What Is The Comics World’s Problem With Women?

First things first: I am a white, middle-class, twentysomething male, and I am very much aware of how pathetically unqualified I am to discuss basically any issue that requires an understanding of life from the perspective of someone who actually knows what hardship is.

However, I am pathetically overqualified to talk about comic books. Specifically, in this case, comic books and their obsession with relegating female characters (and people of colour, but that’s worth an article in itself) to supporting roles, eye candy, and vengeance catalysts – and the truly scary reactions that bubble from the hateful, sprawling mass of insecure male readers any time Marvel, DC or any other major comics publisher does something that might mess with how they perceive things should be.

The most recent case in point has come in the form of a change that should have been universally celebrated – Marvel’s announcement that, going forward, Thor would be a woman (or, rather, a woman would be Thor). Not “Lady Thor”. Not “Thor XX”. Not “Miss Thorena” or “She-Thor”. Thor. It’s the same Thor it’s always been (well, except for the time he turned into a frog), but now he’s a she. It’s as big a deal as it is not a big deal, if you follow me.

The announcement came simultaneously with the news that African American character Sam Wilson, better known as the Falcon (as seen in the recent Captain America: The Winter Soldier flick) would be taking over the Cap mantle, and Iron Man would be getting a new suit.

And yes, fans, as expected, were royal goddamn pains in the Asgard about it.

Now, to be totally fair, it increasingly seems that such announcements are being met by a more moderated wave of vitriol from men (which, um... good?) as more and more of us shake off the pro-masculine programming put on us since boyhood and come to understand that "running like a girl" is not, and shouldn't be construed as, an inherently negative thing. But there remain a vocal few who just had to have their two cents' worth of public idiocy.

First, renowned film critic YouTube channel CinemaSins offered up a concerned pontification on Marvel’s probable future…

No, CinemaSins. A female Thor and black Captain America are not examples of “Marvel gone goofy” – and neither, for that matter, would be a gay Wolverine, or a Spider-Man with Asperger’s, or a spiritual Hulk, regardless of creed. In fact, that would probably be a more accurate representation of the general populace than four straight white dudes and a fifth guy who is also white but has metal bones and a growth problem.

The bigger issue is, when Marvel announced these changes – and not just these changes, but the introduction of African-Latino Spider-Man Miles Morales in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man, or even Nick Fury being re-cast as a black man when the Ultimate line first launched in 2001 (he was previously Clint Eastwood and John Wayne’s love child, basically) – that a significant number of fans accused them of pandering to “minorities” (a typically arrogant, Anglo-centric and incredibly skewed interpretation of how the world is actually populated), forsaking their “true” fans for cheap points among what they see as a vocal, whiney few.

Ironically, they don't seem to understand that, increasingly, they are the vocal, whiney few.

Well, it’s a good thing that the comics industry doesn’t live and die on your business, "timthetatman", because if you are really so emotionally stunted that you can’t come to terms with the fact that Thor is literally a pair of breasts up and a penis down on how she formerly looked – and is basically otherwise unchanged – then you have far bigger problems than lecherously fantasy-casting your own movies, you cretin.

Meanwhile, “travissaurusrex” claims something in a comic book about god-like, inter-dimensional space-faring aliens “doesn’t even make sense”, as if “sense” has literally anything at all to do with god-like, inter-dimensional space-faring aliens.

Wow, Al Snow, what the hell? I rooted for you, man. I used to love you in the WWF, before it was the WWE, when you were still contracted to lose every match you took part in, to help younger, more interesting talent be catapulted to more impressive statuses than you could ever have hoped to attain in your stupidly long career, despite riding Mick “God” Foley’s coattails for like twenty years.

Wait, what was I saying? I got distracted. I zone out around gratuitous stereotypes.

The erudite KAVINSKY believes that sex and gender are the same thing. That really requires no further comment, right? Like, we can all just quietly agree that this guy is a cockwit and move on, yeah?

No, “sakethvv”, Thor is not Thorita, and even if she were, I struggle so hard to understand why that’s supposed to be automatically a bad thing.

Like, did you forget that even your own mother, for all her other obvious parental failings, had the resilience and fortitude to shove your apparently still infantile frame physically out of her in order to give you the privilege of life in the first place? It’s probably well past time to stop with the “girls=bad” line of thought, buddy.

If you’re an adult and your Twitter handle is drawn from a fictional character with an over-emphasis on how rad you think they are, you are not in a position to start trying to be witty about anything, least of all through insinuating that 51% of the world’s population are frail and mopey.

Oddly, though, it’s not just the men who had a thing or two to say about Thor’s new look.

Well, sorry, “marsfaery”, but without any kind of explanation, evidence or context for your assertion, I humbly beg to differ on the “ridiculous” front.

In an industry renowned for the endemically shitty way it treats women (and has done for years), believe me, it’s not the fact that there’s a new one on the scene that is the truly ridiculous thing at play here.

No; what’s truly “ridiculous” is that Marvel can keep putting out new promotional material for its films in which women are perpetually clinging to their impossibly buff male-superhero protagonists, or, in the case of real ass-kickers like Scarlett Johannsson’s Black Widow or Hayley Atwell’s Agent Carter, left contorted in some textbook Escher-Girl pose that screams, “Come hither,” but barely whispers, “And I will break your stupid neck”.

Ultimately, we’re dealing with a largely fictional medium here, one that white, middle-class men have dominated both behind the scenes and on the pages since its inception. As the incredibly white comic-book ocean gains a few more drops that happen to be female or of a different ethnicity, we shouldn’t be screaming, “Shark! It’s a shark! Shit! No! Sharks destroy everything you love!” and bolting for the beach. We should just revel in the water not being so fucking salty all the time instead.