The role of women in comic books, from characters to authors, is a hotbed of opinions, and as a female comic lover I get asked my opinion quite a lot. I've been asked questions like this one, complex analyses on the tropes applied to female comic characters, and much simpler ones like, "are these for your boyfriend?"
If you look at the comics that usually get brought up as examples, they tend to be from Marvel and tend to have started circulation in the 1950s or earlier. When they initiated, they were representations of a powerful nation fighting war - Captain America and Superman trouncing spies and strange Europeans. So yes, if you go digging through their back catalog, some serious misogyny is going to pop up; but so is some racism, xenophobia, homophobia and stereotypes. These comics were written by people in that era for people of that era, so when you look back at them they will often seem offensive and bizarre.
This isn't a defense for them in any way; many tropes are still applied to women leaving them as sidekicks, reporters, and second lines of defense, however their position is rarely undervalued by the true comic lover. When Stephanie Brown was written off by almost everyone involved in the Batman series as 'not a proper Robin', fans overruled them and demanded that she was counted.
Gender aside, everything must be canon. The same logic can be applied to the Batman-Oracle argument brought up in the video above.
When Batman broke his back, he recovered because he's a multi-millionaire business man with access to the world's best technology. When Barbara Gordon was paralysed by the Joker putting a bullet in her spine, she ended up in a wheelchair; if Bruce Wayne had become involved and thrown money at her an explanation would have been required as to why he cared.
Batman is close friends with Oracle, but Bruce Wayne should only have a passing knowledge of Barbara Gordon; if Wayne Industries suddenly got involved just for the sake of equal treatment, it wouldn't take long for Gotham's crime undercurrent to figure out Batman's already tenuous disguise.
Thus, canon is preserved and Batman gets a whole new range of technical upgrades thanks to Barbara's super intelligence!
I feel I should also point out the many, many strong female characters. Lots of the 'women are underrated' supporters deliberately leave out the ways women have defied tropes, and also the existence of male tropes. They do exist, but they're passed over as normal despite being just as distorted and unfair. You pretty much have to be the rippling-torso'd genius billionaire, otherwise you're the poor, crazy, mutated outcast:
Batman and Joker.
Captain America and Red Skull.
Reed Richards and Dr Doom.
For every supremely perfect man there is an equally malfunctioning one, and the 'perfect men' are often not as perfect as they look anyway. For example, the recent Green Lantern film only barely touched on the crippling alcoholism of Hal Jordan's comic counterpart.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against WiR. I hate tropes, I really do, because they reinforce the idea of comics being a boys' club.0 My personal favourite trope is Ghost. Have you ever read it? I have, and it was a wake-up call.
I was raised on Sandman, Preacher, and Batman. I was used to intellectual dialogue and dystopian societies, outcasts and figureheads from all walks of life. Eventually I began to search out 'new' comics, looking for things I might like that were outside of my father's comic book collection. Ghost was introduced to me by a shop assistant as a 'girls' comic'.
Aww.
This is true, insofar as there is a girl in it. It's written entirely by men, drawn by men, is aimed at men, and its obvious before you even open the book.
She's a reporter (why are they always reporters?) killed for knowing too much. Unable to put up enough of a fight to save her own life, she suddenly becomes a vicious vigilante in the afterlife. Everyone can see her, she still exists, she's just also dead. And some woman wants to kill her for being too beautiful. And she hates men, unless they're offering her sex and protection. She's written like the authors have heard of feminism, but only about ten seconds of a full conversation about it while passing cleverer people on an escalator. For some reason she's always trying to lure people in with her aggressively sexual wiles, then killing them. She even had her own magazine paired up with Witchblade, but it was like sitting a stripper next to Darcy Bussell and calling it Classic Dance Monthly.
Never, ever read Ghost.
You just can't get away with it these days, though; there are whole comic book labels focused on promoting just female creators, whole sections of comics set up to target the female market, and they're starting to bleed through. I've become a sort of dealer, handing out copies of Transmetropolitan and Umbrella Academy to anyone who shows an interest. Honestly, I could have the tropes discussion for hours but ultimately its futile, because they're dying out on every level.
Look at Criminal Minds, a TV show that tried to write out two of its female characters and replace them both with a young, blonde, new one. They immediately set up a potential romance with fan favourite Dr. Reid (which, if they had any concept of how fangirls work, they should have recognised as an immediate mistake). The decision makers cited 'creative differences', but were heavily undermined by the other outspoken and disbelieving cast members. Fans became actively involved too, and the question was raised about if they would ever do that to the male characters. Someone along the line, who I can only assume was fired, blurted out an offhand statement basically saying of course they wouldn't, they matter. Uproar ensued and they hemorrhaged viewers to the point that they were forced to write the two original characters back in and phase the new one out. Success!
I ultimately credit Joss Whedon with a lot of my life choices and beliefs because his shows let me grow up watching stories that weren't about a girl fighting crime or a man seeking revenge, they dealt with issues so far beyond gender that it never even crossed my mind to have issues about it. I know he wasn't a comic author back then, but he is now. The people who are the target market for both TV and comics grew up with him and writers like him too, and they're the new decision makers.
The status of women in the comic world may look bleak, but its changing so very fast. After Fable 2, Fable 3's main character was a woman on her quest to become a saviour. Kick Ass's Hit Girl is only a kid and is more powerful than all the female sidekicks before her. Change is there, its just rapidly becoming normality.
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