MS. Magazine #1, 1972
When Wonder Woman appeared in 1941, she was immediately very different from the superhero boys club. Created by psychologist William Moulton Marston, who invented the polygraph “lie detector” and wrote comics under the pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman was not only a super-powered Amazon princess with strength equal to that of the mighty Superman but also an archetype of kinky feminine empowerment (just ask Golden Age Wonder Woman about the Phallic Menace). Still, despite hit and miss characterizations after Marston’s death and Comics Code sanitizing, Wonder Woman has endured as a feminist icon as well as a reminder of ongoing sexist objectification of women in comic books (esp. by Frank Miller, here and here). The Amazon Princess Diana illustrates what her supporters and critics have noted are gender inequities in male-dominated characterizations of superheroines, a trend clearly illustrated by recent Wonder Woman scribe Gail Simone in her infamous “Women In Refrigerators” row. Still, there has been some progress (for example, Marvel’s Heralds and ironically-titled Girl Comics) but sexist attitudes towards superheroines still persist in comics AND movies. Besides Wonder Woman, we’ll take a look at Robin the girl wonder (and Green Arrow’s latest Speedy) and the newest Batwoman as we reflect upon the history of the Action Superheroine!
PROMETHEA is acclaimed British writer Alan Moore’s use of a strong female superheroine to explore themes of magical imagination and, again, deconstruct superheroes. Moore recalls: “the original idea behind Promethea was to come up with something that worked as a mainstream superhero character, maybe looked a bit like Wonder Woman or Doctor Strange in a weak light, and which would enable me to explore the magical concepts that I was interested in before a mainstream comics audience that may never have encountered these ideas before… Because in some sense, when I’m talking about magic, I’m only talking about the creative process. Magic to me is something from nothing, which includes rabbits out of hats, it includes the creation of the universe from a quantum vacuum, or it includes how a comic comes into being from me sitting in an armchair with a completely blank mind. It’s all of this. Any given creativity is magic.“ You can see some academic musings on Promethea’s themes here and here.
Introduction to Feminist Theory and the problem of “Supergirls Gone Wild“
Wow the list of the fate of all the super female charaters is very unfortunate; all are either dead, raped, depowered, impregnated, tortured, or a combination of mental disorders and before mentioned. Not one female hero escapes the male centric rule.
By: Eriksharifrabah on March 28, 2010
at 4:47 pm
Simone’s “Women in Refrigerators” list sparked a lot of controversy and is indeed a sobering illustration of comics characterizations of women (here’s an updated list and the backstory as well as an interesting 10 years later reflection). Fighting sexism is an ongoing struggle.
By: Doc T on March 28, 2010
at 5:48 pm
Hilarious dark comment stated; females there-in depicted are but cannon fodder for supervillains.
For which described in the 10 years later blog post, where cannon fodder and super villain can be symbolically inferred from the weapon/Bullet Kitty Pryde is protecting us against is, pretty much a giant phallus… hhhrrrmm
yes sexism is rooted far more than I realized.
By: ERIKsharifrabah on March 28, 2010
at 7:05 pm
Or, culture has become overly (overTly?) sexified, to borrow your term, and created a counter-culture that cannot help but symbolically recreate imagery of the V, OO, ->, etc…where is Dr. Ruth??
By: Garret on March 28, 2010
at 11:29 pm
Exactly Garret haha
By: ERIKsharifRABAH on March 29, 2010
at 2:36 am
By: Doc T on September 22, 2010
at 12:01 pm
UPDATE: The latest dust-up evokes an answer to the “guys are objectified also” argument. Check out “The Myth of Male Objectification in Superhero Comics” at Comics Bulletin.
By: Doc T on February 26, 2012
at 5:32 pm