Hello
@King crimson and good morning. Thanks for this informative post, it has given me a lot to think about. Yes, I agree that much of the comics industry has some problems with sexuality and drawing of women, even if I do myself enjoy the comics that I did read, including the desings of women.
I don't really have acess to comic book stores, so I have no idea about anything you mentioned about in modern comics. May I have some examples from people here who do?
@King crimson is referring primarily to things like the
"boobs and butt" pose, though there's a pretty good general pattern of which that is a part. 'Modern' comics can here be interpreted to mean pretty much anything in the last 30-40 years or so, I think.
Though yeah, skimpy outfits being common for female characters is weird. Sure Wonder Woman and Power Girl are nigh-unkillable demigoddesses, but Black Canary and Poison Ivy among others aren't bulletproof regenators.
Though really, most characters wear surprisingly impractical outfits, since they seem to wear normal stuff. Very least, you won't find many examples who confirm they're wearing durable supersuits.
Yeah, but most male costumes at least mean you won't constantly have bits of rubble scraping your bare skin.
Consider the Golden Age magician Zatara, who adventured in a top hat and suit. Impractical for rough travels and combat, perhaps, but it'd keep the weather off, at least.
By contrast, his daughter Zatanna tends to adventure in literally a Las Vegas showgirl costume. Fishnet stockings were never meant as all-weather clothing.
Hrm.
One possible reason for the much greater occurrence of girl than lady in a Cape's name could be the length.
Girl is one Syllable, lady and woman are two, while both man and boy are at one; Your character surviving to become known is greatly aided if the name rolls off the tongue easier.
I must admit that I don't read a lot of superhero comics, so I don't know enough names to check the validity of this.
@King crimson: Regarding "Iceman" and "Marvel Girl" as examples, I think part of that is the reverse doesn't sound as... Well? Like Batgirl and Batwoman equally sound good, but Iceboy just sounds stupid compared to Iceman.
I mean. We can come up with justifications for this after the fact.
But it's kind of...
interesting... that our default language is fine with calling an adult female "girl" and this supposedly doesn't sound 'stupid' or demeaning, but not fine with calling an adult male "boy."
[Also, 'girl' is definitely not pronounced as one syllable in all English dialects; where I come from we say "gur-uhl" with a pretty distinct split between the two syllables.]
Female characters in superhero comic books having skimpy outfits makes sense when you consider who the main consumers of superhero comic books are: unmarried men. A female character that can kick ass wearing nothing but a bikini gives the young men who read the comics a hit of dopamine both in how she does violence (satisfying our sadism) and what she's wearing (satisfying our lust). But that's the hindbrain, and if you only have that, then your forebrain cannot rationalize just feeding the chimp hindbrain. Fortunately, superhero comic books that provide an engaging plot (or at least, a sufficiently complex plot) full of rich archetypes and a long in-universe history to justify the forebrain's enjoyment of the comic book.
That's my explanation of why female superheroes wear skimpy outfits.
Except that this starts from the underlying premise "superhero comics are and ought to be marketed to unmarried men." Firstly, as
@King crimson pointed out, that wasn't always the case. Decades ago they were heavily marketed to children, including prepubescent children. Secondly, why
should they be marketed primarily to unmarried men, by the mechanism of providing sexual gratification? Comic books aren't exactly too expensive for a married person to buy, and in the modern era, women make up a large fraction of the potential market for any commercial product.
What it comes down to is that we've got this fancy combination of legacy social mechanisms and justifications for why it's okay to put female characters in bikinis and stick them up on stage because of deep-seated male drives, but where doing the opposite and putting men in Speedos and putting
them up on stage as fanservice for women is seen as, well, kind of
weird. Oh, and maybe it'd be evidence that the artist (implicitly assumed to be male because men are the default gender, right?) is kind of gay (which would be appalling).
The thing batman is skilled enought to make it work and actually get the info less with torture and more with terror.
Terror is always a big element in any kind of torture (note that 'stage one' of the Inquisition's torture tactics was always just to drag the victim in to the chamber and
show them the instruments). It doesn't really sidestep the point that it seems kind of hypocritical that Batman will break someone's bones by beating them up, or dangle someone off a building
just for information, but won't kill the Joker when he kills 30 people, and then goes to jail and escapes and kills 20 more, and repeats this process
several times.
