It’s new comic day tomorrow! What are folks looking forward to?
Around the Tubes
The Beat – Ross Richie Wants to Push #ComicsForward (so I’m giving some direction) – My take soon.
Kotaku – Sounds Like Batman: Arkham Knight Will Be Surprisingly Violent – As if Batman isn’t normally violent?
Around the Tubes Reviews
Nothing But Comics – Ninjak #1
Bleeding Cool – No Mercy #1
CBR – Rocket Raccoon #9
CBR – Saga #26
Among the big two publishers there is a fairly common occurrence whereby in order to revamp a team title that there is a shakeup of the characters that belong to that team. The new characters figure out how to work together under some duress, and then they become an unstoppable team. This is perhaps the most common with the biggest teams in the medium – the Justice League, The X-Men and the Avengers – as the smaller teams tend to stay more true to their membership. What is notable about the dynamics of these teams is when the female membership is examined. Although other teams arguably are better in terms of sales, the Justice League will generally serve as some of kind of touchstone for teams in the medium as it was the first and has the biggest names from a popular culture standpoint. The League started as a collection of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, the Flash and Aquaman, and when looked upon from that standpoint, the ratio of female to male characters is six to one.
Over the course of the Justice League’s publication history, and more or less for the publication history of every team, there has been a couple of general rules when it comes to its female members. Female members, if they are written out of the team, and if they are written out of the team, they almost always have to be replaced by another female member. Equally, when the characters are written out, there is not such a big pool to draw upon when replacing them as if a male character were written out of the story. In 2006, the Justice League of America was rebooted once again, this time after the events of Infinite Crisis, and in order to tie into the rift between the big three heroes at the time, they decided to sit down and vote on each other’s inclusion into the League as well as all of the other heroes. While this resulted in a new team, what it also did was to present a somewhat memorable cover (seen at the above right.) While it is an impressive collection of heroes, the problem of gender parity is obvious here. There is good representation of most of the popular characters here, but aside from female characters from another time, most of the female superheroes from DC are shown in one panel, whereas there are nunmerous lacking from well-known male characters, and even then the ratio of male to female characters in this picture is 30 to 12, not as bad as 6 to 1, but that still boils down to 5 to 2.
Different teams have different compositions of characters. Justice League International in the new 52 actually had a one to one gender parity (depending on who was counted in its members) and the X-Men have always been better at gender parity, the more so that the X-Men title is comprised of only female members. At the same time, medium wide, there are generally fewer female characters to draw upon if there was to be a need for them. In a real world sense, there exists equally the ability of a woman or a man to be a hero, and in terms of who could develop superpowers, seeing as the origins are so different, there is no real reason why men would be favored over women. The favoritism only exists in character design. It is not as though female characters should be expected to thrive in comics, at least from a sales standpoint, but creators should endeavor to at least create some interesting background or secondary female characters that would have a chance to grow into something more over time
In the wake of the Pushcomicsforward movement there have been a lot of questions about what that means and how to accomplish it. While there are indeed many facets behind how to make comics a thriving medium, there are no definite answers. In terms of the big two publishers though, there is at least one concept which could be forever scrapped without much loss to the continuity of comics, and that is to do away with death as a gimmick. There used to be a saying in comics that the only two characters that stay dead in comics are Jason Todd and Bucky Barnes, but in recent years not only have both returned from the dead, but both have been extremely popular in their new versions. The popular saying thus changed to Uncle Ben being the only one that can stay dead, but even an alternate universe version of him recently showed up in Spider-Verse.
The problem with using death as a plot device is that it is often not really relevant to the overall story, at least not in the sense that it should be. That is to say that if death is going to be used, that it should not simply be introduced as a gimmick to elicit sales (the death of Superman) or a gimmick to play at the heartstrings of its readers (the multiple deaths of Jean Grey.) Of course death exists in the comic world as it does in the real world, but for the focus on death as an action for main characters, the secondary impact of their actions are often overlooked. This was highlighted in the movie Man of Steel as Superman and Zod laid waste to Metropolis, which likely would result in the deaths of millions. The movies showed a more realistic view of what the carnage would be like for these characters, and really even minor uses of powers would have unforeseen repercussions. For instance, how do heroes without radios avoid airplanes when flying? There are complex rules for that in the real world, but the idea of a hero hitting a plane is never addressed in comics.
It is thus the case that in one case death is ignored, and in another that it is trivialized, but there is a much bigger result of death. With death as such a major cop-out for writers, something which is added for a little bit of extra drama, the crosshairs are often placed not on established characters, but rather on newer ones. Thus while pushcomicsforward looks to the future of how to evolve the medium, one of the inherent problems of the minor characters at the big two is they need to find some way to survive in universe in order to still become relevant. It is a good start that Alan Scott is written as gay and Wally West is black, but the difference is less profound if they become unpopular and then show up later on panel just to be wiped away on some company wide crossover. Death should therefore be used universally the same, with no resurrection, no clones or any other gimmick to bring back beloved characters. Instead let them live, and work for better characters and better stories.
Recently the head honchos at BOOM! Studios put out the idea that comics needs to change and to not be stagnant as a medium. Long since dominated by superhero stories, the medium has indeed made a number of changed in the past couple of decades and the change is noticeable in some regards. Equally though, comics are somewhat of a niche when it comes to their perception in popular culture. Although there is an increasing amount of female readers, the medium is slower to make the changes to draw in fans of all backgrounds, and especially at the big two publishers instead still focuses on mostly a collection of characters who are both white and male. While the interest in push comics forward doesn’t necessarily lie solely with the big two publishers, change has to happen there as elsewhere in order for the medium to evolve.
Science in comics was a bit of an x-factor until the onset of the silver age. Until that point, science was usually grossly misapplied in order to move along a plot. Gross inaccuracies were made and aspects of scientific knowledge would be presented, leaving what was actually used of the science to be misappropriated and simplistic. As the silver age started, the focus on science is what rescued comics from being a medium for children, and instead allowed the medium to mature. The changes first came at DC, though with the generally more god-like powers of the characters, the science was not as pertinent. Hawkman and Green Lantern became intergalactic police, the Atom used White Dwarf matter to give himself powers, and the Flash became a scientist that gained powers by a scientific accident. While the science was there, it was not until Marvel arrived that it redefined science in comics. Although still unreal, the science was still presented in a way that it could be real, at least in our imagination. Instead of characters that were either given or born with their powers, the new wave of heroes earned it the hard way, by building it themselves. Not every Marvel hero was a scientist, but there were a few – Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Reed Richards. While this did push the envelope forward for comics as a medium, what was left behind were the women. The female leads to these heroes were still sometimes heroes, but they fell back into the template of having powers given to them. Sue Storm was a college dropout, and Janet van Dyne was just an girlfriend. They even did better than Betty Ross, Pepper Potts and Mary Jane Watson, who were often relegated to secondary status as damsels in distress (though Sue Storm also performed this role despite being a power superhero.)
While there are perhaps more men than women in science still as a profession, there is no real clear reason why. Women at younger ages are as adept as their male counterparts, and the interest for science is equally there. Some consider it to be a genderized problem, that the “old boys club” of science discourages women from entering its field in some cases, and that women are taught gender roles by society to be less focused on science as opposed to other ventures. While there is debate on these assertions, it is true that women have no more or less natural inclination to science than men do. So why can’t there be a female version of a super scientist? There are of course some very intelligent women in comics. The female version of the Hulk is an accomplished lawyer, and others have shown an ability to pursue more academic fields than what is traditionally typified by their genders, but there is still a gap in terms of the heroes, and who can do what. Female characters can still be powerful, but it is unlikely that their minds are capable of giving them those powers. In fact a large portion of female characters derive their powers from either magic or the supernatural.
What has been an interesting and worthwhile development in the cinematic versions of comics, is that the women characters are presented in a way which is a lot more progressive. Jane Foster is an astrophysicist and in the previous round of Fantastic Four movies, Sue Storm was shown to a be a scientific genius in her own right. This is because as the characters move to a more popular medium, they are forced into a more acceptable presentation of the role that women play, more so than just damsels in distress, but also as able thinkers on their own. So why is there no female superscientific genius yet in comics? This comes back to the inherent idea behind #pushcomicsforward, that there can and should be such female characters, because the medium simply has not caught up yet to the reality of the world. There is even maybe not a need for as many as Marvel has, but a character that is at least adept at science, and who knows the periodic table from the kitchen table. There is no reason not to, as such a character wouldn’t even have to carry a series, but they could still be there, guiding the scientific discussion to a place that is more realistic.
