I am a man. It’s true. I am equipped with certain…attributes; attributes that can clearly prove that I am male. I also am able to identify with typically masculine things (beard growing, spitting, hairline recession, crotch adjustment, thinkin’ ladies are purdy, ya know, the basics). I say “typically” because there are folks other than men who have first hand experience in those fields of expertise, but I digress.I recently have found myself becoming increasingly interested in reading superhero comics that feature women as the title character. Now while at first this is certainly a progression in my taste for all sorts of characters and stories, why do the female characters I enjoy reading about have to have such large…attributes? It’s certainly not a requirement of mine in life outside of comicbookian realms. And while I thoroughly enjoy reading books about mousy, introverted women attempting to find new ways of coping with their midlifeishness in New York City (see The New York Four by Brian Wood for more!) I do tend to have just a teensy bit more fun when reading about scantily clad ladies soaring over the skies of metropoli (yes, I made that word up), and beating the living hell out of criminals.
Is that a crime?
If it is, will a scantily clad lady come beat my ass?
In that case, I’m a bad, bad man.
Okay, now that you’re all thoroughly creeped, I’ll continue: I am referring to one heroine in particular who caught my proverbial eye. This woman is very much a woman. Very much so, indeed. I’m talking about Power Girl, folks. Power Girl, the stranded cousin of a Superman from another universe, stuck in the DCU proper and attempting to recreate herself (just as the creative brass from DC is attempting to revitalize the character) in the Big Apple (hmm, not so different from the young lady, Riley, from NYF). Her defining trait, however, isn’t so much her attempt at reinvention, so much as it is her voluminous…
Let’s just hold on for a second.
Power Girl (Karen Starr) is heading up Starr Enterprises, a research and development company whose mission is to solve environmental and sociological issues across the globe through promoting intelligence, human self-awareness, and progress. A pretty fantastic, fantastical venture, yes?
Do most blonde jokes begin with “So the CEO of Starr Enterprises walks into a bar…”?
No, sadly they don’t.
Karen Starr is certainly not the prototypical big dumb blonde we hear about in limericks and jokes. She is, however, a big blonde lady who wears a white leotard with an opening in the chest that shows off her enormous, gigantic…attributes. She towers over most people, yet she’s quite the lady. She’s brilliant, yet you could bounce a quarter off her buns n’ bust. The duality of her character is right out there in the open for everyone to see.
Don’t freak out, I’m not saying there aren’t any brilliant, beautiful women on our Earth. But show me one who’s six feet tall, can fly and fight crime without a nipple popping out of her uniform, only to go to work afterward at a company that holds a patent on nanites that can rebuild a car from spare parts. Then we’ll talk, okay?
Karen’s a head turner, a looker, if you will. An eye pleaser. She more than likely makes boatloads of money more than most men. And that’s just her day job. She’s also in the business of saving the world from man-apes (metaphor? maybe!), alien chicks who party too hard (an older sisterly figure looking to show younger ladies that brains really do matter? great!), even a fella trying to forcibly repopulate his planet by battling monsters to impress earth-ladies enough that they’d be willing to copulate with him (satire of masculine prowess? excellent!)
Of course, with every busty blonde in this or any other medium, in spite of her intelligence, there are going to be boob jokes. Boob jokes that Power Girl simply brushes off as the weakness of men. She even goes as far as to say, If men want to degrade themselves by staring, let them.
She makes a solid point.
Men, however, can indeed be prone to their own degradation.
Yes, we tend to stare.
As a man, I’m sorry to say, it’s true. We do. However subtle men think they are, we all know, deep down, we’re not. Men can be the most obvious creatures on the planet. Easily amused. Easy to please. Many of us, however, are harmless but complex. We feel lucky when women shed a shining light of attention on us for a brief time.
Knowing these things as we do, we’re able to be analytical about the subject of sexuality in the commodities we consume (some of us anyway (I apologize again in saying that some men are, well, men.))
Is the presence of Power Girl in the medium of science fiction and fantasy comics just a cheap ploy to sell books to lonely man-children? Is it the further exploitation of the female form, another innovative way to sell sex? A celebration of the female form? Perhaps an example of a strong female lead character in an industry almost wholly dominated by male, godlike heroes?
Let’s face it, okay? Comics have got to sell if we expect to see them in print or at all in the future. Yes, writers, artists and editors must attempt to appeal to both men and women. Give the male heroes hairless, bulging pectorals; give the women big boobs, wide hips and skimpy clothes. That’s simply the reality of the medium (and every other medium for that matter). Comic book publishers need to make money, subsequently they make their mainstream cast sexy.
Now for this next part, you’ll have to open the book to discover the other half of “telling stories with pictures”, the half that is often forgotten by comic naysayers: The content! Yes, the content! Ya know, those weird symbols we can assign sounds to and form words with.
Using what we learned about Power Girl just minutes ago, taking the goddess and making her human by giving her human characteristics (fears, thoughts, doubts, hopes, humor) and writing her as a character with actual charm and charisma aside from the obvious lady parts, you find a self actualized positive female role model who is proud of herself and her body.
If you were to strip it down (pardon the expression), remove all the fluff, you’d find a fun, sexy book about a young woman who could potentially rise to become as archetypal a trope for women as her cousin from a parallel universe (Superman, in other words) is for men. With powers almost identical to Superman’s own, Power Girl is the female counterpart of the platonic embodiment of good. Give that goodness a healthy sense of humor about her physique, and a mind that suggests her body isn’t to be utilized, but honored, and you’ve got the Power Girl we see on the comic stands every month.
Yes, I am a man, as I’ve said before. I am attracted to the female form. Perhaps I was initially attracted to Power Girl because of her sexiness (in spite of the creepy fact that she is (sadly) not real). But, who hasn’t ever bought a book because of the cover when they’ve had two to choose from? Judgment based on initial magnetism is a human trait (throw Power Girl’s tall, firm and full, ass-kicking body into the mix) and, frankly, despite the warnings, sometimes gut trusting pays off in big ways.
Call me sexist if you will. Call me a pig, a disillusioned fool with false sense of woman and her form. But after you've finish with my chastisement, ask yourself a question, “Is $2.99 too high a price to give a funnybook a shot, or is it too low to compromise my own ego and point of view?” Do yourself a favor, read the book before writing Power Girl (and ALL comic book characters) off as trashy boy stuff. Trash she is not.
I’ll tell you what, though, if she were the guardian of my city, I’d be doing one of two things, (1) Regularly hurling myself from buildings and in front of planes, trains and automobiles so good ol’ Pee-Gee would come save me, or (2) rob every person, bank and store in the area just hoping that she’d kick my ass through a wall.
Yeah, I read comics. So what?
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