On these shenanigans with women pre-bronze age
here and here
I agree with Maddy and bluefall for the most part.
Don't attack me, hear me out.
Wonder Woman and Black Canary and Lois Lane from the Golden Age are wicked awesome. And I've never read much old Marvel (or Marvel period...but guys, I recently bought a lot of Incredible Herc back issues AND I read Marvel Adventures and Books a Million I'm improving!), but sure, those chicks are awesome too. (Okay, I've never seen or been convinced by anything that any of those mentioned are awesome in the slightest back then, but whatevs, I probably haven't read enough)
Silver Age has Supergirl, and while she wasn't a feminist firebrand, she was meaningful. For the record, Maddy and Bluefall consider Babs to be the earliest sign of the Bronze Age acomin' and so does the Supergirls book.
But, were they all not deeply friggin' flawed and informed by sexism?
Yes, absolutely. I wish I had the Supergirls book with me, because it phrases some of the bad stuff perfectly but I'll go with this.
Jean Grey may have been awesome , but a a lot of times she was treated as a cypher: she was the team girl who slavishly followed her father figure Xavier's every orders and acted as alove interest. Sue was a cypher who was the dutiful 50s mother, turned invisible, got rescued, and was told to shut up and get kissed. They were token girls, they didn't headline their own titles, they were treated as cyphers, secondary and lesser, even if they were awesome on occasion. They may have been meaningful to some fans because they were women and occasionally competent, but for the creators? I don't know.
GA Wondy was awesome in her own title, but then she was merely the JSA's dutiful secretary outside it despite being able to kick everyone else's ass. And even then she had the icky "if a man chains me, I am powerless" thing going on, and then in the Silver Ages she got stripped of all her feminist roots, became Steve's dutiful babysitter who was constantly told in story to go back to the kitchen, was marginalized and damselized in every way possible and she even had to have a freaking dad who was lost at war. Goodbye, Etta Candy and women power, good bye anything that made her meaningful. She was not Wondy anymore. She's just another cypher.
Lois Lane was similarly made the least feminist thing possible in the Silver Age. Black Canary was all about helping out her man. Supergirl was the idealized 50's dutiful teenage daughter.
In the Silver age, DC actually WROTE DOWN that women were to be unimportant and secondary. WROTE IT FUCKING DOWN. Marvel may not have written it down, but no doubt it was at least an unwritten rule:
The inclusion of females in stories is specifically discouraged. Women, when used in plot structure, should be of secondary importance...
Now considering these points perhaps the quote should be changed to "very few meaningful" characters. Bluefall herself says:
I hasten to qualify that that's a broad generalization. Golden Age Wondy could be argued as a meaningful female character (though not subsequent to Marston's death, and absolutely not during the Silver Age, which again, a problem, since that's what everyone seems to want to pull her back to), and Ebony (of the Spirit fame) was probably as meaningful as he was painful. And we should never discount Lois... though as with Ebony, "meaningful" does not necessarily here translate to "anything any right-thinking person should be nostalgic about or want to bring back."
Nevertheless, that the exceptions are this questionable, and so few that they can be individually named, is rather telling.
and
Well, if I knew you were going to be all quoting me out of context I'd have snuck an "unsexist" or "racially enlightened" qualifier in there. XD
Blue may have been generalizing a little, but her point still stands, and it is an extraordinarily valid point and she gets it across well in one punchy sentence- pulling back into the Silver Age and Golden Age is exclusionary and wrongheaded toward women and minorities liek whoa. Yes, there have been some SA characters who've been awesomely remade, such as Lady Blackhawk. But there's very few SA women that CAN be remade, or minorities, and writers all too often pull out the entirely squicky aspects of the Silver Age like Star Sapphire (who I think is squicky in all incarnations) and dump aside Bronze-and-Beyond meaningful characters to bring back more straight white males or shrewish cliched females. The Silver Age just kind of sucked for everyone who wasn't white and male, so really, let's not revisit it. I don't care how awesome it was for you, it doesn't see at all awesome to me, and really, it's holding comics back.
You argue women were awesome and important and meaningful in the silver age? Well maybe to you, here, now with hindsight 20/20 and some character evolution. But you just need to take one look at that DC editorial code and know that they sure weren't meaningful to anyone back then, except as tokens and props.
I agree with Maddy and bluefall for the most part.
Don't attack me, hear me out.
Wonder Woman and Black Canary and Lois Lane from the Golden Age are wicked awesome. And I've never read much old Marvel (or Marvel period...but guys, I recently bought a lot of Incredible Herc back issues AND I read Marvel Adventures and Books a Million I'm improving!), but sure, those chicks are awesome too. (Okay, I've never seen or been convinced by anything that any of those mentioned are awesome in the slightest back then, but whatevs, I probably haven't read enough)
Silver Age has Supergirl, and while she wasn't a feminist firebrand, she was meaningful. For the record, Maddy and Bluefall consider Babs to be the earliest sign of the Bronze Age acomin' and so does the Supergirls book.
But, were they all not deeply friggin' flawed and informed by sexism?
Yes, absolutely. I wish I had the Supergirls book with me, because it phrases some of the bad stuff perfectly but I'll go with this.
Jean Grey may have been awesome , but a a lot of times she was treated as a cypher: she was the team girl who slavishly followed her father figure Xavier's every orders and acted as alove interest. Sue was a cypher who was the dutiful 50s mother, turned invisible, got rescued, and was told to shut up and get kissed. They were token girls, they didn't headline their own titles, they were treated as cyphers, secondary and lesser, even if they were awesome on occasion. They may have been meaningful to some fans because they were women and occasionally competent, but for the creators? I don't know.
GA Wondy was awesome in her own title, but then she was merely the JSA's dutiful secretary outside it despite being able to kick everyone else's ass. And even then she had the icky "if a man chains me, I am powerless" thing going on, and then in the Silver Ages she got stripped of all her feminist roots, became Steve's dutiful babysitter who was constantly told in story to go back to the kitchen, was marginalized and damselized in every way possible and she even had to have a freaking dad who was lost at war. Goodbye, Etta Candy and women power, good bye anything that made her meaningful. She was not Wondy anymore. She's just another cypher.
Lois Lane was similarly made the least feminist thing possible in the Silver Age. Black Canary was all about helping out her man. Supergirl was the idealized 50's dutiful teenage daughter.
In the Silver age, DC actually WROTE DOWN that women were to be unimportant and secondary. WROTE IT FUCKING DOWN. Marvel may not have written it down, but no doubt it was at least an unwritten rule:
The inclusion of females in stories is specifically discouraged. Women, when used in plot structure, should be of secondary importance...
Now considering these points perhaps the quote should be changed to "very few meaningful" characters. Bluefall herself says:
I hasten to qualify that that's a broad generalization. Golden Age Wondy could be argued as a meaningful female character (though not subsequent to Marston's death, and absolutely not during the Silver Age, which again, a problem, since that's what everyone seems to want to pull her back to), and Ebony (of the Spirit fame) was probably as meaningful as he was painful. And we should never discount Lois... though as with Ebony, "meaningful" does not necessarily here translate to "anything any right-thinking person should be nostalgic about or want to bring back."
Nevertheless, that the exceptions are this questionable, and so few that they can be individually named, is rather telling.
and
Well, if I knew you were going to be all quoting me out of context I'd have snuck an "unsexist" or "racially enlightened" qualifier in there. XD
Blue may have been generalizing a little, but her point still stands, and it is an extraordinarily valid point and she gets it across well in one punchy sentence- pulling back into the Silver Age and Golden Age is exclusionary and wrongheaded toward women and minorities liek whoa. Yes, there have been some SA characters who've been awesomely remade, such as Lady Blackhawk. But there's very few SA women that CAN be remade, or minorities, and writers all too often pull out the entirely squicky aspects of the Silver Age like Star Sapphire (who I think is squicky in all incarnations) and dump aside Bronze-and-Beyond meaningful characters to bring back more straight white males or shrewish cliched females. The Silver Age just kind of sucked for everyone who wasn't white and male, so really, let's not revisit it. I don't care how awesome it was for you, it doesn't see at all awesome to me, and really, it's holding comics back.
You argue women were awesome and important and meaningful in the silver age? Well maybe to you, here, now with hindsight 20/20 and some character evolution. But you just need to take one look at that DC editorial code and know that they sure weren't meaningful to anyone back then, except as tokens and props.