schmevil | The boob window/why Ms. Marvel?

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The boob window/why Ms. Marvel?

I need to reorganize my comics. They're in stacks all over my room, and taking up two shelves that I need for my three-layers-deep-books. Probably it's time to consign some of them to the longbox, but then the question becomes: where the eff does the longbox go? Crisis.

Usually I've got the latest issue of Comic Store News on top of one of the stacks. I like combing through it for weird new releases that don't get press OL. This one had a huge promo for the new Power Girl ongoing. (Which I will most definitely be picking up on Wednesday, along with whatever FCBD books my comics guy decided to pull for me. ILU D!) My brother saw the promo, and... hell.

He's a gamer, an aficionado of horror and action movies, cartoons and humour of questionable taste. He took one look at that promo and went "Oh fanboys." Not in so many words. No, his actual words were, "What the fuck?" Followed by approximately two minutes of derisive laughter. So I then had the unenviable task of explaining the boob window. I relayed the every-issue-they-got-a-little-bigger story, and the one about the window being a space that needed to be filled by a symbol. Of course, Karen never found that symbol and the boob window, the space in need of filling, remains. I told him about the endless fannish merry go round of boob window controversies.

And then I realized something. Somewhere along the way I stopped seeing the boob window. Of course I was literally seeing the boob window, and acknowledging it as cheescake. But I'd stopped seeing how it would look to people outside of comics fandom. I'd stopped thinking about it.

"And they... just kept it like that?" he finally asked.

"WOW: Night Elves," I said in response.

We have this thing, where we relay stories about our respective fandoms: what ridiculous new games/comics/SF shows are coming out; what fresh embarrassment our fellow fans have served up. And of course, it's not just fanboys, but fangirls, creators, publishers and network hacks. The boys bring the misogyny more reliably, but the girls are just as capable. What we kept coming back to is this: how goddamn embarrassing will it be to buy this book outside of the dm? At say, a convenience store, or a chain bookstore. As embarrassing, surely, as it was to buy those Greg Horn issues of Ms. Marvel, when I was between comic stores. As embarrassing as the Benes issues of Birds of Prey.

And yet, I like Peeg the way she is. The boob window is her most recognizable look. I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable with a redesign that wasn't completely spectacular. These days we get boob window and an impressive musculature; cheescake and epic asskicking. And yet. Empowered, which makes no bones about its chesscakeness, is actually less embarrassing to me.

***

On an unrelated note,

jazzypom asked me to talk about Carol Danvers a while back. Consider this a preview of a longer post, scheduled sometime post term.

Carol Danvers is a soldier, turned storyteller, turned superhero. When her father decided that it was more important for his sons to attend college than his daughter, she joined the USAF and put herself through school that way. She worked her tail off, becoming one of their best, and when injuries incurred in the field grounded her, she moved into intelligence, and later security. When she hit too many roadblocks in the way of further career advancement (lol girls), she left, and wrote a couple of books about her experiences. She started another book about a (female) astronaut friend, and did freelance work that she later parlayed into an editorship at JJJ's Woman Magazine. When JJ wanted recipes and reviews of the latest beauty products, she pushed for real social and political content. She finally left, to pursue superheroing full time, which she did by herself, and on her own terms.

Then it starts to get disturbing. She joins the Avengers and things seem to be going well. She's contributing to the team and building relationships with other characters. Until suddenly, we get the infamous Rape of Ms. Marvel. Incredibly, she actually managed to come back from this. Only, whoops! She gets attacked by Rogue, losing her powers, memories and emotional life. Again, amazingly, she comes back. This time as a peak human fighter, adventuring with her new friends, the X-Men. You know what comes next, right? She's held by the Brood, who decide to perform invasive experiments on her intriguing half human, half Kree physiology. In the process, they manage to reactivate her powers, and take them to their fullest potential. She becomes Binary: a cosmic hero who draws her power from a star, and the evolutionary endgame of humans and Kree.

Of course, by now we know that it can't stay this way, right? Her connection to the star is broken, of course. Her power levels are drastically diminished, of course. She comes back to earth and falls into drinking, of course. After she finally crawls her way out of the bottle, she gets to spend the next eight years of comics trying to get back to where she first started out.

Distilled to its barest bones like this, her history reads as convoluted and bizarre. It is undeniably both of things. But through it all there's one thing that remains constant: Carol is a fighter. No matter how many times you knock her down, no matter what strange new sexualized violence she's subjected to, no matter how her life gets wrecked, she picks herself back up, spits in the face of those who wronged her, and finds a new way to live. On her own terms.

As it stands, she's a powerhouse with the innate potential to be even more powerful. She's an experienced fighter, with or without powers, and a skilled tactician who's absolutely willing to fight dirty. She is by turns bitter and hopeful, and above all, driven. She's not a peacemaker, a detective, or a reluctant hero. She's a missile in human form, and she will fuck you up.

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I know what you mean. I feel kind of ... dirty, reading series with art by people like Amanda Connor or Terry Dodson. Because they won't see that there's an epic battle-monster behind the boobs, they'll just see the boobs.

D'awwwww, now Carol sounds awesome! Now I really want to get into her! Just to make sure, would you recommend the current series trades, though? Or something else? What I've read by Reed hasn't been promising so far (which, admittedly, was only his YAP one-shot).

I love Connor and the Dodsons. I also love Cho, who did the above image of Carol. It's not that I'm anti-cheesecake, but just. Comics covers are sometimes so tasteless. The awesome thing about Connor, the Dodsons and Cho, is that their cheesecake is lovely, and celebratory. There's genuine love of the female form in their stuff.

And then there are guys like Land and Benes. -_-

I'm going to do a series of Carol posts on SD, once the term is over, so you'll be able to make a more informed decision about Reed's run then. Actually, some of

stubbleupdate's stuff might still be up in the archive. I haven't checked.

With Reed... there are ups and downs. He has trouble sticking with a direction, so every arc seems to go somewhere new. He also relies way too much on narration. Carol's narration, but still show don't tell, buddy.

On the other hand, there are some fantastic character moments, and some great fights (Carol vs Rogue, Carol vs Spider-Woman 2, Carol vs alternate Carol, Carol vs the Brood Queen). His romantic stuff is kind of limp: he sets up two potential relationships and then lets them flounder. There are a number of dropped threads (what happened to Arana frex).

On the other other hand, it's usually a solid, classic superhero book.

You know what, let me get back to you. *g*

Reed's Word Balloon interview on Newsarama has him saying that "I know that the first six issues ain't the best comics ever written. I'm glad Marvel gave me time on the title after that" which kind of pisses me off, as those are the books that I really liked. If the author doesn't have that much of a feeling for them, then there probably won't be more stories like them.

And the dropped stories list is massive.

Arana
Wonder Man - romance
Wonder Man - the Avenger with the secret
Sarah Day - Skrull?
William Wagner - dead? Kree?
Is Other Carol still in containment? Think of how much you could get out of Carol and Other Carol having a conversation in prison
How did Carol react to that Bugle thing?

Other Carol could make for an interesting nemesis.

I want resolution for both the Wonder Man threads in Ms. Marvel, and some explanation of what happened to him post Mighty switchover. Where the eff has he gone?

DARK REIGN: LETHAL LEGION #2 (of 3)
Written by Frank Tieri
Penciled by Mateus Santolouco
Cover by Tommy Lee Edwards
Put up your dukes as Wonder Man joins the fight…or is that starts one? Find out what was big enough to bring heroes and villains together, who thinks they’re powerful enough to bring down Norman Osborn! The mystery unravels as the Lethal Legion gets closer to finding the traitor in their midst and it’s every man for himself!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

I don't know how to feel about this. Who is scythe hand man?

No idea. He looks like he should be in Project Superpowers

That's Grim Reaper. Wonder Man's zombie super villain brother.

The boob window...yeah. I can't bring myself to buy a comic with Power Girl on the cover, I'm sorry to say.

*nod* She's a great character but the boob window. It even puts of guys.

And with all her experience, all her years of career in more than one career, they still dress her like that. When I'm her age, even if I look FABulous, I still wouldn't be wearing work outfits that require I wax my bits regularly. =p

Carol and Karen both suffer from permanent wardrobe malfunctions. *g* There was a time when her outfit was much less.... thong-y, but it's always been a bathing suit. Oh, comics.

outfits that require I wax my bits regularly

ttly agree.

I actually like Carol's more recent costume (the one in your icon), enough to have cosplayed it, even, but my all-time favorite costume of hers is the the vaguely combat-gear inspired Warbird costume she's wearing in Avengers: Red Zone. I realize that body armor is totally pointless on Carol given her near-invulnerability, but it *looked* really cool.

My least favorite is probably the early costume that was basically a copy of Mar-Vell's, because it made Carol look like a female copy of him when she's very much not.

I think of this one as her classic costume. I could write an entry about why it's so perfect for her. The only thing I don't like about it, is how contemporary artists turn it into a high cut thong.

I don't like her original one either, but it served its purpose as a 'starter costume. ;)

The only thing I don't like about it, is how contemporary artists turn it into a high cut thong.

I kind of think high-cut thong bathing suits should not exist on general principle, because they're uncomfortable and also tend not to look as good on women who actually have hips as other cuts of bathing suit. But when you try to find a bathing suit that's smaller than a size 10, it's frequently high-cut all the way.

Highcuts are not especially flattering. Boy shorts all the way!

I really like the Warbird costume that Other Carol wore.

Of course, Catherine Donovan's dress isn't practical enough for heroing in, but I still appreciate it.

Carol's work out gear would make a better costume than her bathing suit. Also, if you read #1 and see her lift the car over her head, you'll notice that she has no external genitalia.

I'd love a redesign with boyshorts and cap sleeves, with shorter, more functional boots and gloves.

My ideal version has, not boyshorts, but the kind of cut that 1940s bathingsuits had. And boots to just below the knee, as opposed to the thigh-high ones she sometimes has in canon.

*applauds*

Unfortunately for me, when I collected comics as a lass, I only saw Danvers at her worst: when she came to beat up Rogue (who was younger than her, but I've come to understand that Rogue was older when they first tangoed), when she got raped, then drunk then thrown out of the Avengers. The side boob didn't help either, I was pretty neutral re: Danvers, she didn't irk me but didn't make me pause either. Then, in the ways of these things, I got a prompt (still writing), and as such, had to ask what made her so appealing to fangirls. So, cheers for that.

There are a lot of hard to read Carol stories. There are also some awesome ones. She seems to have been a magnet for writerly violence. *g*

Power Girl is the one character on whom I don't mind the existance of a boob window - somehow it works for Peeg when it's eye-rollingly LOL-worthy on everyone else. Though it could just be that I appreciate the musculature and the ass-kicking enough to give it a free pass, the way I do Wonder Woman's costume (which gets kind of grandfathered in for me based on the fact that there were a lot of Golden Age male superheroes who didn't have pants/tights either).

Carol is a fighter. No matter how many times you knock her down, no matter what strange new sexualized violence she's subjected to, no matter how her life gets wrecked, she picks herself back up, spits in the face of those who wronged her, and finds a new way to live. On her own terms.

Carol reminds me a little of Tony in some ways, not in personality at all, but in the way that both of them get knocked down and have their lives destroyed repeatedly and always manage to pull themselves back together and keep on going, frequently without help from anyone else (though to be fair, with the drinking they were both offered help and rejected it).

She's not a peacemaker, a detective, or a reluctant hero. She's a missile in human form, and she will fuck you up.

And that's one of the things I like about her -- I love Jan, but Jan gets cast in the mediator role an awful lot. Carol is a powerhouse/fighter in a way that's usually the province of male characters (I didn't realize until after I got into Avengers that a lot of the things I like about Rogue are essentially carry-overs from Carol). I think she and Power Girl would get along really well.

Like I said, I've got mixed feelings about Peeg's costume. On the one hand, I've come to really like it. On the other hand, I don't think I'll ever be able to read it publicly, without having to justify it. That's a source of irritation to me. I should be able to enjoy a well-written, well-drawn comic, without becoming a subject of by passers-by. "OMG IS SHE GHEY?!" "PORN LOLZ." Porntastic covers only serve to ghettoize comics in the nerdcave.

Carol & Tony are one of my friendship OTPs. I honestly think that they should be better friends than canon allows. Their relationship is interesting, in that it's at times a classic bromance (geeking out over heavy metal, literally, teasing the hell out of each other), and at others kind of, dare I say it, nurturing. Carol often gets coded as masculine, almost as often as Tony gets coded as feminine, and their relationship is accordingly queered (and yet also not). It's also interesting that they're canonically attracted to each other, care deeply for one another, and have the sense to never let it get more serious than the lightest flirtation.

I think they have... similar outlooks, while being very different personalities. They have different problem solving approaches, different biases, hell, different experiences. But they have enough in common to work really, really well together. I appreciate moments like Avengers/Invaders, Busiek's run, bits of CW and the 90s IM comics, that show how they click. Their worlds and their methods overlap far more than do say, Tony and Steve's. Carol&Tony is a lot like Rhodey&Tony.

I think she and Power Girl would get along really well.

Oh definitely. Interestingly, Peeg also has a bizarro history full of sexualized attacks and reboots. And like Carol, a dearth of canonical love interests.

Carol often gets coded as masculine, almost as often as Tony gets coded as feminine

Some day, I will actually sit down and write a piece of meta on gender coding in Iron Man and Ms. Marvel, because the two of them do tend to be given the opposite gender's coding more than is usual. I suspect it's one reason why Tony seems to be the designated uke (okay, bottom/sub, he doesn't blush or weep enough to be an uke) in Steve/Tony fandom -- people pick up on that, whether they realize it or not, and Steve, converse, gets very much coded as the classic Male Heroic Guy.

Carol&Tony is a lot like Rhodey&Tony.

When I try to ship them in my head, both of those pairings sort of crash and burn for some of the same reasons, too, but they would both be gloriously hot trainwrecks-in-the-making while they lasted. And therefore I'm glad canon has never gone there for Tony and Carol, because they've both had enough romantic trainwrecks already.

Tony is coded feminine when it comes to relationships. Real romantic relationships and friendships, and not hookups, I mean. And he's very often (canonically) The Victim. On the other hand, he also has some intensely masculine, alpha dog qualities. The same goes for Carol. Traditionally, she's at her most feminine when she's being victimized. That's started to change under Reed, who's actually comfortable with strong, female characters. ;)

And therefore I'm glad canon has never gone there for Tony and Carol, because they've both had enough romantic trainwrecks already.

Hells yes. Although I could see a movieverse Tony and Carol having a fling, and then settling into a friendship. Movie Tony has less baggage.

I think Tony/Carol would only work longterm under vastly changed circumstances. In 616 as it is, they'd... grate. I could see them becoming romantic partners, as an extension of a longterm military/heroing partnership. Sort of a wartime love affair?

Heh, I bought/read Ms. Marvel in hardcover so I could take the cover off. God I hate those Greg Horn covers...

They are so damn fugly. Carol looks like a Real Doll on most of them.

But I'd stopped seeing how it would look to people outside of comics fandom. I'd stopped thinking about it.

It's kind of weird/sad to think about. Until I got my driver's license I was never allowed to go into my local comic shop alone, even though it was a respectable place with nice guys behind the counter, etc. Then I stepped back a bit and realized from an outsider's (and parent's) perspective, the Lady Death and Ninja Thong Psylcoke posters in the window and the Emma Frost in corset and panties statuettes on the counter made the store look like an inappropriate place for a teenage girl. I wonder how many people never went into that store because they were put off by the industry's imagery.

I'm not fond of boob windows on anyone, really. I'm kinda frustrated that in the Rule 63 side of the Watchmen fandom it's fanon now that "Danielle Dreiberg's" costume has a boob window, when it's otherwise exactly the same as Nite Owl's canon costume.

I've become fond of Peeg's boob window. Don't ask me the whys and wherefors of that - I really don't know. But I really, really don't like Danielle's. It's completely out of place in her costume, and doesn't make a lick of sense for her character. Laurie decked out in silk (or latex)? That makes sense. Danielle flashing her boobs while detecting and ass-kicking? Yeah, no. Especially if she retains Dan's sexual hangups. Night Owl's costume should be supremely functional (even while being all owly). Boob windows are dysfunctional from an intimidation and protection perspective.

I wonder how many people never went into that store because they were put off by the industry's imagery.

*nods* I think the obvious sex stuff should be kept out of the front window. Much like the adult section of movie rental store.

It's taken me a long time to find a great comic book store. It's not even the merchandise, which I hardly see now, or the staff, but the other customers. I need to be able to check out comics without being looked at. O.o

Funny story-- I ran into a guy from one of my classes in the burger joint I eat at while I read my Wednesday haul, while I was reading PG #1. Immediately after he left, I began wondering exactly this.

I ran into a guy from one of my classes in the burger joint I eat at while I read my Wednesday haul, while I was reading PG #1.

In his mind you're now a hentai addict. ;)

I used to read Ms. Marvel at school, between classes. I've always wondered what passersby thought about the Greg Horn covers. *g*

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The boob window/why Ms. Marvel?

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In July....

Re: In July....

Re: In July....

Re: In July....

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Cheers for this

Re: Cheers for this

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