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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,