Thursday, March 13, 2008

Important Differences

I love comics. I think that in many ways, it's like a poor man's version of viewing the Sistine Chapel over and over again, only it changes, the costumes cover more (not much more!), and everyone is in super-shape. The Sistine Chapel is really the first seriously cool visual story ever laid out... a Renaissance comic.
There are a lot of men and women and angels on the Sistine Chapel walls, mostly naked, and all of them wrapped up in a very exciting tale that begins in a Paradise and ends in Hell or Heaven - the classic visual story told in numerous comics over the years.

However, what I've noticed in comics, especially superhero comics, is the hyper-masculinity of the WOMEN, not the men... it's like comic book heroes have changed organs.

In fact, the men are often the social ones now, doing the relationship patching and the "hey, let's talk about this..." routine. That's okay, I guess, if you're a girly-man.

But the reason why Wolverine is the most popular X-MAN is because he drinks, smokes, and isn't a girly-man. He's a guy, with a heart sometimes, and that's better than a man-in-tights who'd rather talk about relationships.

Nowadays, comic book women are aggressive, all-knowing, virtually omnipotent and the farthest from feminine you could imagine. They not only kick butt like men, they swear like men, they spit, fight, burp... what the heck? Why? When did this mutation take place in the feminine gene pool?

As impressive as women are, I've yet to see one stand up after being punched by a 250-lb boxer who knows how to throw a punch.

Obviously, the gender ID crisis felt in the general public and the artist community is reflected quite viscerally in the art of the comic book world. Everyone there and here is searching for the "way to be" for themselves, and the gender confusion felt by superheroes was created by 45 years of radical feminist re-education in universities and on TV.