10 More Female Comic Book Characters That I Can Think Of

Once I stopped typing before, I realized that I could think of 10 more female comic book characters. Below is exactly everything I know about them

Undressing after a long day of business school.

1. She Hulk – I’ve learned about this one late. Somewhere in between the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and the Wicked Witch of the West, we got She Hulk. I don’t know what she is, and I’m not too sure I care. But why is she green all the time, and why is she capable of complete, intelligent conversations while the most we get out of the male equivalent is “Hulk SMASH!” ?

Because a bright yellow cape isn't going to get anyone's attention.

2. Jubilee – The yellow-trenchcoated barnacle on Wolverine’s hull reminds me of Batman’s Robin in all the wrong ways – her clothes are a target practice costume and her power draws as much attention as is humanly possible. If I made fireworks, I’d dress in camouflage every day. She might as well have the power that causes her to teleport from one dangerous situation to another equally awkward and dangerous situation.

Can't fight crime without your regulation crime-fighting thong.

3. Psylocke – Apparently she’s one half of two different ladies, and both of them have weird purple hair and make knives with their hands. This was the super power I wanted – the ability to stab and punch at the same time.

In Soviet Russia, breasts come with suit.

4. Black Widow – Fulfilling the mandatory guns-and-boobs quota the NSA requires of any superhuman crime fighting agency, Black Widow is an agent of SHIELD, and Tony Stark wants one. I think. This is all the knowledge I have. Did Scarlett Johansen come from a comic book?

Having a bad day. Check out her numbers.

5. Cat Woman – International PETA spokeswoman Selena Kyle goes into obvious heat whenever Batman is around. Is she bad? Is she good? Is she going to be able to fit into the latex after she’s had 6 or 7 of Bruce Wayne’s kittens?

I don't know *why* she was naked in the movie. She was never naked before.

6. Mystique – Hello blue lady. When Magneto left the un-mutated, naked Mystique alone because she wasn’t “one of us anymore,” my brother said it was the gayest that Ian McKellan had ever been. Another one of those that begs the question – if she can look like anyone she wants, why does she look like that?

Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, shown here slightly more visible.

7. Sue Storm-Richards – Not only does she turn invisible, she makes invisible things that she can use to pretend to do other stuff! They haven’t addressed how she manages to save the world while phasing in and out of the crippling blindness that occurs when your invisible eyes are no longer able to reflect the light that allows you to see.

This happened.

8. Hawk Girl – Is this a real thing? When I Google it, I feel like the internet is playing a practical joke on me. Apparently she’s a founding member of the Justice League, which gives her as much of a partnership percentage as Superman. Go figure.

Clouds only fear you if you show them your abs.

9. Storm – Marvel thinks that ethnic girls control the weather. This is probably something dredged out of the “Myths We Learned About Girls Because We Never dated any” Files. Anyway, Orroro Munroe is an Egyptian orphan with weather control powers and now she’s a science teacher. That’s how the world works sometimes.

What does she do? She's got a sword, I promise!

10. Dawn – She didn’t make it onto my first list and it surprised the heck out of me when I realized I’d forgotten about the most unreasonable of all superheroines, Dawn. I think she’s The Goddess, but I’m not sure. She hangs out with God, the Horned Consort, and Satan, and they all look like the same really aquiline blonde guy, so I’m not sure what the commentary on religion is supposed to be. Also, she’s crying. That’s hot.

There are a lot of girls out there. I’m sure I’ll think of 10 more.

The 10 Female Comic Book Characters That I Can Think Of

In response to my most recent question…This is, unfortunately, the moment I have always feared.  It is time that I finally admit, to myself, God, and/or the Universe that I know next to nothing about comic books.
I understand if you wish to stop reading now, perhaps even delete this bookmark from your registry in outrage.  But believe me, I do have a genuine interest.  It’s just that, between the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe and my continued investigation of the wit and wisdom of the great apes, I’ve had very little time for the diversion, and, as such, I’ve learned virtually everything I know about comic books from the nerds I’ve been kind enough to date.
With that rather humbling confession out of the way, the question at hand has merit, and warrants a great deal of thought.  I shouldn’t simply arbitrarily pick out a few girls from the registry to highlight; that would do a disservice to the industry and the characters.  Instead, I think a more accurate representation of my knowledge should follow as such:

The 10 Female Comic Book Characters That I Can Think Of

A beacon of feminist ideals

1.    Wonder Woman: Originally created as a proxy for William Marsden’s bondage fetish, Wonder Woman is everything from a feminist icon to a colossal freaking joke thanks to the preliminary costumes we’re seeing out of the potential NBC pilot.  I’m going to tune in, though, just in case they forget to edit out one or two of the inevitable nip slips our new costume filler is bound to incur while running.

Confusing my sexuality since 1995.

2.    Fairchild: The leader of Gen 13, and I really didn’t pay a lot of attention outside of that because I was too busy letting this title confuse my sexuality.  Fun Fact:  It is virtually impossible to find a picture of her in her costume without Google literally choking itself unconscious on all the home made Fairchild porn.

The way it should have gone down.

3.    Jean Grey: I think the only one on the list that I ever actually empathized with, due to the shared feeling of being slaves to our brains (I always felt she was something of a metaphor for the internal torment that smart women tend to feel), but I’d have ditched Cyclops 10 miles ago if Logan offered me his helmet.

Barbara Gordon, seen here in Batman! the Musical.

4.    Bat Girl: Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, her existence was introduced at the end of The Dark Knight during Two Face’s fun little hostage situation, and they should just let it go after that because they’re not topping Heath Ledger with anything, I don’t really care how Anne Hathaway looks in vinyl.

Boys Love Pink.

5.    The Star Sapphire Corps:  Sluts.

You make me want to cosplay.

6.    Silk Spectre: I went with Sally Jupiter on this one, the pinup was too hard to turn down.  SUPER Fun Fact: I went to see this in the theatre on Stupid-Parents-Take-Their-Young-Children-To-An-Innappropriate-Movie day.  They must have been half price tickets given the sheer number of tiny voices I heard remarking about Dr. Manhattan’s copious appendage.  Good times.

Look at her up there. Dazzling.

7.    Dazzler: An X-Man who apparently does things.  Shiny things.  I’ve heard her name mentioned a lot, so she must have gotten naked or something. Also, hey, roller skates!

I can has Leather Jacket?

8.    Rogue:  The look-but-don’t-touch thing was deliciously frustrating, and she’s a character that makes me interested to actually catch up on the story lines.

What is it with ethnic girls and weather control?

9.    Rainmaker: Another member of the compelling Gen 13 team, Rainmaker also scores some queer points for being one of the first openly gay superheroes in the trades, which resulted in some pretty hilarious hate mail back in the days just before email and the Internet and spell checkers that recognized the word “lesbian.”

10.    Francine and Katchoo: The one trade on this list that I did read from start to finish.  One cannot separate the two characters from each other or Strangers in Paradise.  It broke my heart in a good way to see the door close on their story.

So there you have it.  I hope this has provided a salient answer to what has been a most interesting question.  And to anyone who can recommend a quick and easy way for one to familiarize themselves with these story lines, I’m all ears.

Review, Part 2 – Makeover Nation – Selfhood, Citizenship and Celebrity

Though the first half of my review focused on those methodologies in the makeover gamedoc which resembled “tabula rasa” style indoctrination and enslavement techniques, this second installment takes a closer look at the methodologies which turn appearance into a commodity that helps or hinders an individuals market value in regards their human and social capital.  The gift of a free makeover, considered a prize not only by the contestant but usually by their families and friends (as evidenced in expositional footage of congratulations) comes with necessary requirements and obligations that the contestant must agree to of their own free will, making this invasion of their inner self and renovation of their outward appearance a conscious decision made on their part, rather than an intervention on the part of a neoliberal marketplace seeking to reinforce its own indispensability by highlighting the disadvantages incurred by those who do not fit the necessary requirements for trade and citizenship.

Is democratic citizenship predicated on meritocratic mobility within society, as Weber suggests (2009:38)? This is suggested by the jubilation of After-body contestants who intone that they can “do anything” now that they have a culturally appropriate body to do it in.  This belief is likely predicated on the notion that, though all men may be created equal, we do not remain that way for long after birth, and these differences ultimately cast us into social strata which can increase or decrease the amount of weight our individual aesthetics and beliefs have in the communal congress of cultural sensibility.  In offering the average citizen (as average as can be considered, given that only 20% of female contestants and 1% of male contestants are people of color), a leg up in the world by renovating their appearance to better reflect an external vision of beauty, makeover shows not only reinforce a strict cultural framework of acceptable appearance, but help the contestant to internalize this sensibility while inflating the importance of ones’ external offerings as capital in a fiercely competitive social market (Weber, 2009:42).

Despite the ever-presence of the outside worlds expectations of social norms and aesthetics, a recurring theme of isolation incurred by the makeover narrative, which insists that the contestant remove themselves to a private place where their transformation can occur in secret.  This evokes themes of cultural rites of passage wherein the young are removed from their childhood homes to undergo tests and trials as a means of preparing them for adulthood.  When they return to their homes, they do so as adults, recognized as such by their peers, who now see them as worthy of respect and capable of making actions and sharing in group decisions that can affect the whole of the community.  As well, those makeover recipients return to their old lives once their trials are complete as full citizens; their voices now carry more weight and authority thanks to the changes that someone else has made for them.  Tropes of law enforcement and criminal justice are loud within the narratives present.  This isolation is a double-edged sword, as not only a trial in and of itself, but as a punishment for the poor decisions the contestant has made throughout their lives.  The process of virtual incarceration and rehabilitation serve to remind the citizen that their old life, their old appearance, were crimes against the state.  They must now internalize the aesthetic and behaviors of another if they have any hope of functioning as self-possessed citizens fully capable of participating in the neoliberal market culture that is America.

If, as neoliberal ethics suggest, everything has a market, then relative inequality in terms of human capital does easily translate into a differential in decision-making power.  This ethic of America, as delivered by makeover transformations, has been distributed internationally to cultures who have begun to see America as less a place and more “…an idea, a concept to be thought of in quotes which, itself, can be reproduced and distributed outside of national contexts.” (Weber 2009:48)  America, in the international eye, becomes more a theme park of opulence, where 90210 is Main Street, USA, and glamour is a social right, and a requirement, of citizenship.

Questions

1.)                    What do we, as Americans, think of in terms of international lifestyles?  How do other countries “brand” themselves, or is this a uniquely American notion?

2.)                    Are we building our own stereotypes?  Is a stereotype simply a marketing tool within the constructs of neoliberalism?

 

Reference

Weber, Brenda R. Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.

Review, Part 1 – Makeover Nation – Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity

Throughout the spectrum of what appear to be a unique variety of makeover shows, Weber identifies a universal framework of cultural indoctrination and re-education.  Prejudicial and stereotypical notions of racial identity, sex and gender identity, and social conformity are drilled into the minds of the insecure, who willingly hand themselves over to a governing body of groomers in the hopes that it can make them better.  Weber suggests that the goal of the makeover is not to be better, but to be “normative,” to cast off all perceived deviations from societal expectation, and conform to the middle-of-the-road definition of acceptable (255).

Most disturbing of these mechanisms seems to be the breakdown methodology espoused by the teams that take on the case in question.  The individual is subjected to a dissection of their existing selfhood – teams take apart their wardrobes from the underwear up, deriding every facet of their existing style as a means of eroding what remains of their self-esteem.  Participants’ appearances are subjected to the “objective” judgment of strangers; these uninformed opinions are given weight by the “experts,” further eroding the participants’ trust in their own judgment.  Some contestants are forced to stand, nearly naked, in front of a hall of mirrors, which is psychological torture enough with ones clothes on.  Example after example smacks of the kind of tabula rasa methodology used to berate and torture individuals until they abandon their free will and surrender to their captors, becoming suitable for the slave trade.  The latter example of the house of mirrors, from How To Look Good Naked, makes the rather tasteless juxtaposition of an emotionally devastated black woman in her underwear against the white male host of the show, fully clothed, offering her hope and redemption.  One could not help but draw attention to the allusions of white supremacy and gender subjugation.

Though these shows make an outward showing of egalitarian consciousness by casting non-white, non-straight individuals in the taskmaster and designer roles, the hegemonic principles of neoliberalism are nonetheless enforced through the show’s rhetoric and treatment of its contestants.  The values of a society where appearance is a commodity are instilled and reinforced in contestants, who, once broken down, are rebuilt in the show’s image of what their ideal should be.  Once indoctrinated, these participants have little incentive to deviate from the social role into which the show has cast them, for to do so would be to give up the social power and cultural capital they have accrued through the heart wrenching process of emotional demolition and appearance renovation.

Questions:

1.)   Pursuant to the “fat/ugly” oppression that Weber argues the audience and gamedoc grants, what other sorts of oppressions are the Makover TV paradigm (and its audience) willing to grant for the sake of maintaining the normative?  What sort of oppressions do we grant ourselves on a day-to-day basis?

2.)   Weber counters Sander Gilman’s argument that “the belief we can change our appearance is liberating,” by arguing that changing our appearance only makes us believe that we’ve been liberated (256).   What is liberation, within the framework of these shows, and what would liberation from the show’s framework mean for its former participants?

3.)    Can true self-improvement really be televised?  As each case tends to be a one-shot deal, there isn’t a lot of concern over maintaining drama, but pre-constructed narratives still exist.  Can people who legitimately need help in one avenue or another trust a marketed product of this kind to really help them?

 

References

Weber, Brenda R. Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.