Comics Are for Girls!

Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat revealed the big promotion news. Senior Editor Bobbie Chase has been promoted to Editorial Director. She had been editing Batgirl, Nightwing, Grifter, Teen Titans, and Red Hood and the Outlaws in DC’s New 52 lineup. 

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The other news this week is of a new, rotating title called National Comics. According to DC it’s “new print comic series, will debut this July and feature a series of stand-alone stories built around some of DC Comics most intriguing characters.  The first four key characters that comprise National Comics include Eternity, Madame X, Rose and Thorn, and Looker.  Each character will have a stand-alone issue.”

Sounds like a good way to bring in characters that have been unused so far and give audiences a taste of them. Although three our of the four characters being featured are female, we hoped characters like Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, or Renne Montoya would get some time in the spotlight. The only problem we see is, with eleven creators on National Comics, only one is a woman. Fiona Staples (Saga) will be doing covers.

In the early ’70s, like all of visual media, comics got looser and bolder with its depiction of women, and Kirby’s work was not immune. One of his most-loved and well-crafted characters from that period is Big Barda from the New Gods cycle. A warrior woman from Darkseid’s evil army who switches sides and fights for right, Barda’s strong-willed and fiercely protective personality was based mostly on Roz Kirby, Jack’s wife. But visually, Barda was inspired directly by a series of photos of singer Lainie Kazan that Kirby had seen in Playboy.

Kazan was a fit woman with a larger physique, and Kirby liked the notion of creating a female super-hero with that kind of build, or as Mark Evanier puts it, “a super-heroine who looked like she could do the feats of strength that Wonder Woman or Supergirl did with more dainty physiques.”



In Kirby’s drawings of Barda, you can see him taking pleasure in exploring the female form more explicitly than in his past works. I suspect one of the reasons he was able to do so without the discomfort of something like Galaxy Green was because, to Kirby, Barda was as full and important as any of his characters — maybe even more so, given her close ties to Roz. To Kirby, Barda was a strong woman who was also sexy, as opposed to a sex object for which he had to devise some plausible characteristics or storyline.

Kirby’s art wasn’t known for its sex appeal, but it’s fascinating to look at the small elements of eroticism that show up in the work of the man who defined super-hero art, especially since the super-hero art of today is filled to the brim with sex. It’s additionally interesting to note that, while Kirby decked Barda out in a two-piece for lounging around, her outfit becomes all business as soon as she needs to throw down. One more lesson we might learn from the King.

Click through to see the King’s scrapped erotica comic about future women travelling the universe in search of men. It’s just as crazy as it sounds.

The line between sexy and over-sexualized in comics is a hard one to pin down. It’s different for everyone, of course, but for the purposes of this post, we should probably agree on a few ground rules, just for the sake of having one conversation, rather than many. Art in a comic is over-sexualized when the women are drawn as sex objects first and heroes (or people) second. Skimpy clothes, large breasts, arched backs, and exploitative camera angles all contribute to heroines being drawn as sex objects. For a good example, check out this image by Ed Benes, which was part of the promo push for Blackest Night:

There are five fully-dressed men on the page, but the two women have as much skin on display as possible, no matter how unlikely it would be. Star Sapphire, the one in the foreground, is a particularly terrible example of the depths superhero art can sink to, as there’s nothing reasonable about her costume, from her high collar to her cleverly-placed superhero emblem. Her breasts and butt are emphasized to the detriment of the story this image is trying to tell. The image is, at least theoretically, about a vicious war between several different factions. In practice, it’s about fully-clothed, over-muscled dudes growling at each other while a lady vamps with barely any clothes on nearby.

Read More: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/16/superheroine-sex-art-story/#ixzz1mgcLoQQk

The New DC Universe continues to roll on, and today, the Source provided us with a look at another upcoming title: World’s Finest, which features a cover by the legendary George Perez. Set to be released in May as part of the “Second Wave” of DC’s rebooted titles, the story arc by Perez, Paul Levitz and Kevin Maguire is focused on two characters from the alternate world of Earth-2 trying to make their way back home.

But more importantly than that, it’s got a new costume for Power Girl, replacing her classic “cleavage window” suit. Truly, it is of dire importance.

Power Girl is by far my favorite female superhero, and it might be a suprise to some given my feminist, but I actually really like Power Girl’s classic costume, boob window and all. From a design standpoint, you need something on the character’s chest to break up the costume and for all the obvious problems one can have with the window, it makes Power Girl stand out among the sea of characters who all have their logos splayed across their chest. Add to that her Captain Marvel-esque cape and bob haircut, and you get a character that doesn’t look like anybody else.

Well, except for Power Boy that is. He has a boob window, too.