My Thoughts on Marvel Divas

[ficwize]

likeadeuce asked me to explain why I'm enjoying this story. So, that's what this post is about - and let me just start out by saying a few things.

1. I didn't intend to buy it or read it. But then I started thinking about how few comic books really featured women, so I read the first issue in the store. Then I read the second issue right afterward.

2. I still haven't bought it and likely won't.

3. I am 100% unfamiliar with any of these characters. I have NO idea whether or not the stories are authentic or OOC. I have no history, no background info, nothing at all. I am literally judging this story based on this story alone.

4. I got the Sex and the City reference without reading any interviews, a few of which I've since read. I enjoyed Sex and the City, but I didn't love it. My thoughts on Divas thus far are about the same.

5. My personal background, which is relevant to my thoughts, is that I'm a single 30 year old lawyer. There are more details that some of you know, but that's the gist of it. And that should explain why this comic is relevant to my interests, when you read my thoughts below.

First, an observation that I think will likely offend some people, but I'm going to say it anyway. I find that a lot of people who criticize women's literature (and thereby women's story lines in other things) criticize them for including too many romantic story lines. They don't like the fact that women never sem to carry a story on their own without it involving men in some way.

I think this is a valid criticism. But I don't understand why, after that criticism is made, whatever work under discussion is somehow devalued. I"m 30 years old and I went to a women's college, and believe me, I work and fight in a man's world. And still, relationships, marriage, babies, boyfriends, etc. come up all the time, in every friendship I have with every woman I know. (It also comes up with all the men I know, too. Perhaps it should play bigger roles in male-centric fiction to make that more true to life.)

So the fact that this comic is about four women who share a common bond in that they were/are/might be heroes and deals in large part with their love lives doesn't bother me and I don't find it degrading.

Instead, I find it fascinating. It's asking the same question every woman I've ever met asks: Is it possible to have it all?

The four characters, whom I barely know by name, are all dealing with different major points in their life, but they share something in common with each other - and with me. They worry about work - is it taking too much of their life, will their past decisions haunt them, have they made wrong decisions about careers, have they put themselves in a corner?

They worry about health - and as someone without insurance who has been struggling a lot this year with health problems, I can relate. Do I need to go to the doctor, what if it's bad news, what do I do then, who is going to help me, am I strong enough to bear it if it's the worst, am I doing something to make myself sick, am I being irresponsible?

They worry about relationship - what do I do when my bad ex shows up, if I'm attracted to this man and sleep with him without wanting a relationship, does that make me a slut, are my friends judging me, will potential employers judge me if they find out, am I making a mistake by being interested, am I making a mistake by being uninterested?

They worry about finances - and good God is that hitting close to home right now. Am I financially stable, what do I need to do to make myself financially stable, is my credit good, do I buy property, do I go into business for myself, do I keep struggling to find a job somewhere else, do I change fields altogether?

I have heard criticisms that the cancer storyline is trite and overdone, and I say fie to those people who say that. I dare them to tell someone who has had a friend diagnosed with breast cancer that it's trite or overdone. I dare them to feel that way if they are diagnosed with breast cancer.

And I find the reactions thus far very normal. Anger, second opinions, self-blame, bargaining with the devil/god (maybe not in such a literal way, but still).

As far as I can tell, with only half the story and no background to look at, this comic is dealing with a lot of very real women's issues.

Are the characters all making smart decisions? No, but then, looking at my circle of friends (and in the mirror), I can safely say that's fairly realistic, too.

At the end of the day, I simply don't find stories about women claiming their sexuality while still having outside lives to be misogynistic. And I'm not saying that anyone reading this thinks that - but according to wikipedia, that was a criticism made of the author. Why shouldn't women want to have sex? Why shouldn't they want to have boyfriends?

And in this case, I really am at a loss. One character is dealing with her ex-husband (who is the son of Satan!???? I missed something there.) showing back up and causing drama. Check. I've seen that happen a lot in my own little world. One woman is agonizing over whether or not she's actually interested in a man who is interested in her after she already slept with him. Oh, yes, I can tick off the women I know who worry about this. And one is dealing with the arrogant, though probably well intentioned, offer of her boyfriend (ex?) to bail her out and give her money to start a business. While I don't know anyone exactly who fits this, I can look at her situation, and look at my own with a friend of mine who is male, and see startling and striking similarities.

So, while I hardly think this book is the best thing I've ever read, I do find it kind of amazing. On many many levels, it addresses things that are relevant to my life, and to the lives of the women that I love and care about.

As an almost afterthought, I'm going to also address the art and the authorship. The art has been criticized for being misogynistic and I'm not 100% I know why. As far as I can see, it really isn't that different from the art of any comic woman heroine - tight uniforms and big breasts. Okay, we get it - all comic book heroes have amazing bodies. But that applies equally to men as to women. It's rare to find female characters not dressed in ridiculous clothes (Brand and Daisy to name a few), but it's equally rare to find male comic heroes not dressed in ridiculous costumes (I *hate* Scott's condom head uniform. I liked it better when he didn't wear that ridiculous head covering. And yellow spandex?? Yeah. Like I said...)

The author, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is doing something that I actually think is fairly rare- he's writing about a gender not his own. I overheard local Atlanta comic book artists discussing writing women once and was appalled at the number of them (mostly men) who said they wouldn't even really try because as men, they would never "get it." In my opinion, that was ridiculous. I'm not a man, and I don't shy away from writing male characters. And when I have received criticism that I write men like a woman would write them, I try and follow up on it to find out what I did wrong and how I could do it better.

My hat is off to Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa for at least being brave enough to try, and in my opinion, not doing a horrible job. Anyway, I welcome comments - even if you do disagree with me. ;)

Comments

[ficwize.livejournal.com]

it seems to me that Romance - which is for the most part, books written and read by women, with at least one woman in the lead role - gets taken the least seriously

I agree. I hadn't really thought of it in these terms before, but I think you're right. And it's interesting, too, that books exploring women's sexuality are most often dismissed.

As far as agency, I have to say that this story seems full of it to me, which is one of the reasons I like it. There are men in this story, but they are very much secondary characters.

I think that it frustrates me to hear criticisms that there aren't enough women represented in comics and then hear equal amounts of criticism that the stories are somehow less valid when they focus on more traditional women's issues. These women are still heroes, they're still out there fighting the good fight, and they're doing it without the safety net of an established hero team.

But, I am prepared to think that it might just be me.

Thanks for you comments and thoughts!

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I definitely want to emphasize that I think the actual book 'Marvel Divas' is better than the marketing of Marvel Divas. I still don't love it but I have a lot less problem with the content of the book than the packaging.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's true that there are people who are genuinely uninterested in women or women's sexuality who dismiss romance as a genre. But my aversion to romance as such is my perception that it's about women who either (a) are not interested in anything but finding the right man and living happily ever after or (b) who are actually interested in other things but learn by the end of the book that what they really should have been looking for the right man and subsequently sacrifice all of their other goals to be with him. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with telling stories about women's lives, it's that *my perception* of a romance narrative is not of something that's actually about women in a positive way, but about how women need men to complete them.

Now I am *sure* that all romance narratives are not like that, and it's probably true this perception comes more from movies than from books that I haven't read since I was a teenager. But I don't have any concept of where I would look to find stories that aren't like that.

Now about Marvel Divas itself, I'm not sure it really even qualifies as a romance -- I'm not sure WHAT it is -- but I think it bears repeating that I'm not upset by what's in this comic but I'm upset that of all the stories Marvel could have chosen to tell about its women, it picked this one.

Primarily, though, I was uninterested in the book because I thought the 4 characters had utterly indistinguishable personalities and didn't talk about anything I found interesting. It was just, to me, not a well-told story. It's just that, because the external fact of the book's publication and marketing bugged me, I'm still thinking about it instead of tossing it and forgetting it as I generally would with a story I didnt' find well-told.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to take over wizefics journal with this, but if you ever feel like doing a post about romance writers who handle this stuff well, I'd definitely be interested. It's not that I don't want to read stories about contemporary women having everyday problems, it's just that so many of them push the wrong buttons for me. (And neither of us has mentioned this yet, but a lot of the times it's the class issues in these books that drive me off more than anything -- I always seem to read things about about young women from a wealthy families who go to high-profile college and are just *shocked* that they don't get the job, income, and man they want right away.)