As a kid, I didn’t spend much time reading comic books.
My initial fascination with them came, as it did for many others, with the release of the “Iron Man” movie in 2008. I found myself thinking something along the lines of, “Huh, superheroes. Why is Robert Downey Jr. playing himself? I should learn more about “Iron Man.”
But I didn’t. Not for another year or two. Mostly because any time I went into a comic book store I was ignored. If I wanted something from the employee, I’d have to go in with my brother who could care less about comic books.
Not really the sort of thing that encourages someone to get into comic books. There is that stigma that still exists, honestly, and you just really have to know which comic book store to go to (Legend’s Comics and Coffee off of Leavenworth is fantastic, for the record).
Furthermore, the comics I did get my hands on sucked. Strong words, but there comes a point where it doesn’t matter how good the story is, the art is so unbelievably bad that you get second-hand wedgie pain just looking at it. There’s a lot out there about the portrayal of women in comic books and pretty much all of it is true. Google “Escher Girls Comic Blog” and browse through it for a bit, you’ll see what I mean.
What eventually changed my mind was “Iron Man 2.” Sure, the second movie wasn’t nearly as good as the first one, but it had something that the other movie didn’t: the Black Widow kicking butt.
For someone who was not get into comics at the time, I had actually heard a lot about this Black Widow character. My sister is into comics — though she leans more towards X-Men — and so was one of my friends. My friend complained bitterly to me about how Scarlett Johansson was going to play the superspy, and about how she wasn’t even going to have an accent because, I am paraphrasing nicely, she wasn’t smart enough to fake one.
Even as someone who didn’t know anything about that character, that rubbed me the wrong way. At the time I was just like “okay; yeah that sounds annoying,” but now my response would be something along the lines of “she’s undercover, the Black Widow does not have an accent unless she wants you to think she has an accent. Screw you.”
The point is, after I watched “Iron Man 2” and saw a strong female character, who wasn’t a strong female character parody, I was intrigued enough to try reading comics again. You’re not going to get a female character kicking butt and taking names so much in Deadpool, but Spider-Man has quite a few allies who I can admire (Plus, Spidey himself is so fun to read).
My personal favorite comic book heroine is the new Captain Marvel, formerly Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers. She recently got her own monthly which I’ve started reading; and she showed up in Avenging Spider-Man which is how I discovered her.
She is Earth’s Mightiest hero. She’s an Avenger, she’s a soldier, and – and this is really great guys – she no longer does all of it in a piece of clothing that’s less than a leotard! Overall, she’s my second favorite super hero – closely trailing behind Peter Parker as Spider-Man and hovering above Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Miles Morales as Spider-Man.
The point, dear readers, is that comics are changing for women. I can go to a comic book store now, and someone will ask me if I’m finding everything okay. You can have a woman carry their own comic book series without needing to show a little “T&A” to do so.
Marvel Comics, DC Comics and all of the other publishers out there are businesses; they run on demand. Things have started to change for the better because people are asking for something different. They’re buying comics with women as the lead character.
Comics are awesome. They all have a message, they capture the basic story of good versus evil; and a lot of them have awesome art. You can’t let a thing like gender get in the way of a good story. Go out there and read.