Comic Books

Sawyer, Elliott Alexander. Postfeminism in female team superhero comic books. Diss. The University of Utah, 2014.

Comic books are beginning to be recognized for their impact on society because they inform, channel, and critique cultural norms. This thesis investigates how comic books interact and forward postfeminism. Specifically, this thesis explores the ways postfeminism interjects itself into female superhero team comic books. These comics, with their rosters of only women, provide unique perspectives on how women are represented in comic books. Additionally, the comics give insight into how women bond with one another in a popular culture text. The comics critiqued herein focus on transferring postfeminist ideals in a team format to readers, where the possibilities for representing powerful connections between women are lost.

Postfeminist characteristics of consumption, sexual freedom, and sexual objectification are forwarded in the comic books, while also promoting aspects of racism. Through utilizing the methodologies of close textual and close visual analysis to study the team comics, the moments and arguments of postfeminism in the comic books come to light. Furthermore, close textual analysis is utilized to understand the critical response to the comic books, and how that response often overlooks aspects of postfeminism. The comic book companies argue that women are receiving fairer representation because they are shown in teams, but the team format provides a greater platform to further objectify women. Overall, the comic books argue the further marginalizing of women in popular culture through the ideals of postfeminism.

D’Amore, Laura Mattoon. “Invisible Girl’s Quest for Visibility: Early Second Wave Feminism and the Comic Book Superheroine.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900–present) 7 (2008).

In her 1963 consciousness-raising classic, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan called the plight of the suburban housewife the “problem that has no name.” These women were cooks, cleaners, diaper changers, and lovers, but they lacked identity as individuals. Their hopes and dreams remained secondary, blending with the needs of the families they nurtured. In a figurative sense, they were invisible, even to themselves. After Marvel’s Fantastic Four character Sue Storm follows her love interest into outer space, her genes mutate, and she becomes a superheroine whose power makes her literally invisible.

McCall, Jessica D. “Woman or warrior? How believable femininity shapes warrior women.” (2011).

My dissertation is an exploration of how femininity is constructed in the characters of warrior women. I define and apply my theory of believable femininity: the notion that in order for characters gendered female to be accepted by an audience, specific textual markers must render them submissive to a dominating male figure. I examine the following warrior women at length: Britomart and Radigund from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene; Christine de Pizan’s treatment of Amazons in her Book of the City of Ladiesand Hippolyta’s specific portrayal by de Pizan in comparison to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the modern recreation of Hippolyta in DC Comics’ Wonder Woman series; Joan of Arc as she appears in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI and Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan; the figure of Wonder Woman herself as a comic book and cultural phenomenon. My purpose is to illuminate what I feel is an unexamined requirement in warrior women that their strength always be subsumed by their femininity.

Race, Kristen Coppess. Batwoman and Catwoman: Treatment of Women in DC Comics. Diss. Wright State University, 2013.

DC Comics has existed through the first, second, and third waves of feminism, publishing popular female characters who appeal to a mass market. By focusing on depictions of Batwoman and Catwoman, this paper examines the contrast between the social and political progress forms of feminism promised for women and the increasingly violent treatment of female characters in DC Comics, focusing on Batwoman and Catwoman. M. Thomas Inge maintains that male “comic book heroes […] tend to fit most of the classic patterns of heroism in Western culture” (142). These heroes are designated by their completion of quests or missions, their victory in combat, and their self-improvement through these aggressive acts. However the heroines are denied many of the successful quests and missions that are a common motif for their male counterparts. Heroines’ actions are often reactionary, not active. Moreover, comic heroines tend to fall into certain non-heroic normative archetypes: the domesticated woman (or woman seeking domestication), the transgressive temptress that must be punished (or domesticated), or the moral woman who woos the hero away from the dark side (and joins him in domestic bliss). Following Catwoman from 1940 and Batwoman from 1956, this paper examines the disparity between the rights women gained through feminist movements and the increasing commoditization, fetishization, and torture of females within comic books.

Marlina, Leni. “The Discussion on Female Heroes in Respect of Gender Socialisation of Girls: Retelling Myths of Psyche, Artemis and Katniss.” Linguistics and Literature Studies 3.2 (2015): 41-45.

Myths, tales and other related stories for children have significant role in all cultures since they can render the multiplicity of experiences; explain the behaviour of the physical universe; and describe human nature and society. These stories are ‘the most potent means by which perceptions, values and attitudes are transmitted from one generation to the next’ (Hourigan 1997, p.1). One genre of such stories is hero story. The hero story is very popular in children’s literature and young adult literature since they are considered to be ‘unequivocally good for children morally and mentally’ (Hourigan 1997, p.3). To see how the heroic archetype has changed over time, we can explore and compare the journey of traditional female heroes with a contemporary female superhero. This research paper shows how to do an alternative activity for EFL (English as Foreign Language) college students in doing literary analysis by discussing the journey of three female heroes from ancient Greek myths and a recently young adult (YA) text. The heroines of the ancient myths are Psyche in Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche (1855); and Artemis in Callimachus’s Artemis (1988). The heroine of the YA literature is Katniss in Collin’s The Hunger Games (2008), a contemporary young adult’s dystopian literature. By patterning the quests of the heroes in question onto Campbell’s monomyth, the author tries to demonstrate that these female heroes (Psyche, Artemis and Katniss) qualify as male heroes. Then, the author compares and contrasts the female heroes in respect of contemporary gender theory and the socialisation of girls.

MORRISON, AMBER R. Understanding Gender Identity Among Women Cosplayers of the Gotham City Sirens. Diss. University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida, 2015.

As popular culture has an increasing presence in America, so do its various sub-cultures. One of such sub-cultures is the world of comic book fans known as cosplayers. Cosplayers dress- up and emulate characters at comic book conventions throughout the United States and the world—a practice known as cosplay, also described as costume-play. Despite the growing popularity of cosplay, little is known about this population. In this research, I set out to answer the following research question: why are women choosing to dress-up and embody these characters (the Gotham City Sirens) when they are often viewed as oversexualized. In order to answer my research question, I focused on women who chose to cosplay characters from the Gotham City Sirens – Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy – who are frequently depicted in “glamorized” or hypersexualized illustrations. My data collection included participant observation, literature review, and semi-structured interviews. Recruiting participants from local Central Florida comic book conventions, I conducted 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the women cosplayers about their perspectives on the characters and their cosplays. My findings derived from the analysis of the interview narratives identified three emerging dominant themes – sexuality, body image, and personal identity. Based on this research, there is a concluding realization that empowerment and self-reflection are prevalent in women cosplayers. These are important findings because they are essential to the understanding of how gender identity is perceived in cosplay. When cosplayers connect with their characters on a personal level, often empowerment and self-reflection are the outcomes; due to the connection they foster with the character for the sake of performance.

Schmidt, Katlin. “Siren Song: A Rhetorical Analysis of Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in Gotham City Sirens.” (2015).

This project investigates comic book discourse. Specifically, I investigate how comic narratives provide readers with an interpretation for how they should discern and assess “appropriate” behaviors for women. The artifact of analysis included in this project is DC Comics Gotham City Sirens (2009). This text features popular female superheroes, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. Because comic books utilize both textual and visual means to disseminate a message, this project evaluates the visual rhetoric of these characters within the narrative. Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used to provide an understanding to how these visual means contribute to the meanings assigned in the narrative. Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used to provide an understanding to how these visual means contribute to the meanings assigned in the narrative. Using the narrative paradigm and visual rhetoric as organizing principles, I argue that Gotham City Sirens provides readers with an specific interpretation of gender expectations and gender related social issues like Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Specifically, I argue that Gotham City Sirens provides readers with an interpretation of women that upholds traditional gender expectations while also providing an interpretation to IPV that upholds prevalent socio-cultural domestic violence myths that denigrate the

 

seriousness of the issue. In terms of gender, these characters experience a tension between their gender expectations and the expectations derived from their roles as superheroes. The way in which these characters resolve this tension influences the meanings they are assigned based on their experiences with IPV. Ultimately, Catwoman and Harley Quinn are assigned meanings of “non-victimhood” that diminish the significance of the issue and blames these women for their abuse. Superheroes have skyrocketed in popularity over the past fifteen years and their narratives are extending to individuals that are not necessarily comic readers. This cultural significance of superheroes suggests that comic books appeal to a wide audience who has the potential to be influenced, even implicitly, by these messages.

Buttsworth, Sara. “‘Bite Me’: Buffy and the penetration of the gendered warrior-hero.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 16.2 (2002): 185-199.

Can the ultimate girl be the ultimate warrior? If warrior identity is simultaneously a quintessentially masculine identi􏰜er, and one of the core expressions of ‘innate’ masculinity, then the biggest transgression of warrior iconography posed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Buffy’s gender. Buffy is both like and not like ‘other girls’. The social conventions of mainstream femininity, which have so often been used to argue that women cannot be warriors, are often precisely what make Buffy such an effective soldier in her speculative world. The blurred boundaries that are possible in speculative texts open up space necessary to examine the arguments and gendered ideologies which govern what is, and what is not, possible in the ‘real’ world. Such texts can often make explicit what is implied in more ‘realistic’ representations, and can either destabilize or reinforce gendered cultural conventions.