December Wolves: Yes, Zach, I'm A Prude

I've felt for a while now (40 hours) that White Boys On A Stage (Scumbag Reprise) would be an awesome song title, and since I don't have a band, I'll just use it here eventually. This one's about female characters in comics and what I contribute to if or when I choose to buy them. The title is me acknowledging the obvious.

I want to believe I'm clean on this one, but I'm not so sure.


All of this has been said before, over and over.

There's a new article that's making the rounds on iO9 on the old question of whether comic books have an anti-female agenda. It's got Freudian symbolism and an entirely too-reductive view of major flashpoints of Marvel history, so it's not like they're going for the win here. But that wasn't made me think.

Can female-centered comics sustain a meaningful audience without an assload of corporate backing or fanservice? Answer: No. Then again, can non-core titles survive without an assload of corporate backing and wacky bullshit? Unlikely. (See also: Iron Fist, Steel, Captain Britain, the Question, Catwoman or Luke Cage.) Also: Doesn't the dearth of Wolverine/X-Men titles Marvel puts out pretty much keep the lights on? Answer: Yes, writing books using characters the marketplace is interested in makes money.

Quickly, let's review female-centered comics I might be interested in. (From a major publisher, of course. Independent comics are a whole other cup of tea. I have a vague understanding of two universes. I will travel to others soon.)


I'm not buying Gotham City Sirens because I'm not sure what the fuck is going on with Paul Dini. Dini is not a dumb writer. He knows how to do female characters, as seen on his work in the animated Batman series. I had high hopes but the covers were pretty fanservice tops and I had no idea what was going on. Therefore, I didn't keep reading, which ended up being a good thing. Apparently #5 had Poison Ivy gave a cactus an orgasm and that's when I walk away.

Detective Comics (grandfathered in because of Batwoman) (do you see what I did there?) I buy the day it comes out. I am a good consumer, letting DC know that if they keep Greg Rucka writing a female character that's not bait for kidnapping or LOOK HUGE BOOBS and drawn by one of the most talented and imaginative artists in the medium, it will move units.


There's also Batgirl (right), which features Oracle and has a teenage girl putting on a costume with a bat on it and oh God, is this another high school "how am I going to divide up my time" comic? Maybe, not quite? There's an interesting B story about franchising a superhero name, which might be metacommentary on the universe the characters are set in, so this one seems inconsistent but worth keeping an eye on.





Cinderella I buy day and date. Am good consumer, especially because I talk about it publicly and keep the word of mouth going. I'm not entirely sure what to think about her open-shirted-ness for the first 10 pages. It seems just on the edge of plausible but possibly gratuitous. Then again, this is comics. She's not leaning down to pick something up on a panel, so it's a victory, just not a moral one.




Psylocke. I haven't read it or bought it. The covers are mad fanservice-y (see immediate right) and I feel awkward picking it up. Again, I don't want to support the trend of female characters in a thong or nonsense clothes, but the ongoing should be interesting. Female psychic ninja who'se British dumped into an Asian body. Given that the X-Men started out as an extremely political racial allegory, this title could be developed into some cool post-colonial stories. Put Fraction on it and the possibilities are endless. But it's only been two issues.


Ms. Marvel (getting canceled at issue #50, three issues away.) I'm late to this and I'm not sure if I should feel bad about that, but the Spiderman date issue was fun while not being unintelligent and the characters related to each other believably. Also, she's not fat, she just doesn't look like she has an unsuperheroic eating disorder. Go die.

Wonder Woman, the flagship DC character, should be a no-brainer, but honestly, I don't know where to begin with her. Start at the beginning, douchebag, is one answer, but I have trouble going back to the old drawing style. I'm a fan of color. I like Greg Rucka, so perhaps it would behoove me to pick up his Wonder Woman run and see where it goes.


I already buy two of these books, though. Is that enough? I have a limited amount of money and comics for me are not things I require to live and since I have not yet turned into a profitable enterprise, I'm loath to part with my hard earned money for something that I'm not reasonably sure about. I mean, hell, I still haven't picked up the new Lawrence Arms seven inch yet. But, if I want female ongoings that don't make me exasperated, then one of the best ways is to get into them when they're nascent.

I'm dancing around the question: Ought I to subsidize the books even when their quality hasn't been proven? It feels strange to be saying that explicitly. Look at Immortal Iron Fist. The main character was an Avenger and before that was in Daredevil and was a white dude doing white dude things, punching obviously bad people, getting laid and stopping HYDRA. That didn't last past the number 27, though if you throw in the one shots and Immortal Weapons issues, breaks 35. That comic was proven quality, even when Brubaker/Fraction left it and it got 11 issues.

I have other comics I can spend my money on items that I will actually enjoy, so I can vote with my dollar, but I'm not sure what my vote of no confidence in these series means to those publishers. Does buying Cinderella and Batwoman send a message to publishers that at least one segment of the marketplace will stand a female-fronted superhero book without fanservice being an integral portion of the ongoing, or just that the marketplace will tolerate spinoffs?

Does one person make much of a difference? Word of mouth helps, certainly. Can I reasonably stomach the parts that are meant to create and nurture a fanbase while the writers get their sea legs? Or, are these ongoings doomed to a small run to begin with and we ought to take what we can get? 20,000 people bought Iron Fist and Captain Britain at the end of their runs, so one person, numerically, shouldn't make a difference. That's a cop out, though.

It's a way to avoid saying the things that ought to be said. I'm not going to confuse that with talking shit on publishers, but I will say that if there is an ongoing with a female character I'm interested in (from a major publisher) that doesn't treat me and my pocketbook like a 15 year old kid, I will buy it as reliably, if not more so, as the other comics books I buy regularly.

I don't know if that's a major statement, enlightened self-interest or equal-ist. But it's what I've got and what I, as an attractive target audience (see left) am willing to commit to. And that might be the major statement in this piece.