I’m reblogging this because I forgot that I wrote all this. Twitter can do that.
This, forever.
I have a massive half-written blog post lurking in my drafts folder which basically explains why I don’t read superhero comics - or why, specifically, the myriad sexist, racist, homophobic and ableist problems of superhero comics have (funnily enough) never enticed me into the genre, despite the fact that I enjoy superhero movies more often than I don’t. Essentially, webcomics represent both my entry point into comics and the primary means through which I continue to read them, and while I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of webcomics still feature the above problems, they’re massively more representational than superhero comics - and not just in terms of the characters, but also the diversity of the creators.
In the webcomics I read and love, there are easily as many female artists and writers as male, plus a respectable (compared to traditional comics) proportion of prominent queer and POC creators of both genders. On any given day, I can open my Google reader and find strips with a wide variety of leading ladies (Bad Machinery, Gunnerkrigg Court, Girl Genius, Girls With Slingshots, Octopus Pie, The Adventures of Wonderella, Questionable Content), racially and sexually diverse casts (Curvy, Dar, Red String, Punch an’ Pie, Something Positive, Dumbing of Age, Oglaf), characters who openly address issues of diversity, faith and culture, and plots based heavily in real-world philosophy, history, literature, politics and culture (Sinfest, xkcd, Dresden Codak, A Softer World, Scandinavia and the World, Templar Arizona, Hark! A Vagrant, 2D Goggles, Men In Hats, PhD Comics, Johnny Wander) - and that’s as well as strips that are chock-full of subculture, geekery and awesome (FreakAngels, 8 Bit Theatre, Full Frontal Nerdity, Megatokyo, Demonology 101, Ice, The Meek, Penny Arcade, PvP, Three Panel Soul, Lackadaisy Cats).
That’s just the tip of the iceberg; but what I’m getting at is, whenever I see superhero comics crop up as an issue online, it’s almost always in the context of unrealistically drawn women, horrendous sexism, the proliferation of straight white male creators and the unflinching determination of those in charge to keep it that way, male-dominated narratives, terrible treatment of POC, LGBTQ and disabled characters, and just general suckage. And that bothers me, because in principle, superhero comics should be something I love: after all, I love both superheroes and comics! But as I didn’t get into them as a kid - and so therefore have no preexisting emotional connection to make me want to wade through endless offensive bullshit - I find it really hard to understand why I should put up with distorted female bodies, when I can see real ladies of all shapes and sizes in Templar Arizona, Octopus Pie and Questionable Content; why I should have to watch Batgirl be tortured, disabled and then magically made whole again when I can read about Dahlia in Something Positive, Melody in Girls With Slingshots and Kimiko in Dresden Codak; why I should care about endless stories where women, LGBTQ characters and POC end up violently fridged, when instead I can read any number of comics where such characters are three-dimensional protagonists with their own plot-arcs, lives and successes.
In short: I love comics, and I would really love if superhero comics could one day be part of that. But until or unless the bullshit gets cleared away, imma stick to formats whose main players don’t take offending everyone who isn’t straight, white and male to be their jumping-off point.
(Source: jonsnow, via dresdencodak)
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