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[agent_garibaldi]

Sexism in comics is, ever-so-slowly, sneaking under my radar as not just A Bad Thing, which duhobviously, but as a Thing I Really Care About. I was just having a think- comicfans, could you back me up on this? I was trying to think of the whole "Which supers would actually, seriously, class as good role models for 8-12 year old kids?" I have the

Comments

[roguish_scholar]

Superman? You sure? Call me a turbo-revvin' young punk if you like, but I always saw him in a kind of negative light, in that obeying the authorities is automatically the right thing to do, without running it through a mental is-this-right filter.

Cap, I like, especially in Ultimate continuity. He's not about following the government, because governments come and go, but he's intensely moral because Common Decency and The American Dream stay the same.

Also for my own fandom's two penn'orth, no sexes = no sexism! I'm discounting Arcee here - yeah, she's pink and she's curvy, but she basically exists because she was invented for the movie to try and get at least a few little girls to go and see it. Her gender (or apparent gender) plays no part in anything that follows. As far as the comics are concerned, they're just bots and bots.

It's one of the reasons the slash community is a) so prevalent and b) of such a high quality in TF fanfiction - because there's no gender and the physical side is generally stayed away from (except squishyfic, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy), so it becomes romance stories plain and simple.

[roguish_scholar]

Edit: I've not read a hell of a lot of Superman, so if I've got him down wrong please correct me. The bits I've seen give off that air though, taken to a logical conclusion in Dark Knight Returns.

[silentjustice]

I dunno, I would disagree about Superman. While he certainly tends to trust authority more than some other heroes, he doesn't blindly follow it. I'd put him in the Captain America grouping with perhaps a leaning towards conformity. In the current Superman comics, for example, Superman is very introspective about his own morality and such, while in a recent Action Comics he attacked a goverment convoy that had captured a little Kryptonian boy.

Frank Miller, I think, hates Superman to an extent, and always shows him as sap, or a government stooge, or just plain inferior to Batman whenever he writes him. Have I mentioned I really dislike Frank Miller's stuff? lol

[skalja]

Nah, Superman's been known to go against the military/government when he feels the need; he's a reporter, after all. Truth, justice and the American way, right? It's just that he's also a whitebread Kansas farmboy.

And yeah, the irony of using this icon does not escape me.

[blazingskies]

yeah, she's pink and she's curvy, but she basically exists because she was invented for the movie to try and get at least a few little girls to go and see it.

But she also weilds the Biggest Fukkoff Gun you have ever seen. Apart from Megs and Prime's, obviously.

But I'm with you totally on the other points. :)