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Marvel's Female Superheroes Are Gradually Becoming More Super
New submitter RhubarbPye writes: A new study shows an increasing trend in the power and significance of female superhero characters in the Marvel comic book universe. Several criteria were used to examine the trend, including cover art, dialog, and the actual superpowers. Over 200 individual comic books from Marvel's 50+ year history were compared for the study. What's of particular interest is the study's author is a 17-year-old high school student from Ohio.
The summary makes no mention of the author's gender.
Seems a bit condescending, why wouldn't a girl be able to do this?
Er... the last sentence was "What's of particular interest is the study's author is a 17-year-old high school student from Ohio." - the "interesting" part is that they're a highschool student and 17 years old, with a published scientific paper to their name. The summary doesn't even mention that they're a girl, you'd have to go and read the article to find that out.
Reading the article... what kind of first post-er are you?
This is more a result of low powered secondary characters gaining power, the main female characters have always been over powered compared to the male characters on the Marvel side.
If you look at mutants, they all get exactly 1 power, healing factor, or eye beams or telepathy or teleportation... unless they're women in which case they often get several. Jean Grey has a couple, Pixie has several, Wanda has several, Emma Frost has a couple, Rogue only has one but it gives her more
Even for non-mutants if you look at the fantastic 4, they all get 1 power... except Susan Richards. Arguably Reed Richards has two as he is also a super scientist, but that wasn't a result of the accident.
Considering his level of obsession with female superheroes, I assumed he was a 17-year-old boy, with sore wrists.
The summary makes no mention of the author's gender.
RTFA: "Katherine Murphy, 17"
So your thesis is that males would prefer to look at drawings of men in skin tight costumes over women in skin tight costumes?
The person I was replying to was clearly referencing the summary.
Sure, but why the sigh? The aim of the study was to see if portrayal of women in the comics had changed over time. It was found that this was the case and indeed it was hypothesized from the investigator that the reason was change in reader demographics as well as writer demographics. Sounds like a nice little study (especially as they hint to a somewhat randomized process in selecting the comic books), would have loved to actually see the data though rather than just the summary.
The big question on everyone's mind:
Could She-Hulk lift a glass ceiling?
Okay, the most powerful super in the setting is one SQUIRREL GIRL!
She's the living embodiment of "Chuck Norris Facts" for the Marvel Universe, and is basically on par with the Living Tribunal (a fundamental entity of the universe and essentially a godlike manifestation).
How, pray tell, does one get "more super" than that?
ASIDE from grating on about the feminist implications of "Name+GIRL" vs "Name+WOMAN" or "Name".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I have a vague memory of a time when children read comics and adults read books and newspapers. It seems now that children are busy with Twitter while adults are living in a fantasy world. Where will the de-evolution of humanity end?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Let me know when they stop drawing them with FF tits and thighs and asses you could crack walnuts on.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Geez. Are you overly sensitive. There wasn't any mention in the article of 'see these results prove women are still oppressed', or calling for 'more female represenation'. In fact the results from the study would suggest that 'see women are represented rather well in Marvel comic books' (or at least 'better than they used to be') but it makes no such conclusions one way or the other. As a good study should it simply states the results without interpretation of 'what they mean for society'. Though the article does indicate that the 'cause' may be because there are more female comic book readers & artists/writers....surprise surprise...someone catering to 1/2 the population with disposible income using people who might understand more about the demographic than the other 1/2....
Look there is SJW 'bullshit' all over the place that can & should be called out, but if every story about women leads you to believe its an 'SJW conspiracy' you need to grow up, pick your battles wisely.
SHE HAS A NAME, and it's Lara Croft, you insensitive clod! And she IS my heroine, same thing
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I could do the exact same analysis on Superman and find the exact same result that over time his powers have inflated. Power Creep is a well known issue in comics. The score of 12.2 in the 60's to 22.5 for female characters today is absolutely meaningless without the corresponding male character scores.
To give some small sliver to credit to comics, their stock-sexyness isn't just a female thing. While it is true that their female superpowered characters generally wear accessorised bikinis, have breasts bigger than their heads and spines made our of rubber, the men fare no better. Just about every male superpowered character gets the torso of a bodybuilder and a face angled like a brick.
Blame the readers. The publishers just make what they know will sell.
Aren't we touchy?!
Equality makes boys feel inferior. Men can live with it.
So, shut up, you big baby!
That poor little boy Kathy, I'll bet he got beat up a lot
I guess you never heard the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue"
For the last time, it's "I swear she told me she was 18". If you mess it one more time you'll have to find another lawyer.
I think most the readers don't care until they are older and have been reading comics for a while. The boobs, porn faces, and porn poses are a result of the artists. Powergirl specifically has big boobs as a prank by the artist.
Once the readers are a bit older (14+), then yea some would like to buy a sexy version of the superheroine they've read about rather than a sexy poster of some random victoria's secret or sports illustrated model. Either way, the 16 year old boy is going to have a sexy poster of a girl of some kind. And there are sexy boy posters for the girls at that age too tho most are teen bands.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
the "interesting" part is that they're a highschool student and 17 years old, with a published scientific paper to their name
I'm pretty sure all the authors of papers presented as the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair are high school students.
Honestly this is a trend in all of TV, and to a certain extent it's really silly.
Show writers desperately want to put women in positions of power and control, essentially switching the male and female roles. Take "The 100", where literally every military (and thus population) leader of the Grounders is a female. Except... that doesn't even make sense. In what universe have women ever aspired to be military leaders? You have some native american tribes for example, where the female "healer" or "shaman" might be a clan's spiritual leader, but they put women in positions that are so diametrically opposed to how women behave in real life, it becomes a laughably unrealistic scenario.
I mentioned this in another thread, but other shows like "The Flash" depicts every single fracking woman as a supersmart, unmatched computer or mechanical engineer, programmer, physics whiz, etc. What universe does this show even take place? When was the last time you saw more than a tiny fraction of women showing interest or excelling in something like engineering or computer programming? Heck in "The 100" the best mechanic to grace the Sky People in 52 years is a young woman named Raven. Really??? My university had something like 95% male engineers, 5% female. And the brightest were always guys. It's almost laugh out loud funny how out of place these actors seem in their roles. Well it might just be the bad acting, but that's also magnified by bad casting.
When I was 13, I was reading stories about competent 30 year old war and super heroes. Reed Richards had a decade of experience.
Today, everyone seems to be 19 to 22 yet they are somehow completely experienced and more competent than anyone older than they are. (re: the recent Star Trek films). Rogue especially has deaged tremendously from about 30 to about 20.
For some reason, when i was a kid, you didn't need children to attract an audience but these days you do.
It's so unrealistic that it is really jarring to me. These young children lack the experience and gravitas to be in the parts they are playing.
Wolverine at least still has an appearance of being in his mid 30's but he's basically immortal so it doesn't really apply to him except... it seems like a lot of "tricks" he would have seen a dozen times by now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Invisible Woman has almost always been one of the most powerful and versatile superheroes in Marvel. She can knock out the Hulk. She can kill Wolverine. She can redirect a gamma bomb blast, saving the lives of all the other superheroes who have gathered (in that canon issue, her husband was already dead).
Yes, but there has been such a rise in feminism over the past 10 years that it seems every facet of society - no matter how trivial - is viewed through the prism of how it affects females.
If school boys were exposed to as many "news" articles covering the topics in which males are screwed - e.g. in the areas of health, education, criminal law, family law, etc - then you would also see school boys motivated to research and publish articles focused on males. Unfortunately, the popular media only ever publishes articles on "male privilege", rarely (if ever) on "male disadvantage". Conversely, we often see a lot of "news" articles that highlight "female disadvantage", and rarely (if ever) "female privilege".
Women and girls encounter notable disadvantages in every day life. The goal of the Mens Rights Movement (MRM) is to raise awareness of the disadvantages that men and boys also encounter in every day life. Unfortunately, some people see this as a zero sum issue; any government funds diverted to assist boys represent funds taken away from girls. So sadly, we end up with a number of people who try to silence Mens Rights Activists whenever such issues are raised in a public forum.
Yes, which means that women - 50% or so of the population - aren't a large portion of comic buyers.
Not if you understand math and market segmentation. You can pander to the people who *already* buy your product, in the hope that you'll get them to buy one or two extra comic books a month, or you can get aim at the group of people who have never bought a comic book in their lives, and hope to convert some percentage of them to lifelong customers. Men have PLENTY of "super duper strong" male comic book heroes to choose from. While that may be of interest to some females, it's human nature to enjoy reading stories about people to whom you can relate somehow.
Unfortunately for your point, sales and marketing *is* a real thing, and that explains 100% of the drive to capture more of a female market in comic books.
If you think being smart and being tough are mutually exclusive, then you are neither.
I imagine it comes under "sociology", which is counted as a science. This study probably has better research practices than 90% of the sociology papers out there,
I found the article you were referring to.
http://ragnell.blogspot.com/20...
It was written after the principles were dead and after several of them had confirmed the story.
Sure- they may have been lying. But also, looking at the older issues, her breasts do not seem like the double G whoppers they became later.
They do complement Woody in the article on at least drawing her with realistic anatomy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A certain species of whiner that brings up SJWs at every opportunity is actually an irritating SJW itself.
Ironic.