When I'm not planning my eventual take over of the free world, I-Your Friendly Neighborhood Panel Biter-enjoy torturing myself with the endless complaints of online personalities regarding news, religion, sexuality, and-rare as it comes up-comic books. In a day and age where movies have won the comic book genre more attention by the media, all the click-bait news sites love to toss around the topic of women in comic books and how either their uprising is a revolution or a destruction of comic book history. Today I'll be taking a look at why this new age is getting such buzz.
In truth, the first female superhero was Wonder Woman, but she doesn't have a movie so nobody cares about her. Let's talk about Ms Marvel, everybody's favorite new Marvel superhero and how she-and her idol Captain Marvel-are the poster children for this new time in comic books. Created as an attempt to pull in a new demographic, Ms Marvel was a hit character from the previews and hasn't stopped "crushing it". Matter of fact, Ms Marvel will be added to the new cast of the "Avengers Assemble" cartoon and added onto "The All-New All-Different Avengers" roster. For all this attention in such a short time, it's curious as to why none of the anti-women-superhero-successors didn't jump down Marvel's throat. You see if it weren't for a male superhero, Ms Marvel wouldn't exist. Enter Captain Marvel. No, not Carol Danvers. No, not Billy Batson. We're talking Marvel Comic's first Captain Marvel, the Kree named Mar-Vell. He was the first Captain Marvel, it was only in the last couple of years that Carol Danvers went from Ms Marvel to Captain Marvel, and then the title of Ms Marvel went to our new best friend Kamala Khan. The reason I'm confused is because it seems Marvel is really pushing this gender-bent title passing. Blade, Wolverine, Moon-Boy, and Thor are all examples of characters who are or already have passed their heroic mantles onto women. Some of these changes-like X-23 and Wolverine-feel natural, as sidekicks have taken on their teacher's mantles before. But if so many people hated the idea of female Thor or female Blade, why is Captain Marvel untouched? Is it really that hard to figure it out?
Movies. It all ties back towards the movies. You see, when you take a character like Thor who has had a long history in the comics and has a few films, you create a fan-bubble of people who care about the character. And when enough people care about something, they become uncomfortable when what they care about changes, like a parent and their child or a society and it's laws. The reason debate over X-23 becoming Wolverine hasn't begun is because while fans are losing the Wolverine they love, they are getting an older, grizzlier Wolverine in the form of Old Man Logan to hold them over if X-23 isn't what they want. Captain Marvel/Ms Marvel was left unhindered because that mantle hasn't been used in a movie just yet, so the fan-base outside the comics is considerably smaller. The fan-base in the comics can accept these changes because Carol Danvers has been around for a long time and has earned the Captain Marvel mantle. Blade? Like I said, name value. There's a good amount of people who remember the Blade movies. There's a larger amount of people who remember Wesley Snipes. So naturally people would be attached to what made the character cool. The other side to this also applies to Moon-Girl taking Moon-Boy's place next to Devil Dinosaur, two characters nobody knows or cares about. And because some of you might not remember the Z-Listers Moon-Boy and Devil Dinosaur (plug!) I'll recap real quick. Moon-Boy was a monkey person, Devil was a T-Rex, and this new Moon-Girl is an african-american human (for all we know currently). The other problem that raised with the new Blade and Moon-Girl was that they were announced not long after Ms Marvel, The New Thor, and The New Wolverine, meaning people were bound to feel an exaggeration of Marvel pulling the same hat trick over and over. People would say, "okay, okay, we get it! Girls can be heroes too". The complaint I hear is that most people don't mind women in comics, but would rather Marvel use female characters they already have or create new ones. Which is understandable as Marvel has plenty of female characters who don't align back to male heroes. You know like...Black Widow and...Squirrel Girl?
All joking around aside, the reason Marvel is really turning male superheroes into plucky young females is because Marvel Comics is not a publisher. It's a business. A business with social networking and statistics and Disney-polish. You think Stan Lee created Thor with the idea that he'd be replaced by a woman some day? You think when Snipes was preparing for his role as Blade he told the director he wanted a daughter? Its all simple business. Think about it: changing male characters into women characters. If people like it, it sells. If people hate it, the people who like it will defend it. If people hate it and the people who like it defend it, it will sell faster. If people hate it and the people who like it defend it and it sells faster, it will prompt Marvel to use their character in other media or replicate the formula to another character. Rinse and repeat. Marvel is the man in the boat, people are the fish and fictional women are the worms. The only difference is that unlike fish, people don't need a stream to follow each other.
If Marvel Comics came out tomorrow and said, "Another male character will be replaced by a women" we'd get the same debate as before. If they came out and said, "we're changing a female character into a male character" the opinion either be "let's give one for the men, a pity creation just from them. Boo hoo" or "this is totally misogynist, look at how the MEN at Marvel go back on their word". That's why something like that won't happen for a long time. But this trend of using existing characters to boost the populous of female heroes in comic books, I predict it will pass in a few years the same way 1990's extremeness and 2005's political satire passed away. My advice, take solace in the few independent female characters like Black Widow, Jessica Jones and Gamora, because no matter how popular these "destructions of classic male heroes" may get, you-as testosterone pumped men-may sleep peacefully knowing they're existence and fame is all because a white heterosexual adult man used the same name these broads do. And to those of you complaining that Marvel should just invent new female heroes? No luck, Marvel has enough trouble trying to sell the Inhumans rather than a new character without the words "Avengers" or "Spider" attached to her. Seriously, do you even know who Moondragon is? That's what I thought.
Thanks for reading and Happy Celebration September!
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