have their own conceptions of the characters. And that’s what’s wonderful about the genre. I can love Batman for very different reasons than another fan, because my image of Batman is based on an amalgam of certain favorite writers (and dismissing the ones I hate) and the other person’s Batman may be based on what I dismissed (or, hell, comics I haven’t read yet).

My Batman's sweeter than yours

So here is where we come back to the “insider” and “outsider” of the superhero community. I read an Obama-as-Superhero article a few year ago that made a comment about African Americans in superhero comics, essentially stating that: “There are no black superheroes.” I, like many of the other superhero fans who read the article, went up in arms. What the hell was this person talking about?! Luke Cage, Storm, Black Panther, Jon Stewart, Spawn, Blade, Falcon, War Machine, Steel, and many others would love to have a talk with you, buddy! There are TONS of black superheroes! Tons of great and well-loved black superheroes! But then I had to stop, calm down, and reason that what this writer meant to say is that there weren’t many black superheroes well known to the “outsider” general public. Because, sadly, this is true. Many people have no clue who any of those superheroes I named are. Having been so embroiled in the superhero community and culture, I had grown oblivious to the people outside of it.

The same goes with female superheroes and gay superheroes. When DC made a huge deal last year about the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, coming out of the closet, it seemed like the only people who freaked out were those who had no idea who he was or who never even read a superhero comic before. (Granted, I knew some who were upset because it was pretty much canon in the continuity that Alan Scott was happily married with children.) But gays have been a prominent part of superhero comics, arguably, since their inception, but definitely for the past few decades. There were blatant pro-gay comics as far back as the 80s. In 1982, during J. M. DeMatteis' run, Captain America stood up for his gay longtime best friend Arnie when he was being tortured and mocked by Neo-Nazis. Cap even did was Cap does best, he told Arnie that he was a good man and nothing can corrupt his love for Michael (Arnie’s lover).

Captain America Vol. 1 #296

Captain America Vol. 1 #296

Captain America Vol. 1 #296

This was in the 80s! 

In 2000, Kyle Rayner, another Green Lantern, beat up a group of hater punks who put his gay friend Terry in the hospital for kissing another boy in public. Marvel’s Hulkling and Wiccan were openly gay long before Alan Scott came out of the closet. So were lesbians Phyla-Vell and Moondragon (Marvel) and DC’s Batwoman (Katherine Kane), among many others.

Why do you tease me like this, Marvel?

Pro-homosexuality in comics is nothing new--though still rocky, sure, and still in need of work. But it’s there. So why did people act like it was a big deal to see Alan Scott come out? (article about the Moms against Green Lantern). The thing is, we didn’t. We being the superhero community. We’ve seen all this and more. We’ve seen strong women in comics. We love them. And despite what some articles say we, men and women alike, get upset when we see our strong, powerful, and tough ladies transformed into something weak or traditionally sexy (for instance Amanda “The Wall” Waller).

Original Amanda Waller

New Amanda Waller

Thing is, these changes aren’t done for the fans or the “insiders,” these changes are made for those people on the outside. It’s the “new readers” that the publishers are trying to draw in. I hear a lot of these blogs and articles going on about how cape comics are so men-exclusive, men-pandering, and conservative... but it’s not that simple. Historically, yes, cape comics have not been great about portraying women or pandering to women readers. (Though, arguably, with all the gorgeous actors, Marvel's movies have been doing a great job reversing that). But the strong women are there. They’ve been there for a while now. They’re not perfect, but they’re there. Same goes with minorities, gays, the handicapped, and so on.

I’ll confess: I like She-Hulk. I like Power Girl. They’re both slutty and party animals with big boobs and muscles and crazy tall, but I like them. They’re fun. I like how strong they are and how they smile a lot.

Greg Horn's She-Hulk

Amanda Conner's Power Girl (That's right, drawn by a woman!)

These days, not a lot of superheroes smile any more. Everything’s serious and dark. Women and men are getting raped left and right. Kids are dying. There are massacres and gore and post traumatic stress disorders. And while, yes, I’m a child of the X-Treme 90s and a forever Venom, Punisher, and Spawn fan... I do appreciate the happier superheroes. I love Superman and Captain Marvel (Billy Batson). And that’s why I like She-Hulk and Power Girl. They kick ass and they don’t need steady boyfriends. Power Girl is the CEO of a technology corporation and has a stinky, ill-tempered pet cat. She-Hulk is a lawyer and she’s got her pick of any man in the Marvel Universe. She-Hulk has been called out for being too promiscuous, being too much like a man, which is supposed to be a turn-off--such unlady-like behavior!--and yet she has tons of fans, me included. I like how she kicked a pouting Hercules to the curb after a one-night stand and how she made the Juggernaut doofy after bed-breaking sex.

She’s a big green female Tony Stark. And sure, you can point out the flaws in her character, but all those flaws are already talked about in the comics themselves; they’re issues that are very relevant to her character and her personality and her relationships. I want to see more of her.

And when they recently changed Power Girl from the funny, wonderful, sassy single blonde of Palmiotti and Gray’s run to Mr. Terrific’s “causal” girlfriend in the New52, many people were outraged. Men and women fans. Suddenly PG went from being a great, newly-fleshed out character (see what I did there?) to a pretty and dull play thing. No one was happy.

See, it’s not about the status-quo. Cape comics have historically been up for introducing new and controversial and, actually, very politically progressive things such as Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, Civil Rights, Anti-nukes, Anti-Registration, and even Socialism (I mean, come on, has no one read the original Superman comics?). Captain America is shockingly non-conservative. Like I showed before, he stood up for gays in the 80s, before they even said the word "gay" in comics. He even disowned America and became Nomad for a time because he hated the way politics were being handled in the U.S. He’s been that way since Kirby revived him in the 60s. Like I’ve said before, strong women, gays, minorities have already snuck their way into the genre. Their place is strenuous, yes, and they've been fighting hard to keep their place, but they're there. Liberal politics have had a pretty firm hold in comics since the civil rights movement and Vietnam (the bronze age), and I believe superhero comics would be even more progressive today had it not been for the constraints caused by the Comic Codes Act in the 50s--the same constraints that still linger today.

What’s wrong with today’s superhero comics is that it has become all about money. It’s about the publishers and their efforts to draw in new crowds. Sex sells, boobs sell, or so the publishers think. The movies are making insane amounts of money, but Marvel and DC still want those fans to come to the comics. So they have to play nice for the newbies. If we get too controversial... oh man, we better back-peddle. Don’t want to lose those sales. So they dumb it all down. They change the continuity to make it easier for new people to catch up. Meanwhile, these drastic changes have been infuriating for the long-time “insiders.”

I don’t mind change. Don’t get me wrong. But I do mind editors and publishers altering everything that is great about a character just so it can be more “sellable.” Making Billy Batson (previously Captain Marvel and now Shazam) go from a very good-hearted boy to an angsty vicious teen was unacceptable, just as much as DC making Power Girl a trophy play girl.

But it’s easy to point out all the things that are wrong with superhero comics today. Everyone’s doing it. Sadly, though, the more you focus on the bad, the less anyone is going to see the good stuff buried under it.

There is good stuff out there. Wonderful stuff. Stuff I haven’t even read yet. There’s some classic stuff too. Hilariously (or maybe not-so-hilariously) some of the most progressive pro-female stuff I've read in comics was in Judge Dredd (though not a superhero comic, I'll admit). There's more stuff than I can even list here. And it’s not about making yourself like women characters that you would otherwise hate (I’ve been reading blogs recently actually arguing just that), it’s about finding the kind of women characters you do like and praising them. Trust me, there are a LOT of female superheroes out there and, despite what you hear, they aren’t all the same.

So, instead of focusing so much on bashing comics for all these terrible character changes and poor treatment of women and minorities, our effort should be on praising those who do it right. I’m preaching to the choir here and stating the obvious, but publishers could care less about how terrible or oppressive all them boobies are on the covers. They only care about sales. If we support the comics that are good, if we buy them and encourage new readers to buy them over the bad ones, then we’ll actually make a difference. Sure, Debbie Downer says that we’ll still never overcome the onrush of terrible and stupid readers who only want boobies and blood, and we can't dissuade the “tried and true” methods of DC and Marvel... but I’d like to think that if fan-feminists use the same publicity they get to bash the writers and editors of comics to also praise the good comics, then we might get a lot of those readers who would otherwise never think twice about reading a cape comic. As a superhero lover, I’d rather us not waste all our energy banding together in protest only--we should also band together as fans.

That's MY Supes

If you want to read more about Cap's gay BFF:
http://trelkez.tumblr.com/post/28072827300/starring-captain-americas-gay-bff-arnie-roth