I love She-Hulk so much and think she is awesome on both the Hulk level and the Jennifer Walters level, and I will literally fight anyone who says otherwise.
posted by redsparkler at 8:09 AM on May 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

"But they¡¯re all ridiculous in the same way. Dazzler, Miss Elusive, the Enchantress, She-Wolf, Medusa, She-Hulk. Their power is their allure, which, looked at another way, is the absence of power. Even their bodies are not their own. They are without force."

Ugggghhhh. I didn't think the New Yorker did fluff pieces, but I guess I'm wrong. Lepore's look at comic history is interesting, but framing it between her casual readings of A-Force is downright offensive to women who read comics, and I say this as a woman who doesn't read that many comics right now, but still knows enough to not go spouting off about how silly lady superheroes are because some of them have dude counterparts. Heck, most dude superheroes have their own dude counterparts!
posted by redsparkler at 8:14 AM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

G. Willow Wilson's response is a thing of beauty.
posted by mephron at 8:22 AM on May 14, 2015 [17 favorites]

Speaking of which, I believe the post is supposed to refer to "Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:23 AM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

The line about them all being based on allure and absence of power is incredibly frustrating given that she talks extensively about She Hulk, but never addresses how a character whose super power is incredible strength, but who pays her rent by being an talented and intelligent lawyer fits that paradigm. She Hulk's got power all over the place.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:24 AM on May 14, 2015 [15 favorites]

G. Willow Wilson's response is a thing of beauty.

I have been a little cheeky thus far, so let me close by saying that I imagine Dr. Lepore and I want the same thing: better, more nuanced portrayals of women in pop culture. What I don¡¯t understand is why someone in her position would, from her perch a thousand feet up in the ivory tower, take pot shots at those of us who are in the trenches, doing exactly that.

I refrained from copy and pasting the entire thing, but yes, it is indeed a thing of beauty.
posted by redsparkler at 8:31 AM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

Lepore has some serious academic cred, so I'm filing this under "crap piece by someone who should have done much, much better, but apparently thought that the subject was beneath her."
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:32 AM on May 14, 2015 [18 favorites]

I feel like Lepore just picked a comic at (roughly) random to bounce off her research from the Wonder Woman stuff and it just ... went poorly for her. There's criticisms to be made, sure, but she doesn't make them, or make them cogently at least. The responses are great, however.
posted by griphus at 8:36 AM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

You can feel Lepore's distaste (or disdain) for comics in the way she approaches the topic in the article . . . comics are strictly the domain of 10-year-old boys, the "experts"!
posted by pt68 at 8:39 AM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

Calderon's response links to a great analysis of She-Hulk (who is one of my favorite characters of all time) from last year, tearing apart a very similar description of the character.
posted by eamondaly at 8:41 AM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is almost as entertaining as that time Anthony Lane reviewed Watchmen.
posted by Nevin at 8:42 AM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Maybe she was trying to do a sort of Anthony Lane/Hilton Als snarkfest thing but it just didn't work.
posted by griphus at 8:42 AM on May 14, 2015

I think G. Willow Wilson's response is really weak. To someone outside the industry peering in, the heroes all look like porn stars and it's noticeable that many of them have powers based on allure. Little boys reading the comics giggle at all the cleavage and wonder aloud about why their mom would expect things to be different. For Wilson to respond with surprise that "someone who obviously values rigorous scholarship would analyze the first issue of a crossover event without any apparent knowledge of what a crossover event is" and to claim that Lepore should know that a lot of in is "tongue in cheek" totally misses the point. It's an article about audience reaction. You can't demand that the audience get the joke.

Sure, G. Willow Wilson is in the trenches trying to reform superheroes... but there's still a ton of retrograde crap in there and that's the first thing that a lot of people will see. I mean, it is stupid that "Lady Iron Man" is just Iron Man with metal breasts, and I think it's disingenuous to claim that it's entirely done for tongue-in-cheek parodic purposes. Because Wilson is in the trenches, I think she only sees the advances she's making and doesn't see that the overall package is still pretty unpleasant to a lot of potential readers.

(Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel are the truly progressive Marvel books.)
posted by painquale at 8:43 AM on May 14, 2015 [14 favorites]

I mean, it is stupid that "Lady Iron Man" is just Iron Man with metal breasts...

From what I remember, Rescue is a suit that Tony Stark designed personally for Pepper to use while he was MIA having his brain cleaned (or something). Because he had previously insisted she have a suit of armor and she had taken issue with the all the violence implied by Tony's suits, he respected her choice and designed the suit to be used specifically for saving lives rather than loading it up with repulsor beams and smart bombs. I think originally it was meant to have no offensive capability whatsoever, but that may have changed.

But either way, Rescue was conceived very much as a response to Iron Man and what he stood for and how he stood for it.
posted by griphus at 8:49 AM on May 14, 2015 [11 favorites]

And I still have no idea what "powers based on allure" means outside for a few characters.
posted by griphus at 8:50 AM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I mean, it is stupid that "Lady Iron Man" is just Iron Man with metal breasts

It's stupid if and only if your engagement with the comic is solely based on looking at the pretty pictures. Rescue (the character waved away as "Lady Iron Man") is not at all like Iron Man. Even the armor is in stark contrast to Iron Man's, as it's designed for defense and aid.

I mean, Lepore literally judges the book by its cover. It's hard to argue cogently against such an incredibly lazy analysis.
posted by eamondaly at 8:50 AM on May 14, 2015 [14 favorites]

G. Willow Wilson's response is a thing of beauty.

I wonder if "throwing shade" and "rather chuffed" have ever been used in adjacent sentences before.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:58 AM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

But either way, Rescue was conceived very much as a response to Iron Man and what he stood for and how he stood for it.

OK, but that doesn't have much to do with the visual design of the suit.

Lepore's other memorable example of a pretty bad costume image is female-Loki wearing emerald snakeskin pasties over her nipples. Wilson, of course, ignores this example. Instead, she complains that Lepore doesn't realize that male and female superheroes alike wear latex, but this is such a weird defense given that the same material can be sexualized for images of one gender and not the other, and besides, Lepore never even mentions latex.

It's stupid if and only if your engagement with the comic is solely based on looking at the pretty pictures. Rescue (the character waved away as "Lady Iron Man") is not at all like Iron Man.

Honestly, I think this is mostly an argument about the art, not the writing. If Erica Henderson or Adrian Alphona penciled A-Force, I doubt Lepore would have wrote the article.
posted by painquale at 8:59 AM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Sure, G. Willow Wilson is in the trenches trying to reform superheroes... but there's still a ton of retrograde crap in there and that's the first thing that a lot of people will see.

That may be the case, but it doesn't diminish G. Willow Wilson's point that someone who is ostensibly a scholar, writing for The New Yorker, should be held to a higher standard than that of the writer of a bombastic NY Daily News editorial.

Lepore's piece was incredibly lazy and does a great disservice to those working in the comic medium by treating comics as something not worth considering at all seriously.
posted by dubitable at 9:00 AM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

The call for Lepore to have done "research" is more like a call for her have submitted to brainwashing, IMO. I think the conclusions she came to are apt and correct. I think she rightly knew that there was no point in delving into the in-universe explanation of Arcadia or the reasons that Tony Stark built the Rescue armor: those are totally besides the point and she was right to ignore them.
posted by painquale at 9:05 AM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Lepore has some serious academic cred, so I'm filing this under "crap piece by someone who should have done much, much better, but apparently thought that the subject was beneath her."

Thank you for articulating what I was trying to think of.
posted by marxchivist at 9:07 AM on May 14, 2015

Neither Lepore and Wilson get it. They both are missing the point. The structured will always be rigged. Comic books is a male-dominated business, and no matter what is done to tinker with it, the core will always have a masculine dominance.

Yes, female superheroes are Adam's Rib rip offs who all have back problems. They were created by men and are all male interpretation of what an ideal women ought to be --never what a woman can be if she explores her own natural potential as only she'd know best. Men have their maps with those comics, but not women. Even if a woman gets a foothold, she will always be confined in the very way that will ultimately turn on her and her creation.

It is the reason I stopped reading comic books from the Big Two and have no interest of ever going back. Their products are deficient on every level. I prefer reading a risk-taker who starts her own book and company from scratch and does not latch on to one of the good old boys.

Build your own castle instead of trying to patch up the crumbling one that got away with misogyny for far too long. That's what a real heroine is all about.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 9:08 AM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

The call for Lepore to have done "research" is more like a call for her have submitted to brainwashing...

She literally refers to herself (albeit tongue-in-cheek) as "Professor." If this was Joel Stein writing for Time magazine, whatever, but she's a scholar and this is ostensibly her field.
posted by griphus at 9:09 AM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

There's a very strong argument to be made about the deep-seated anti-feminism of the superhero comics genre as it's developed in the U.S., but Lepore's disdain for the genre is so palpable in her article that it drowns out whatever finer points she's trying to make. I can't get any thesis out of it other than ¡°I have no respect for this.¡± Which, fine, it's your brain, but maybe that's not the best basis for a New Yorker essay?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:17 AM on May 14, 2015 [14 favorites]

The call for Lepore to have done "research" is more like a call for her have submitted to brainwashing, IMO. I think the conclusions she came to are apt and correct.

It's not whether or not she should have done research--she did do research, the middle section of the article was all about Wonder Woman and pin-up girls and she talked about her book, which I'm sure she researched the hell out of. But in terms of thinking about how that is connected with modern comics she just gave it a miss and phoned it in.

I think she rightly knew that there was no point in delving into the in-universe explanation of Arcadia or the reasons that Tony Stark built the Rescue armor: those are totally besides the point and she was right to ignore them.

It's not about digging into the particulars of the plot-lines or character histories so much as it is about connecting her research to the rest of the article. I think that is a reasonable expectation for this kind of piece, considering that the author also wrote a book called "The Secret History of Wonder Woman." But rather than do that, she simply recorded a patronizing conversation she had with some boys. That is lazy.
posted by dubitable at 9:18 AM on May 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

I think this is mostly an argument about the art, not the writing.

It absolutely is, which-- given her credentials-- is an inexplicably ignorant analysis of the medium.
posted by eamondaly at 9:21 AM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

In better news, the coming CBS Supergirl series looks promising.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:30 AM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh please. It wasn't that bad, and hints at the heart of disingenuous comic characterizations.

Though she misses the boat on Whedon, who is a good writer who works with weak material and terrible formats. His feminism is so thin you can read the 30 page script from Ultron through it.
posted by clvrmnky at 9:37 AM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Even the armor is in stark contrast to Iron Man's

I see what you did there.
posted by Foosnark at 10:49 AM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think this is mostly an argument about the art, not the writing.

It absolutely is, which-- given her credentials-- is an inexplicably ignorant analysis of the medium.

I think it's perfectly fine for an academic to write a little article pointing out that, from a layman's point of view, from the view of a mom and a couple 10-year-old boys grabbing a random superhero comic, the artwork is silly (at best) and caricatures women and what they wear in ways that are obviously designed for the male gaze.

All the folks dumping Rescue lore still haven't answered why a suit of armor would have breasts on it. Even the 10-year-old boys can see how silly that is.
posted by straight at 11:08 AM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm enjoying the discussion a lot. But if I can make one point:

Lepore doesn't realize that male and female superheroes alike wear latex, but this is such a weird defense given that the same material can be sexualized for images of one gender and not the other

For some of us the traditional male characters were pretty sexualized also - to the point where I used to think the male artists were all secret gays. Or at least projecting some latent homo-desire into their art.

They're sexualized in a different way, of course, and I don't want to suggest that there's no sexism in comics (there's a difference between being the fetishized object of male gaze and being the heroic projection of male fantasy).

Anyways, I'm enjoying the increased presence of women in comics. Even the ten year old boy in me does.
posted by kanewai at 11:17 AM on May 14, 2015

It is the reason I stopped reading comic books from the Big Two and have no interest of ever going back. Their products are deficient on every level. I prefer reading a risk-taker who starts her own book and company from scratch and does not latch on to one of the good old boys.

Build your own castle instead of trying to patch up the crumbling one that got away with misogyny for far too long. That's what a real heroine is all about.

posted by Alexandra Kitty at 12:08 PM on May 14 [3 favorites +] [!]

This is basically saying that the only way to affect real cultural change is to completely ignore mainstream popular culture. You need outsiders working to put pressure on the center, but at some point the center has to shift from the pressure being put on it by those outsiders, or nothing has really changed.
posted by edbles at 11:17 AM on May 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

TFA is annoying the way any writer trying to pass off ignorance of subject matter as wit or a fresh perspective is.

"Here's something I don't know anything about, not the characters, not the backstories, not the context, so I'll just write whatever pops into my head about it, aren't I cute? Also, the true 'experts' on comics are 10-year-old boys."
posted by signal at 11:53 AM on May 14, 2015

I think it's perfectly fine for an academic to write a little article pointing out that, from a layman's point of view, from the view of a mom and a couple 10-year-old boys grabbing a random superhero comic, the artwork is silly (at best) and caricatures women and what they wear in ways that are obviously designed for the male gaze.

No argument here, but that's not the thrust of Lepore's piece. She's not limiting it to the artwork-- she's saying the complete work is essentially without merit because of teh bewbs. I would absolutely agree that comics have a long, terrible history of misogyny that shouldn't be swept under the carpet just because superheroes are hot commodities right now. But I also think the only way to fix that is to actually critique the work instead of making silly drive-by comparisons to pornography.

All the folks dumping Rescue lore still haven't answered why a suit of armor would have breasts on it.

I'm not defending iron breasts. I'm saying there's more to the woman behind them. Lepore has written off that character entirely because of her appearance and makes no attempt to examine what might make her something other than Lady Iron Man. If that's not body-shaming I don't know what is.
posted by eamondaly at 12:01 PM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

Someone should really just adapt Worm into... oh, about 10 years of comics. There's a female superhero protagonist who few could complain about, in my opinion.

By the way, if you haven't read Worm and you love comics and books, you need to do yourself a favor.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:13 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I sense a misunderstanding that parallels pretty well with the Charlie Hebdo thing - Art looks different to outsiders than it does to insiders. There is a vocabulary developed within the genre of 'French left wing comics' just as much as there is in 'Big 2 comics'.

The world is rife with outsiders more than willing to interpret these things through their cultural lens. Should female superheroes wear something that covers all of their curves because a man might get the wrong idea?
posted by Dmenet at 12:17 PM on May 14, 2015

Let's not conflate female characters created by overwhelmingly male writers and drawn by overwhelmingly male artists, with actual women who have actual agency. There's a looooooong way between "Tigra is a catgirl with an hourglass figure who walks around in a string bikini because she just so happens to dislike the way clothes feel, isn't that convenient, maybe somebody should think about what we're saying there" and mandatory burkhas.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:22 PM on May 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Build your own castle instead of trying to patch up the crumbling one that got away with misogyny for far too long. That's what a real heroine is all about.

1) There actually is a limited amount of stone around, both literally and figuratively.

2) There is a long history of people building their own castles, then being kicked out of said castles and written out of history. See also: most of the USA, most modern music, geek fandom conventions, computer science, liking dolls/action figures.

3) A lot of culture is about conversations we have with each other and with ourselves. That conversation can change society pretty radically over a short amount of time. The deck is literally stacked from top to bottom; even if women could successfully create something entirely different that was somehow magically not sexist (no small thing, given internalized sexism), it is more likely to be marginalized (as it has been - women have been creating comics for decades) than respected. If it is respected, it is then highly likely to be co-opted. "If you build it, they will come" only works for a limited number of white men.

4) Women can, and are, both acting within contexts and without them. We can, and already do, both.

5) Most heroes have flaws. Those flaws can including loving problematic things. Those flaws are likely to include loving problematic things if you go with the heroine's journey instead of the heroes, since the heroine's journey has an added step of coalition building.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:47 PM on May 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Zarquon: Wilson's response to this article covers that: These are women wearing outfits analogous to the ones that men wear, posing similarly to how men pose. What should super-heroes wear?
posted by Dmenet at 12:49 PM on May 14, 2015

The women on the cover of A-Force are, yes. But that's a choice made in direct response to a large, large body of work where they don't, and if you're talking about needing to look at art in context it's important to look at all the context.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:00 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The women on the cover of A-Force are, yes

Which, by remarkable coincidence, is the comic that Lepore was writing about, and claiming that they were dressed like porn stars. Given the staggering amount of material in comics that more-than-fully merits the most scathing critique that analysis from a feminist perspective can bring to bear, why is Lepore singling out one of the very few titles that's doing better? And whatever the answer to THAT question is, why is her critique so shallow and uninformed?
posted by Ipsifendus at 1:21 PM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

These are women wearing outfits analogous to the ones that men wear, posing similarly to how men pose. What should super-heroes wear?

Wilson cherry-picked her examples. Lepore brought up the Iron Man armor with breasts, the snakeskin pasties, the fishnet garters, and the seashell bra. She did not mention leotards. Wilson tried to steer the debate to things that she could more easily defend.

This is basically saying that the only way to affect real cultural change is to completely ignore mainstream popular culture.

That seems like an extreme interpretation. Supporting comics by other publishers isn't completely ignoring mainstream popular culture. I really like Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel, but they will eventually fall into the hands of other writers, and the characters will almost certainly be warped and ruined. (It's already pretty terrible to see Kamala in crossovers in other titles.)

Given the staggering amount of material in comics that more-than-fully merits the most scathing critique that analysis from a feminist perspective can bring to bear, why is Lepore singling out one of the very few titles that's doing better?

Because it's still not very good. Pointing out the problems with something that people are patting themselves on the back for --- that's a better way of demonstrating the systemic problems of comics representation than going after Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, which everyone can just treat as an outlier.

I sense a misunderstanding that parallels pretty well with the Charlie Hebdo thing - Art looks different to outsiders than it does to insiders.

Maybe, but this is a case where Lepore has the more accurate perspective. Insiders should be shaking their head at the ridiculousness she is pointing out. No one can defend that Rescue armor design or Loki's pasties. Nearly everything that Lepore says is true. I only really care if a journalist is ignorant or lazy if it leads them to false conclusions, and this did not happen here. I'm seeing a lot of criticism about how Lepore didn't do the proper amount of research, about how she's lazy, about how she is dripping with disdain, and about how she doesn't take comics seriously and didn't bother to figure out why people take them seriously. All of that seems besides the point to me.

I'm definitely an insider, but I like views like Lepore's from the outside. Many (though not all) of the things that she disdains really are worthy of disdain. The extent to which I don't immediately see the things that she sees is a sign that I'm becoming too comfortable with comics culture.
posted by painquale at 1:25 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Someone should create Wonder Man, cousin of Wonder Woman.
posted by MoxieProxy at 2:13 PM on May 14, 2015

Wonder Man is an Avenger. He's the worst.
posted by painquale at 2:16 PM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

A Wonder Boy comic about a boy raised by Wonder Woman's people to share their values but who then has to go to the US to be a superhero, though, that could be amazing.
posted by No-sword at 5:36 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Wonder Man is an Avenger. He's the worst."

SAFARI JACKET WONDER MAN IS NOT THE WORST. HE IS GREAT!

Lookit that grin!
posted by joelhunt at 7:19 AM on May 15, 2015

Yeah, but he's about 30 seconds from busting out his signature catchphrase, which is about the least awesome in all of comics, "Didja know I'm almost as strong as Thor?"
posted by straight at 9:56 AM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Comics have a lot of problems and no shortage of awfulness to hold up for outsiders. Given that, why would you target stuff trying to be better?
posted by phearlez at 10:04 AM on May 15, 2015

"This is a case where Lepore has the more accurate perspective. Insiders should be shaking their head at the ridiculousness she is pointing out.

This. A thousand times this.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:11 PM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know, Jill Lepore wrote an extremely well-researched book about Wonder Woman and her creators. This is not the act of a Fake Geek Girl. Lepore is very much a comics person, clearly. She just maybe isn't someone who is deep into contemporary mainstream comics. That's okay. One came out that was loudly and publicly touted as being aimed at A Reader Like Her. So she took a look and was not feeling it. That's okay, too. I think questioning her nerd credentials -- "if you got comics, you'd love this!" -- is absolutely the wrong way to approach it all. Lepore gets comics, at least as much as anyone who is an interested reader gets comics. This one, ostensibly targeted to her, was not to her tastes, right off the bat. Maybe this isn't even a problem. Not everything is for everyone. But the correct response isn't to shout down criticism as unqualified. It's to listen.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:34 AM on May 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't think her criticism here is unqualified, I think it's lazy - specifically because the research she's already done for her other work could support a much better argument than this.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:18 AM on May 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's not lazy. It's the reaction of a reader new to contemporary Marvel comics -- which is exactly the reader A-Force is aimed at. If she spent six months immersing herself in all that was happening in contemporary superhero comics in preparation for reading this one, that would defeat the purpose.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:02 AM on May 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I work in comics. Comics are how I make a living. I could not possibly take comics more seriously. I avoid most superhero comics because they're gross about race and gender. I'm not interested in reading books where women are in gross sexist outfits, no matter how good the story is. There are more comics out there than I could ever have time to read that don't put women in gross outfits, so I'll stick to those.

Also, I'm confused by this:

This is basically saying that the only way to affect real cultural change is to completely ignore mainstream popular culture. You need outsiders working to put pressure on the center, but at some point the center has to shift from the pressure being put on it by those outsiders, or nothing has really changed.

I reject the idea that Marvel titles are the only part of comics that count as "mainstream popular culture," and are thus the battlefield we all need to be fighting on. Raina Telgemeier recently occupied the top four slots of the NYT comics bestseller list with graphic novels about tween girls in which all of the women are wearing normal clothes. That's the comics mainstream that I'm interested in, and I'm thrilled at the progress we've been making.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 9:21 AM on May 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I, uh, find this debate puzzling. The two characters to She Hulk's immediate right and left (Void and...I forget) have nipples drawn on them. Bottom left and bottom right (Dazzler and I have no idea) have Needless Cleavage and Big Squatty Hips.

¡°All the girls here have, like, gigantic cleavages,¡± Captain Comics said, giggling.

¡°Why do they have gigantic cleavages?¡± I asked. Did it seem inevitable to these little boys, I wondered, that women would be drawn this way?

¡°Because they¡¯re girls, Mom,¡± Mr. What? said. ¡°What else is going to happen?¡± And he laughed, because it was funny, and he knew I would find that funny¡ªthe idea that nothing else was possible¡ªthe way it¡¯s funny when Jessica Rabbit says, ¡°I¡¯m not bad. I¡¯m just drawn that way.¡± Alas, the Avengers are not funny, and neither are the She-Avengers.
posted by radicalawyer at 2:14 PM on May 17, 2015 [1 favorite]