Sexualized Saturdays: Sexy Costumes, Slut-Shaming, and Female Superheroes

When it comes to female superheroes and villains, I constantly hear debate over the sexy costumes. On the one hand, it is ridiculous that female characters must be constantly half-exposed in order to be in comics. On the other hand, one could argue that criticism of what these characters wear can devolve into to slut-shaming and placing standards on female characters that would never be placed on men. In real life, cosplayers wearing revealing costumes experience both harassment and slut-shaming from both men and women. But for this post, I just want to discuss the characters. Why am I so offended when female heroes and villains are constantly depicted wearing sexy revealing costumes?

Let’s use Harley Quinn and Starfire as two modern examples.

DC Comic’s Misogynistic Contest Alienates More Readers

DC Comics hasn’t been doing so well lately, but denying Batwoman her happy marriage pales in comparison to the recent news. What news is that? Maybe you heard about a contest recently for new DC artists. That’s right, you too can be an artist for DC Comics! What’s the catch?

You have to draw Harley Quinn committing suicide. Naked. Yep, you heard that right.

THIS WILL NOT STAND!!!!!

DC Comics Bans Batwoman’s Same-Sex Marriage

This is not the post I thought I’d be writing today, but after scrolling through my dashboard on Tumblr I saw an upsetting post from ‘DC Women Kicking Ass’ that stated that Batwoman writers Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III were leaving the comic due to constant interference from DC asking them to change or rewrite storylines at the last minute. The final straw seemed to be when DC prohibited the marriage between Batwoman and her girlfriend, Maggie.

On Nationalism in Comic Books

A couple days ago, DC Comics announced that the Justice League of America was moving to Canada starting in April, 2014.

Details are very limited right now. From what I’ve read, the Justice League is moving because of some kind of dramatic change.

The reason this threw me for a loop is, admittedly, I don’t think of Canada much. Yes, I know they are America’s brothers to the North, and I love whenever I get a chance to visit Toronto. But, I’ll admit, I haven’t been anywhere else in Canada. I know there is more to Canada, but I just haven’t had the chance to visit past the Air Canada Centre.

So to have the Justice League of America move to Canada was, weirdly enough, a “huh?” moment for me.

DC Nation: The Coolest Wonder Woman You’ve Seen in Years

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of DC Comics. I have about four or five DC characters that I actually care about, outside of those directly related to Batman, because Batman is freaking awesome. Those few characters do have a special place in my heart though, and one of them is Wonder Woman, who never really gets her due, especially in film.

So, imagine my joy when I found out that there were some animated shorts devoted to Wonder Woman, hopefully as a hint that there would be more Wonder Woman action on the Western Front. They could best be summarized by saying that they, in three parts, portray the rescue of Steve Trevor by Wonder Woman, who is at all times behaving like a stone cold G. She surfs, races, and straight-up trucks her opponents, all without missing a beat or messing up her hair. If you’re wondering what kind of Wonder Woman film I’d like to see, you can stop wondering. The 70s style, the invisible pony car, Giganta in Chucks, need I go on? Go ahead and check them out:

These are a part of DC Nation, which does shows and shorts specifically for young audiences based on DC Comics. Here’s hoping that there’s more Wonder Woman swag to come!

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via The Mary Sue

Sexualized Saturdays: Which Characters Would You Queer?

I have been thinking recently about the practice of making existing characters who are previously thought to be straight into queer characters. It’s not something that happens often, but it has been done before. In DC’s New 52 reboot, the Green Lantern Alan Scott, previously assumed straight, was revealed to be gay. Batwoman was another character who was previously assumed straight—ironically, she was actually introduced as Batman’s girlfriend to prove that Batman was straight. Now she’s a lesbian. Yay! On television Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a character that is still often debated by fans. While her character’s bisexuality was definitely erased, many fans still argue over whether there was evidence in previous seasons that showed that Willow was attracted to women.

Furthermore, the Slash Madness Tournament is here again and is currently in its final match-up. Once again it’s come down to a war between Destiel and Sterek fans. Last time I checked, Destiel was in the lead by a small margin, but the Sterek fans are certainly putting up a fight. What’s more interesting to me, however, is less the tournament itself and more how fans talk about these two giant pairings. Fans seem to think that winning tournaments like this will prove to The Powers That Be that certain queer relationships, like Sterek and Destiel, would be supported by the whole of the fandom if they were made canon. By showing support for these pairings in a visible way, fans believe that writers will realize that the fandom won’t abandon the show because of canon gay characters—rather, fans will actively support it.

While I’m all for people shipping whatever pairings they want, I have always been skeptical about turning canonically straight characters into queer characters. This mostly has to do with having decent writers in my opinion, and even that’s not always a guarantee. I’m especially concerned with characters like Dean Winchester, who is portrayed as a real ladies’ man. In this case, I worry about writers trying to claim that character is now completely homosexual, when logic would dictate that he is at least bisexual. I also worry about the reasons why we, the viewers, are just now learning that a character is queer. Why have these characters never shown any interest in same-sex relationships until now?

A real life example of this is Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon did not originally intend for Willow to be gay, but come season four, he decided to have a character explore their sexuality and thus Willow became a lesbian. In my opinion, the whole thing was handled very poorly. Other than one episode in season three where Willow’s evil twin is described as being “kind of gay”, there is no indication that Willow is attracted to women before season four. Maybe if Whedon had spent a season or two developing her sexuality this transition could have worked out, but he didn’t, and it didn’t. I’m not saying that these issues can’t be dealt with, but so often they aren’t or aren’t dealt with well.

So You Want to Read Comic Books 2.0: The Movement

The fourth issue of Gail Simone’s wildly popular new comic The Movement hit stores last week, and I figured it was well past time we gave it a shoutout here. The Movement is one of the best comics I’ve picked up since I started my American comics journey about a year ago, and furthermore, it’s one of the most impressively diverse. 

The Movement is set in the DC Universe in Coral City, a city rife with crime and corruption. Fed up with the problems that extend even into the police force, a group of young people who have all been, in some way, abandoned by society band together to take justice into their own hands. Using part hacking, part strategy, and part brute force, they begin to take a stand against the moral and social rot that pervades the city.

What’s So “Tricky” About Wonder Woman?

As you may have noticed, Warner Bros and DC Comics have announced their new lineup of movies. They announced that there would be a Superman/Batman movie, a Flash movie, and finally the long-expected Justice League movie.

Well, that’s interesting, right? I mean the Justice League movie has been greatly anticipated. We already had an, admittedly terrible, Green Lantern movie. The recent Superman movie was excellent. And the next two will take care of Batman and the Flash. So this is great! We are well on our way to a Justice League movie. That’s just awesome. But you know, it feels like something might be missing. Something big, yeah—something important. What could it be?

Oh yeah, Wonder Woman!

Why Man of Steel’s Lois Lane is Better

I have never really liked Lois Lane. Not saying that she isn’t a feminist or a well-developed character, I just didn’t like her. I especially didn’t like her relationship with Superman. I was always a big Wonder Woman/Superman shipper (and a little Superman/Catwoman—I love rare ships!) because I thought that Diana actually accepted and understood all of Superman. Lois Lane is notorious for liking Superman, but not Clark Kent, and even in some versions when she gets to know Superman better, she is uncomfortable with his more Kryptonian side (Kal-El). So even though most people see Lois and Superman as the ultimate superhero love story, I always saw it as a problem. Lois loves the hyper-masculine Superman, but dismisses the more sensitive Clark and the more eccentric Kal-El. So basically Lois only seems interested in the stereotypical male she sees Superman as.

Another major problem I have had with Lois is, despite her being a woman who is supposed to be clever, intelligent, and streetwise, she not only gets kidnapped all the time, but also is usually one of the last people to figure out that Clark Kent is Superman, despite having a lot of interaction with both alter egos on a regular basis.

But Man of Steel fixes all of this!

Oh, My Pop Culture Jesus: Jesus the Man of Steel

I loved the Man of Steel movie! I adored it, in fact, and not only was it great, but some interesting Christian images crept into it as well. I did a post before about Christ figures and explained how if you don’t realize Superman is a Christ figure then you aren’t watching the movies right. Well, the Man of Steel movie, more than any other Superman movie so far, lays the Christ figure parallels on pretty thickly. Let’s take a look at what this movie did differently to make the parallels more obvious.