The thing about Rachel Summers

I remember this discussion over at Livejournal before about the meaning of hair colour in superhero comics where in the case with the womenfolk, blonde hair often immediate denotes beauty and red-haired women are either dangerous or dangerously fun with the exception of Barbara Gordon at the time. Like how there’s a tendency for cartoonists to make the daughters more closely resemble their mothers, with the exception of Mayday Parker who resembled her father more. Right down to the similarly dark hair and her outfit being nearly identical to his, instead of being a feminised or skimpier version of the male counterpart’s outfit. As it is with Batgirl and Batwoman to Batman, Supergirl to Superman or Hawkgirl to Hawkman,

In the case with Rachel Summers, the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, considering that her maternal grandmother (Elaine Grey) is blonde or perhaps was blonde, and that Scott’s own brother Alex is blond himself, which should make pedantic sense that Rachel should’ve turned out blonde herself. But I suspect giving her red hair is meant to communicate that she’s practically her mother’s doppelganger, which is particularly true over the years. To the point of taking on one of her mother’s former nom de plume Marvel Girl for a long while, dressing up very much like her from time to time that the biggest visual difference between the two is that Rachel often has shorter hair. If she had been blonde, this wouldn’t be the case.

Maybe not to the same extent that I’m proposing but easier to tell apart in terms of appearance alone, though it’s possible some cartoonist briefly gave her blonde hair by accident before, that she may not have been made into a Jean Grey doppelganger so often if this was the case. It’s very obvious that since from the start that Rachel was and still is meant to be a Jean Grey doppelganger, she doesn’t just have her mother’s abilities and hair colour, she also sometimes dresses up like her and even share the same nom de plume together. She’s very derivative of her mother in ways her brother Cable isn’t, despite sharing the same parents and abilities together. This says a lot about the way she’s written over the years.

That’s not to say I hate her as a character, but there’s no mistaking that she’s very similar to Jean Grey in many, if not most, regards. Not necessarily entirely identical but similar enough to act as an adequate understudy for her whenever Mummy Jean’s away or something, which really hurt whatever claims to uniqueness Rachel herself may have had. The way she’s written over the years should tell you that there’s a tendency for writers to treat her like a Jean Grey doppelganger, not just in abilities and hair colour, but also how and why she even dresses up like her from time to time.

This may not be unique to Jean Grey herself as Emma Frost might have hers with the Stepford Cuckoos, but with other characters it’s not exactly, particularly nor wholly the case. Nightcrawler is Mystique’s son and shares the same blue skin as hers, but his ability is very different from hers so he’s never going to be his mum’s doppelganger. Vanora is Rahne Sinclair’s daughter but while both women have the same ability (turning into wolves), she looks and acts differently from her as to not be her doppelganger either*. Theresa Cassidy bears similarities to her father Sean but she’s more of his female counterpart, rather than be an outright doppelganger for him the way Rachel is to her mum.

When she’s been shown to dress much like her own mum in a consistent number of instances, even if it may not’ve been especially frequent, take on her mum’s codenames and even wore an outfit similar to hers as Marvel Girl for a time in the 2000s, then she really is her mother’s doppelganger and far more often than what Vanora is to Rahne Sinclair. She’s often her own mother’s understudy in a way the other X-Progeny aren’t to their own parents, the latter aren’t to the same extent that she is to Jean Grey really. So it’s inevitable that she’s going to be compared to her, since she is the prototype for the sort of character Rachel grew into. Assuming if she may’ve been more different at the conceptual stage.

But I suspect that writers frequently turning her into her mother’s doppelganger and understudy undermined their ability to make her actually stand out from her in some other way, that it’s going to be real tricky into not making her Jean-lite. Whatever attempts at making her stand out more from her mum tend to be short-lived, since her time as Mother Askani was undone by the time she reappeared as a young woman again. At other times, they’re often not well-thought. That’s not to say she sucks as a whole but that it’s harder making her stand out from Jean, when she’s so often turned by writers into her understudy and doppelganger.

*I could be wrong in here as she may’ve been her mother’s doppelganger in a sense (as she could take on any wolf form), though not as often as Rachel is to Jean, which is saying since she doesn’t make any further appearances since then.

Body dysmorphia, video games and comic books

This isn’t commonly brought up and speaking from my own experience with my late mother not objecting to the overly buxom characters in animation, but objecting to skinny women in fashion magazines that among women who can’t get into comics/video games/whatever, it could be the other way around when it comes to self-dissatisfaction. In the case with comics and video games, it would be this easy to conjure images of the ideal woman in practise. It’s like wondering how and why so many cartoon women lack cellulite in their legs, aren’t hairy for long (especially when it comes to Marvel’s Tigra, who’s supposed to be covered in fur) and some don’t even have saggy breasts, let alone without being old.

Cartoonists and game developers (though not all of them, thankfully enough) will often come up with very idealised and sexualised images of women, perhaps in ways that risk making someone else feel worse about herself, especially regarding how women are more likely to develop body dysmorphia than men. The lack of any positive role model in whatever they can easily find could further put them off of things that should provide strong female role models, but it’s often undermined by constant idealisation and stuff. Tigra could easily be a role model for hairy women, since there are portrayals of her being really hairy and she’s technically covered in fur. Here you have a woman who wears little and is shown as quite hairy, though unfortunately she’s usually drawn as if she’s painted.

This would be very discouraging to those seeking a role model to relate to and aspire to be, one who’s not ashamed of her hairiness and owns it real well. Conversely speaking, I don’t think I’ve encountered superhero cartoonists giving female characters cellulite, which is odd as women are more likely to store fat in their thighs than men do. I guess it seems unsightly seeing a female cartoon character with flabby thighs, more often than not they either have muscular thighs or skinny thighs. Not to mention it’s not uncommon for them to have thin waists, as to provide the illusion of having wider hips because women often store fat in their hips as well.

When combined with bigger breasts and cellulite free thighs, you get a rather idealised image of women. Far more idealised than that in fashion magazines where one could always easily focus on the well-made garments, given so many women in the world of superhero cartoons and video games tend to either dress skimpily or look painted on, which only magnifies other people’s insecurities. I kind of think that it’s not other people’s fault why they’re more put off by depictions of women in comic books and video games, moreso than they would with fashion magazines given the way they’re portrayed in the former two is far more extreme and more male biased in some way. (Fashion magazines tend to have more women onboard so.)

I remember somewhere in an academic paper that the idealisation of women in fashion magazines wouldn’t give into the same hyperreal sexist expectations of what women should be the way anime productions do, since fashion magazines tend to have more female editors and writers onboard so this would be true for superhero comics and video games really. This makes a lot of sense that the prototype for Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreal woman’s that of a drag queen, in the sense that the female characteristics are ridiculously exaggerated and enacted by a man. So this would be true for the way superhero cartoonists and character designers depict womenfolk, this may not be true for all of them, but it does play out the way they’re described.

I suspect if we were to restrict it to the writing side of things, the sexism angle will still play out in some way. Sort of like how in both superhero comics and video games, there’s a tendency to create female versions of male characters. This is what Anita Sarkeesian termed ‘Miss Male Character’, where it’s particularly obvious if you look at a handful of DC and Marvel characters. With Batman there are Batgirls and Batwoman, with Superman you have Supergirl, with both Hulk and Red Hulk there are She-Hulk and Red She-Hulk. I remember reading somewhere in a study stating that female characters are also often subordinated to their male counterparts, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise why Catwoman doesn’t have Catman as her sidekick.

Or why not a lot of superhero writers would bother turning Black Canary and Supergirl into actual mother figures for both Robin and Superman, since Supergirl’s now depicted as being actually older than Superman himself. This is made evident by the fact that in some recent stories, she was already a teenager when Clark was sent to earth as a baby. (My Adventures With Superman has both of them start out as babies when they get sent elsewhere.) There’s an even more irritating tendency to give muscular female characters naturally big breasts, not that these don’t exist in real life but when there’s only one who qualifies (Rasa von Werder/Kellie Everts), then such depictions are going to be statistically unrealistic.

Very muscular women usually tend to have square breasts/more defined pectoral muscles, though these tend themselves to a rather androgynous character that not many cartoonists and designers go for. Even if these kinds of depictions have toned down lately, as well as the existence of flat-chested female characters out there somewhere, it’s kind of surreal to think that some can’t do without a fictional buxom woman out there in their stories. It’s not that being buxom is a bad thing, but rather the preponderance of such would easily make someone else feel insecure about the way she looks. Like it communicates a message that those with smaller breasts aren’t attractive, not feminine and stuff.

So it shouldn’t be hard to see why agentic and empowered female characters are undermined by unnecessary sexualisation, which puts some women off of those who’d otherwise be role models in some way.

Would this fly if it were a guy?

I feel when it comes to the way male and female characters are portrayed in popular fiction (video games and crime media included), at other times it’s kind of unequal in the sense that many womenfolk are given outfits contrary to their actual intentions and personalities. It wouldn’t make sense for a character like Cammy White to wear a thong in combat, until recently if Street Fighter 6 is any indication given her stern personality. Morrigan Aensland, being a seductress, would gleefully moon around in this outfit. Imagine if you have a male character dressed up in what appears to a suit until you realise that his trousers have bondage ribbons to each side, making you wonder why on earth would he dress like this?

But the thing is that similar things have been done to female characters over the years that it’s obvious people are going to be desensitised to nearly naked women in some way, as if women are there to be looked at constantly and if they’re ready for sex or something. Not to mention I even argued that these kinds of images may even trigger someone’s body dysmorphia in a way it wouldn’t be with fashion magazines, especially when it comes to the female characters’ proportions and tendency to show more skin than needed. When it comes to clothing, one can always conceal their faults with some article of clothing. But when it comes to the way female video game and cartoon characters are portrayed, they’re almost always kind of perfect.

Maybe not necessarily perfect but given this is drawn that one can easily whip up the ideal woman, whereas with fashion you have to mold yourself to fit this. It’s like how a number of these cartoon characters rarely have cellulite in their thighs, even though women are more inclined to store that than men do, or why it’s pretty rare to find a hairy female cartoon character at all. The closest that I can think of would be Marvel’s Tigra, though she’s usually portrayed as if she were body-painted. So any depiction of Tigra as being actually hairy, as it is with her own eponymous miniseries magazine and a brief appearance in the She-Hulk stories, is occasional at best.

It’s not hard to see that female characters that consistently don’t have much body hair to begin with are going to be the majority, not just in the worlds of DC and Marvel but also something like Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Kombat, among many others. It’s not hard to see how this communicates the idea that the ideal female body (especially in most video games and comics) has to be without cellulite, not much body hair (which would be unfair to those who’re predisposed to being hairy) and almost always there to be gawked at. This is changing for the better in some games, something like even Concord for instance. But the backlash towards Concord points out at something.

Sort of like how there’s a lot of complaints towards this game having a fat character as a playable character, whilst this isn’t even unique to it as Overwatch has it too. But it still communicates the message that can alienate or harm those with body dysmorphic disorder, the more I think about and consider it. As for the more successful Marvel Rivals game, the only female character with a smaller bust is Peni Parker. But then again she’s a young girl, though it does communicate the message that women with smaller breasts are less womanly looking. Not helped by that most of the female characters in this game tend to have bigger breasts, coupled with narrow waists and wider hips as to impart a more zaftig figure.

Given my own struggles with body image, it’s not hard to see how and why these games could be off-putting to certain women. Instead of celebrating the female form, these images reinforce their inadequacies. To make matters worse, it’s more common for women to develop body dysmorphia so such portrayals are going to rub them off the wrong way anyways. The fact that both comics and video games struggle with female audiences should suggest that when it comes to those with body dysmorphia, which women and girls are more prone to, the way these characters are drawn often make them feel worse about themselves. It’s kind of easier to excuse these as they seem to be imaginary.

But I feel this could be even more harmful since people like Freja Beha Erichsen and Kate Moss don’t sport enormous chests, whereas Ivy Valentine and Sophitita often do which could easily trigger one’s insecurities about her breast size. Not only that but there are instances of female cartoon characters who are technically fully-clothed, but wear such skin tight outfits that could easily be body paint. It’s like they wanted a naked woman without making her actually naked, but then again it could be argued that female nudity in drawn art might be more off-putting than a photographed fully-clothed fashion model because the former could reinforce one’s insecurities about their body image.

Whereas one could appreciate the craftsmanship put into a well-done garment, though from my own experience fashion magazines are seen as kind of insubstantial. But I guess it’s easier to overlook the faults in the things you’re more biased to, even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise why these kinds of things are off-putting to others. Especially to those suffering from body dysmorphia that the stark contrast between men and women reinforces their inadequacies.

Diversity and Comics

Not so much in the DEI sense of the word, though it does come in the lines of it, but more in the sense of topics being told and offered. The problem is that the comics industry is largely patronised by geeks, so the topics offered tend to be things that interest them a lot. Like if you really want to read a comic book that’s about dog predation, you’re bound to be almost out of luck because you’re more likely to encounter yet another superhero story or something similar. These kinds of stories certainly do exist but they are rather rare, same with something like church cats and though there are those that come close, however such treatments are rare in the world of cartooning.

Although regular old cartooning does address a wider variety of topics and subject matters than most comic books do, but comic books make up a substantial number of cartoon books being published at this point. Not necessarily always a majority but rather something that makes up a good portion of the cartoon sector within the publishing industry, that even if you run into books containing cartoons you’re also likely to run into something like The Flash or My Hero Academia. Even if these kinds of stories risk being off-putting to those who don’t care about superpowered battles at all, whether or not they actually dislike those but still.

This is one diversity that deserves to be talked about, though some suspect that part of the problem is that many comic book cartoonists and writers aren’t this well-read. Not that they are unintelligent but that they have almost nothing else to tell stories with, which is why it’s easier to run into retreads of Superman’s backstory than to tell stories about Aquaman stopping dogs from eating turtle eggs. This may even be encouraged by editors themselves, who are afraid of going off-brand with these kinds of stories. If they did, they risk facing reader backlash or something like that. So there’s one possible reason why you don’t see more stories featuring the latter subject, it’s too controversial and divisive.

Given how DC and Marvel are so reliant on appealing to their most devout readers that they can’t be bothered to go left field, lest they risk alienating their biggest patrons. Something like this has already happened multiple times before, so this is why these two are increasingly cautious with the sort of stories they publish and condone. So they can’t be bothered to take further risks without alienating their most loyal readers a lot, given these two are practically cult brands at this point in time. Given this has developed over a long period of time as to be nearly inseparable.

Though both of them used to publish a much wider variety of stories being told before, but because DC and Marvel have grown so closely entwined with superheroes that could explain why despite sharing the same owner as Hanna Barbera does, the new Captain Planet comic had to be outsourced to another publisher. No surprise that Dynamite also publishes the Space Ghost comics as of late, since I feel Warner Bros sees DC as largely for the DC world. This could’ve been the case before as Jonny Quest had a comic book published before but not by DC, not to mention Captain Planet first appeared in stories as published by DC’s rival Marvel.

Admittedly, this was before Warner Brothers bought Turner Communications, but it’s not hard to see how and why Warner Bros sees DC Comics as a brand separate from its other brands. Or for another matter, how Disney sees Marvel for the same reason for most of the part. Even if Disney now owns Marvel, Disney comics proper are usually done and published outside of Marvel. Marvel is a separate brand and is treated as such for most of the part, with Disney comics being outsourced to other publishers who’re lucky enough to not only have but also retain the Disney licence for long.

I remember somebody going by the name of Jed Alexander said that these two prioritise brand consistency over anything else, not that it’s wrong to run a business but when comic books constitute a huge chunk of the brand’s shared universe it can be hard to break out of it. DC’s very own Vertigo lasted for a generously long time but then it gave way to DC Black Label, which emphasises more on recognisable DC characters this time. So this goes to show you how Warner Bros doesn’t see DC Comics as its comics publishing division, but rather as a brand to maintain and take care of.

Not that there’s anything wrong with managing brands, this explains why DC has some expectations to adhere to. So even if it were possible to pitch a comic book series that tackles the problem of dog predation, or one featuring Aquaman addressing the same it would be too controversial for DC Comics to go through so it’ll get rejected right away. So this means that even if you have comics writers who have something to put on the table, it wouldn’t be accepted immediately if it’s actually too divisive and controversial. Then you have comics writers who know nothing else to write about, so it’s easier to retell Superman’s backstory than to write a story where Aquaman confronts dogs eating turtle eggs.

This is a real problem that scientists and journalists alike know, though it’s something that rarely shows up in comics if present. It could be a combination of both where a number of writers and editors alike are hesitant towards things they’re not particularly used to, something like the subject of dogs attacking wildlife, that it’s something they wouldn’t willingly enjoy addressing in any way. So such stories aren’t just rejected but also never addressed at all at worst, so it’s not going to be something that you’d ordinarily encounter in the DC Universe. Superpowered battles are de rigeur, having Aquaman confront dog predation would be too out of the blue.

So this could be partly why comics and especially western comics aren’t diverse in terms of the kinds of stories being offered, not necessarily in the lights of DEI but in the sense of stories about the Medici and well, the Gucci family. Maybe these do show up, though rarely at that. It’s kind of bad when there are more prose nonfiction books about the Medici, than there are comics featuring the same (let alone outside of Italy, since these could exist) that speaks volumes about the things both writers and editors condone. I can’t name a single comic book that I know of that features something like the Rothschilds, which tells you about how comic books have largely come to pander to a minority.

This may not always be the case, but it makes sense why comics are the way they are. Like many of them are often written by people who have little else to say about the matter, it almost always relates back to geek culture in some way or another. Maybe not always but it’s often like this with many comics at this point. This is getting better at this point, though it remains to be seen if there’ll be more comics authors who are interested in these sorts of things. It is getting better though it’s more widespread outside of superhero comics and possibly outside of Anglophone comics, see also Japanese comics (AKA manga) to give you an idea of what others are talking about.

Though unfortunately, it seems Anglophone comics are hamstrung by many things. But most especially a near-overreliance on familiar brands like DC, Marvel and the like, that makes it risk-averse to certain concepts and themes in some regards really.

The other diversity

When it comes to diversity in comic book storytelling, it’s usually in the lines of multiculturalism, disabilities and other forms of identity politics. Not that there’s anything wrong with having different kinds of lives being represented in comics, but here’s another form of diversity that may’ve been brought up before though not in a way they’d expect it to be. Something in the lines of comic books about factory workers and the like, these certainly do exist but it seems what tends to sell in comic books are often about flashy battles and anything speculative. The other problem’s that comic books have come to be largely patronised by a certain audience with certain tastes, to the point where the comic book industry caters a lot to those people.

It’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy that comic books that don’t hinge a lot on geek interests are the ones that don’t get to sell, outside of bookstore sales and online sales. Mainstream comics almost always mean superheroes and to some extent, anything speculative but not so much on something many more people read or care about. There certainly is a casual comics readership, but I don’t think they’re strongly catered to for long, the way there is for the hardcore comics readership. They’re not necessarily elusive, but they’re an afterthought for many North American comics publishers. The sort of comics publishers that do target casual readers a lot are going to be regular publishers, sometimes comics publishers but hardly ever the likes of Image, DC, Marvel and their ilk.

Their biggest patrons tend to be diehard readers more at home in fantastical settings involving flashy fights, than stories involving something like factory workers trying to earn their keep and stuff. The latter does exist but not in great quantities, you might say that escapism’s also a big thing in prose fiction. But when it comes to factual topics and the like, there’s always an audience for those. There’s always going to be somebody else willing to read up on them, just as there’s always going to be somebody who’s even paid to write about this stuff. There’s going to be somebody who’s willing to write about it and get paid for it, so it’s kind of inexcusable to have comics be solely about fights.

When it comes to the other sort of diversity, I suspect that given the comics industry’s biggest patrons happen to be nerds, catering to anybody else outside of this demographic would be a really big risk. Even if it brings in more casual readers this way, something the comics industry tries to aim for. But never seems to be genuinely committed to it either, because I feel publishers would risk alienating their most dedicated readers in doing so. It’s easier to focus on superheroes, especially if you have a loyal built-in audience for it, than to publish comic books about urban foxes and the like. There are probably already some comics about the latter, though I feel most comics publishers aren’t willing to take a big risk, lest they lose their most loyal patrons.

Even if it brings in new readers this way.

The brilliance of simplicity

When it comes to a character like Black Canary, she’s commonly shown wearing fishnets in some form or another. But as what somebody else said, they’re particularly complicated to draw. They’re even more complicated to colour due to the advent of computer colouring, that it would be time-consuming having to colour those spots (I know this from experience). To the point where replacing them with opaque tights would be more time-saving and also helps preserve the overall look without changing it much, it also helps that opaque tights also don’t have the same sexualised connotation that fishnets do. Opaque tights are very much things that most respectable women wear and is even encouraged in some professions like nursing.

Black Canary is not a particularly sexually active character, despite her choice of attire, she’s only had two male romantic partners: her former husband Larry Lance and then her boyfriend Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. Supergirl has several more and she herself doesn’t wear any fishnets, which is saying and similar things can be said of others like She-Hulk. If animation is any indication, you could always depict Black Canary with opaque tights and she’d still be recognisably herself. It doesn’t change the overall look much, though it’s far less sexualised since it’s something women in respectable occupations are wont to do. Like I said before, Black Canary doesn’t seem to be much of a romantic, being attracted to just two men in her life.

Just two men in her life, as far as I know about it. In the case with animation, there’s a preference for simplicity given making it more complex, especially in 2D, makes it harder to work it and more hours to work on than necessary. Whilst advancements in computer technology has made it easier to go ham with details, simplicity is much easier to pull off consistently in 2D animation. Perhaps this goes a long way explaining why Black Canary only started showing up in animation fairly recently, given Bruce Timm found a solution to this by replacing them with a different pair of tights. Far less sexualised and also something easier to animate with more consistently, the best of both worlds born out of necessity and efficiency.

This is something that I feel comics cartoonists don’t get when redesigning her at all, like you could always preserve the overall look whilst substituting the fishnets for something opaque if animation’s any indication and she’d still look like herself. It’s not that drastic and it’s also far simpler, far easier to draw from memory too. But this involves realising something that sometimes it doesn’t take something drastic to replace the fishnets with something else, it could be something far simpler to draw and easier to remember as well.

Reverse engineering the female vigilante

When it comes to the usual portrayal of female vigilantes in the world of superhero comics, they’re seen in catsuits and leotards, sometimes it gets really skimpy and sometimes it gets so tight that there’s practically no point in giving them open cleavages when they already look kind of naked (without being naked). Not to mention some cartoonists tend to play up their assets, making them bustier or more well-endowed than average. Let’s say I create a female vigilante whose character design goes in the antipode direction, rather than putting her in an outfit that reveals or highlights her body, it conceals it.

Perhaps a character like her already exists in either DC or Marvel, but I feel the way most female characters are portrayed and designed in both of them makes it easier to sexualise them at any point. Like say she wears a catsuit that you have cartoonists wanting to unzip the part where the cleavage ought to be, or make it so skintight that she looks somewhat naked. Likewise if she wears a leotard, people will want to give her a wedgie. If she wears a short skirt (a la Supergirl, Mary Marvel and Nightshade, all DC characters), people will give her a panty shot even though it’s inappropriate when in flight.

Some characters look like they’re created straight from BDSM imagery as it is with Cassandra Cain, Madelyne Pryor at one point (I think) and possibly a few more, which doesn’t help if/when some superhero cartoonists and writers are actually intimated with BDSM themselves. When you have cartoonists and writers being knowingly into BDSM and/or deliberately sexualise the female characters, so there’s no way it’s going to be an innocent accident when the intent makes itself blatant in a number of cases. When it comes to the way female characters are usually portrayed in DC and Marvel that it’s going to be hard getting around the possible sexualisastion of them at any point.

Actually this is also true for moe characters in anime, since in Japan it refers to what we call the anime style. The way moe characters are portrayed is to make them so desirable that sexualistion inevitably goes hand in hand with it, many moe elements are also popular porn fetish categories which makes it worse. It seems the real problem lies with the inherent problems with such a school of drawing that it could be circumvented by not designing such characters to look like this or that, it’s like the problem with the female nude. Because of how sexualised women are, that a better way to circumvent it is to not show them unclothed.

Especially if/when people could get aroused by it, that the only way to circumvent it is to preclude it altogether. Sometimes there’s no way getting around things like nudity and the like, which are readily sexualised by the way. This may not always be the case for other characters, but it seems like the way female characters are portrayed in DC and Marvel are almost always either idealised or demonised until now. It would be interesting to come up with a female vigilante who doesn’t dress like this at all, one who’d be more comfortable wearing baggy clothes than a catsuit. It would be just as impractical especially with the wide sleeves.

But it does make one wonder why are so many superhero cartoonists hellbent on making them dress like dominatrices, why are so many superhero writers hellbent on writing down their sexual fantasies of women they like? To be fair, while there are some women who actually dress like this and thus sexualising themselves a lot, others are more sensitive to what others think of them as. Then there are those who openly oppose sexualisation of any sort, so I feel they’re unlikely to condone the repeated sexualisation of women in any medium really.

What will become of Neil Gaiman?

I’m not a fan of Neil Gaiman, nor am I a hater. But I find myself wondering what’s going to happen to his literary legacy once he’s outed for sexual abuse, that it’s quite likely it might be undone in some way. It’s also just as likely for it to become something of a cautionary story for any writer, should they get too intimate with readers as to sexually take advantage of them. It’s kind of surreal to think that for a while in the past, sometime between the 1990s and 2010s (20 years or so), he was lauded as one of the most female friendly writers in comic books ever. But it’s a low bar when almost every superheroine is rarely depicted as resembling an average woman over time, coupled with rampant sexualisation, blatant misogyny and how and why male superheroes like Superman and Batman often receive female counterparts.

I feel it’s possible for PD James’s legacy to be similarly undone, should there be a scandal surrounding her having had a hidden affair with a certain detective over the years who inspired one of her characters. In the cases with both Gaiman and James, it’s not so much using somebody as inspiration alone as the problem, but rather the ethics of using somebody as inspiration without their consent or the consequences that arise from controversial methods. Sort of like how there’s a DC Comics character that Gaiman came up with who’s closely based on somebody so specific, right down to the same number of piercings and stuff. Likewise it would be kind of shocking to realise that Dalgliesh is based on somebody James had an affair with, but it becomes obvious when it comes to who the latter is and what he has done. The only problem is that both their PR teams do their best to keep their reputations clean and unblemished.

Despite both of them having done wrong, that has to be disclosed immediately with James (should her secret affair be leaked to the public). It wouldn’t make for good publicity, but it should speak about the things they’ve done to other people. Especially if it risks revealing something suspicious about them, like how there’s a Neil Gaiman story featuring one character who’s based on a nanny he had an affair with. As for PD James, if Adam is based on a man she had an affair it yet kept it secret for long, then it seems disingenuous of her to not reveal it in time. There’s not much news about Gaiman’s affairs with other women, however controversial they are in nature, but I feel it’s got to do with his PR team making sure his reputation isn’t so badly tarnished.

It’s probably the same with PD James’s own PR team, that if she turned out to have an affair with someone that they’ll do anything to minimise it. Even though she should go through the consequences of her actions and posthumously so, since by then there’s no getting around Adam being eerily similar to her sidepiece should he ever be found out in time as well.

Between the two

When it comes to Goth cartoonists on the Internet, I feel that while Kai Decadence is one of the first that I got really interested in, it’s Arden Wachowski who’s the more talented of the two. Generally better sense of anatomy and while their comics aren’t always so polished, there’s something of an interesting story and angle not commonly found in Anglophone North American comics. As they’re Canadian, Cold Hard Teeth is more interesting than say Captain Canuck.

The latter’s a Canadian superhero as conceived by actual Canadians, but while the stories he appears in are serviceable, Cold Hard Teeth blows the waters off of it because it’s not only more readable but also has a more interesting premise. It’s about two musicians who go Goth upon realising that they’re monsters, also they’re into bands like Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy which makes the Goth angle all the more authentic and sincere. In ways those written by non-Goths don’t get immediately.

There’s a gulf of difference between something like DC’s Black Alice and the characters at Cold Hard Teeth, or for another matter Courtney Gripling’s Goth makeover. Courtney being this character from As Told By Ginger, but like I said earlier Gordon’s and Tanner’s Goth makeover is sincere as their author actually got into Goth punk music at some point and stuck to it. For all its faults, it’s really well-written and it’s refreshing in a sea of bland superhero stories.

Kai Decadence’s stuff tends to be more sexualised, in the sense that he fetishises not only muscular men, but also bodybuilders and it shows in the way he draws cartoon characters. The less is said about his fursona, the better. While Kai Decadence is one of the earliest I got into, Arden Wachowski’s better even if their art’s not always polished but is at least interesting.

The Princess And The Witch

To some of those growing up in the early 2000s, there were a number of girls who were into Disney’s WITCH. It’s practically Disney Italia’s attempt to court a teenage girl readership, since they wouldn’t be caught dead reading Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse at the time. It’s basically a magical girl team setup inspired by Sailor Moon, but made with an Italian sensibility despite its American setting. (Its original authors are Italian, as it is with the reboot.) Initially rejected for being too manga-inspired, the authors fought for it and it became something of a success.

While the premise of WITCH (Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay Lin) is basically that of teenaged girls becoming magical warriors or something, it’s more common to push the Disney Princesses themselves. Like I said before that the WITCH characters generally live in a world closer to our own, whilst the Disney Princesses inhabit vaguely antiquated worlds. From what I’ve seen of the WITCH comics, the former wear contemporary clothing (2000s for the original series, 2020s for the reboot). The Disney Princesses seem to live in a gilded past.

As in despite the gowns being inspired by fashions of the day, the Disney Princesses live in worlds removed from our own in some way. While the WITCH characters are technically and arguably more relatable, the Disney Princesses are more ubiquitous especially in the world of merchandising. It’s easier to push and inculcate the Disney Princesses because they seem to communicate a feminine ideal popular with little girls at the time when the brand first started, coupled with decades of familiarity with some of the characters there.

Easier than it is with the WITCH characters, despite being actual schoolgirls themselves (thus closer to most young girls really). It’s kind of telling that there are more Disney Princess-branded items than there is for WITCH, far more with the former than with the latter, speaking from my experience. I also think it’s easier to market Disney Princesses to other people, given how leery Christians are of witchcraft that the princess thing seems less suspicious by comparison. Something Disney knows on some level, despite creating the Harrypottersque Wizards of Waverly Place.

It’s also more convenient to sell merchandise to adults this way with the Disney Princess characters, than it is with the WITCH characters where you could come up with princess-themed gowns. The WITCH characters are probably a harder sell, so it’s easier to do cradle to grave marketing with the Princess characters instead. It’s also quite possible that despite being set in America, there’s something particularly Italian about WITCH that doesn’t sit easily with American audiences not helped by a certain programme not fulfilling people’s expectations but I could be wrong about that.

Especially when another Italian-made brand, Winx Club, manages to do so well overseas. But I suppose even the Winx characters don’t seem to have the same cachet as the Disney Princesses, at least not to the same extent so far and it’s easy to do American Dream ideals with the latter. The whole bettering oneself to get a better life in some way, I suppose. Perhaps American imperialism seems more appealing when wrapped up with pretensions to royalty, as it is with the Disney Princesses, than something involving magical girls.

The latter being a rather foreign idea more readily embraced by Japanophile Italians, it should be noted that anime like Yu Yu Hakusho actually aired on the Italian version of MTV, it’s for real people. It seems to me that although Italy’s also home to Italians hesitant towards Japanese influences in comics, it’s more likely to successfully cultivate stores based around those like with Winx Club in relation to the magical girl school of storytelling. America being a massive hegemon would rather rest on its laurels and inculcate its ideas and preferences onto everything and anything else.

Thus everybody and anybody else as well, which explains why it’s not too open to foreign influences for most of the part. It’s not that WITCH isn’t unsuccessful, there have been attempts at reprinting the earlier comics and a reboot, but it’s not particularly as ubiquitous as the Disney Princesses are.