Something Regarding Comic Books That's Worth Reading

Props to Comics Alliance's Laura Hudson for this article on the difference between female characters in superhero comics who are sexually liberated versus those who serve as vessels for male sexual fantasies. Two things to add:

1. I should point out that her examples of negative portrayals are DC Comics-heavy. While I was (and still am) more of a Marvel fan, I've gone through enough material from the "Distinguished Competition" to know that one groups make more genuine strides to write/draw female empowering stories than the other. If you ask any Marvel fan to name the top 15 or twenty most powerful characters, I'm pretty sure 5-7 of them will be female. Over at DC? After Wonder Woman and Power Girl. Also, Marvel's chock full of female characters who aren't legacy characters of female counterpart to male predecessors.
   
2. One of the reason I stopped collecting comics regularly (around 2001) was because the "revamps/reboots" boiled down to basically "How controversial can we make our characters and sell comics?" The Ultimates line (which mercefully seems to finally evolving into it own universe, and not some giant "What If" Marvel world minus the decades of continuity), the recent Flashpoint from DC (where Gorilla Grodd pretty much destroyed all of Africa and no one seemed to care but when Aquaman and Wonder Woman threaten Great Britain it's like "We've got to stop them!") have been more about grabbing attention via "edginess" versus good storytelling. Kingdom Come involved a nuke destroying the American Midwest, but the story behind that event did not make it gratuitous. Rogue and Gambit finally got in on a few years ago when they were captured and depowered by a Magneto-in-disguise (of course he was), but we didn't have to see the act itself; it was pretty much implied.
   

And to piggy-back on #2: I think the worst thing that happened to the comic books was when the comic book characters started appearing in movies full time. While I agree with Sly Stallone (who said comic book movies have all but replaced old-school action movies) and Stan Lee (that movies were the natural next medium for comic book characters) if seems to have left the writers and artists feeling that they have to "push the envelope" in order to get the theater-goes to buy a $4 comic. Instead of good stories with equal amounts of action and pathos, we get a montage of sex and gore, but since the characters deliver snarkier lines, it's supposedly different that what we got in the 90's.