Sunday Grab Bag of Failastic Fail: Marvel Divas, Marvel to Ruin She-Hulk Film

[kali921]

At this point, with rare exceptions, every time Marvel opens its mouth to talk about the state of women and female characters in the industry, I instinctively tense up, because I know that my soul is going to hurt by the time I get two sentences in.

Let's start off with Soul-Crushing Failure #1: Megan Fox tapped to play She-Hulk in upcoming film.

Comments

[tattycat]

Wow. Just what I always wanted. A comic series about dating problems. I didn't know Marvel was teaming up with Harlequin Romance.

[kali921]

The concept of this might work if not for 1) the title, 2) the horrible cover art, and 3) the writer's angle. I actually generally like Aguirre-Sacasa; in fact, he wrote one of the best issues of Spider-Man of the last couple of years, that being the wonderful issue that showed that he really understood Peter and MJ's marriage, but right now I want to throw away everything I have that has his name on it given how he just tried to sell Marvel Divas. I anticipate much hilarity in the blogsphere when the issues start coming out, because I bet there is going to be so much to roll our eyes at.

[tattycat]

What's sad to me is that it's not like there are no women around that the writer could, y'know, TALK TO, or anything. We're not all frivolous all the time. Really. Not.

And I can never decide if I love Nic Cage or just want to set him on fire or both or in what order.

[kali921]

And I can never decide if I love Nic Cage or just want to set him on fire or both or in what order.

BWAH! AhahaAHAahaha. I too vacillate between those two impulses. I know the feeling.

I wish a woman writer had been given this Marvel Diva project. THEN it might have been interesting. But at least it's a gay writer! Because then there might be shopping! /sarcasm

[outlawpoet]

man. Who was the first artist to get boob socks into a mainstream comic? I know it's somewhat self-perpetuating now, but there's really NOTHING like it in life(constructing garments that did that would be tricky) so some poor benighted artist was the first to draw a girl like that. Nowadays everybody has seen it in their favorite comics. But how did it get started?

Sucks that they're dragging Monica and Firestar into all this.

[kali921]

I think my brain has rewired its neural pathways such that whenever I see a cover depicting a female character (in this example, Monica on the above cover) with boobs that actually don't look like two cantaloupes glued to her clavicle, I tend to react positively to it. But then look at Patsy, Felicia, and Angelica, and the rest of their bodies. UGH.

[tattycat]

ke two cantaloupes glued to her clavicle

Aaaand time to get another cuppa tea. And a towel.

[kali921]

...Sorry, love. It had to be said.

My conspiracy theory:

[box_in_the_box]

Marvel is INTENTIONALLY trying to fail with Marvel Divas, so that when it bombs in the marketplace, they can throw up their hands and say, "SEE? We TRIED to appeal to female readers, but they STILL didn't buy it! This necessarily means that female comic book readers DON'T EVEN EXIST!"

You laugh, but considering the fact that Marvel has flat-out told retailers that IT'S THE RETAILERS' FAULT that NuSpidey isn't selling well, I don't think we can underestimate their stupidity. From the top down, Quesada's Marvel is so inherently, incurably misogynistic that I think they'd LITERALLY RATHER GO BANKRUPT than EXPAND their audience (or even their PROFITS) by dropping their wannabe-fratboy atmosphere.

Re: My conspiracy theory:

[kali921]

I did quite like (and by "like," I mean "experience a newfound surge of antipathy") Joephisto's response to someone's question about the recent disappearing and/or death of so many female characters

[twbasketcase]

Sometimes there is fail so huge that I am actually unable to form words to react to such fail. What even-- I don't...

*sighs*

*sits and whimpers*

[kali921]

I'm AMAZED that I haven't yet come across illiterate fanboys screaming at us that we're all shrill Feminazis who want to keep the man down and that we're horrible people for just not giving this miniseries a chance, man.

[bethan_b_bad]

0_0

Oh my God, there is so much wrong with that cover - the cover alone! - that I don't even know where to start.

Fuck you, Marvel. Fuck you sideways with a rusty iron fucking dildo, and while we're at it: dear Nick Cage and Joe Quesada, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET AWAY FROM MY HEROINES. DO IT NOW.

There is not enough booze in the world, I swear.

[kali921]

Monica Rambeau. They put Monica in this after Ellis did such awesome work with her in Nextwave. Look, I want Monica to have a romantic life, but the last time she was prominently featured in Marvel continity, IIRC, she was getting patronized by T'Challa and told that she'd never reached full potential in using her powers, and this AFTER Marvel was dangling the possibility in front of us that she'd wind up being his wife. This a woman who used to voluntarily hang out in the outer reaches of the solar system BY HERSELF to be the Avengers' sentinel/lookout.

Aaron Stack leaves Nextwave and gets to go wear fake mustaches and guzzle beer in the Ms. Marvel book and then gets to go slaughter zombies and sex up Jocasta in Marvel Zombies.

Monica gets shunted off to Marvel Divas.

[bethan_b_bad]

Christ, I know. D:

I mean, poor, poor Felicia is coming off far worse on this cover as far as art goes - above the hips, Monica is not awfully-drawn - but, but... Monica. Beautiful, wonderful, tough-as-nails and snarky as the entire cast of The West Wing put together Monica.

I have not sadfaced this hard at comics in a long time.

[kali921]

I want to know who Felicia is going to be supposedly pining over in this series. If it's Peter Parker, I'll facepalm so hard that my face will wind up in a pool of molten rock at the center of the Earth. On the other hand, there's a possibility that Marvel may want to titillate further and pick up where Kevin Smith left off with Felicia, and by that I mean have her suddenly get in touch with her supposed bisexuality and be dating a woman. Because the way Marvel presented that in Kevin Smith's mini seemed *absolutely* meant to make straight (and bi) fanboys fap.