Marvel Divas
Written by Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa
Marvel Comics, 2009
The Marvel Universe, the creative world of comic-book company Marvel Comics, contains supernatural beings, alien races, a lot of bad guys and, of course, the iconic superheroes of several generations. Apparently, it is also home to cocktail bars, manicurists and an abundance of romantic drama. At least, it is if you're a woman.
Marvel Divas, a four-issue limited series to be released by Marvel in July, is Sex and the City for superheroes, literally. Marvel CEO Joe Quesada said the edition will "feature some of the Marvel Universe's greatest female heroes in a way you haven't seem them before".
The series' writer, Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa, said he plans to "lift the curtain a bit and take a peep" at four female superheroes. Firestar (Angelica Jones), Black Cat (Felicia Hardy), Hellcat (Patsy Walker) and Photon (Monica Rambeau) will develop a preoccupation with "sudsy" melodrama.
They're all leading double-lives and they're all having romantic trouble. An expose-style plot follows these "fabulous single girls" contending with romance, action and ex-boyfriends, leading to much "suds and drama".
The problems are about as rampant as The Thing on an adrenaline hit.
It starts with the idea that likening the series to Sex and the City is what will sell it. The female demographic will flock to the sales stands because, clearly, all women are interested in is big-city professional white women seeking out happiness in the arms of Mr Big and looking nothing but fabulous in the meantime.
Divas flaunts every single sexist gender role in existence. Even a powerful and formidable superhero is only out to fetch a man. Attractive women possess only one distinctive, unrealistic body type; it is crucial to dress that excessively exaggerated body in seasonal fashion labels and routinely subject it to beauty treatments (the preview pages of Divas show the four characters getting a manicure).
The title also blatantly fields high-profile women as tumultuous, tempestuous prima donnas. Who thinks of a credibly strong independent woman when they think of a "diva"?
The comic's sleaze-factor is all too typical of blatantly sexist portrayals of women in pop culture.
The comic was accused of sexism on numerous fan-based websites, such as Jezebel.com. "I don't care about how awesome superheroines are when they're out kicking ass", it said. "I just want to know what they're like when they're having some hot sudsy fun and talking about shoes and boys!"
Aguirre-Sacasa responded that he was not being sexist, that he loved writing about "strong women".
He claimed to recognise gender inequality: "The series is going to a deeper place, asking questions about what it means, truly means, to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns", he said, reported the Comic Book Resources website.
If this were his true ambition, it may have paid to include a few "strong" women in the creative process. Unfortunately, this didn't happen.
Comparably, the manga comic Shojo employs about 400 women mangaka (comic artists). Another popular manga studio is CLAMP, an all-women collective. Japanese pop culture website ICv2.com estimated that, in the Japanese manga market, 60% of readers are women. It's obvious that a loyal female audience results from comics made by women for women.
It seems askew that an all-male creative team basing their decisions on an already male-dominated audience, with a comic book history of women in specific gender roles, could pull off such a feat.
Sex and the City sold to a particular audience. It is clear that Marvel Divas is pitched in the same way. In any corporate setting, marketers and accountants make the decisions, and comic books are no exception. Yet the imagery and tone remains completely couched to a stereotypical male audience.
Women in comic books have historically been excluded to lesser and inferior characters or simple plot devices, such as the love interest that causes male heroes to act erratically or become distracted.
Or as super-heroines who invariably seek out the aid of their manly counterparts (like the first issue of Fantastic Four in 1961, where the Invisible Woman is helpless in the grip of a giant monster and the three men in the team have to save the day).
The real aim of the book was revealed straight after Aguirre-Sacasa's apparent concern for women in male-dominated worlds: "But mostly it's just a bit of hot fun", he said.
That is, sexualised objectification of women is an inevitable product, no matter the context or how truly "super" the women depicted may be.
It dismisses their strength, power and achievements. Who cares if Photon led the Nextwave team to destroy weapons of mass destruction? I want to know whether or not she'll hook up with Brother Voodoo.
And so women remain marginalised and defined by their sex lives.
Yet Marvel Divas didn't come out of a vacuum. Sexist media imagery stereotypes women in many ways and provides the groundwork for culturally defined "sex appeal". It distorts and alienates the ideas of both women and men about desire and power.
It complies with the ideology that, as a woman, it is most important to be deemed "beautiful" and behave in a conformist way to achieve success. Capitalist society has a particular idea of what is attractive and desirable, as well as what is successful.
Marvel Divas emphasises all of this over and above the power and strength it takes to be a superhero. She may be a crime-fighting, supernaturally powerful, martial artist superhero — but what kind of shoes is she wearing?