What Worth An Effort?

There's this perpetual idea that I've been coming across ever since Ragnell and I began compiling for WFA that I have to admit tends to irk me a little.

This idea, paraphrase, ends up as: "Well, why bother with superhero comics? You can get much better portrayals from manga or indy comics. Superhero comics aren't worth the effort."

This idea, usually from otherwise intelligent posters, just really tends to make me twitch.

First of all, "better portrayals" really depends on what you're reading. I've been a manga fan for more than ten years and I have to say that personally, my experiences have been varied. I've read quite a few excellent portrayals of female characters, true. But I've also read quite a lot of stories that made superhero comics look like bastions of sanity and feminine asylum. Manga is so varied that it's really hard to pigeonhole it as really better or worse than any other style. .

In the case of superhero comics, no one really denies that sexism still exists, but I tend to prefer the manner in which it's expressed in superhero comics than the manner I tend to see it expressed in manga. It's just a personal taste matter, really.

I've never read much indy comics, but I'd imagine it's very much like manga, in which it really depends on what series you're reading. But there's nothing that makes either series innately more "woman friendly" than superhero comics.

(There are admittedly more female creators in the manga industry, but the thing about institutionalized sexism is that it can be practiced by men AND women. And anyone just needs to look at a certain subset of the romance novel genre to see that female writers can be as sexist as men can. I definitely want to see more female creators, don't get me wrong, but their presence doesn't necessarily make an industry less sexist.)

I suppose it just irritates me because I love superhero comics and I get annoyed when people attack them. It's one thing to say "superhero comics have a lot of problems" or even "I don't like superhero comics", but somehow it's different when I read "superhero comics aren't worth the effort."

I like superhero comics. I like spandex. I like powers. I like nazis riding on dinosaurs, alien invasions, body snatching, and stupid plot twists. I like insane premises like guys with the head of a flaming skull on a motorcycle. I like the overwhelming sense of history and continuity that comes from characters/properties that have been around in one form or another since the sixties or the thirties.

I like the character interaction and I like the story structure. And I like having the feeling that even by the time I'm dead, the properties will probably still be around in some form or another.

I love Barbara Gordon, Lois Lane, Power Girl, Lady Blackhawk, Dinah Lance, Storm, Ms. Marvel, and many many other strong female characters that really make reading superhero comics a joy.

There are a lot of improvements I'd like to see. A LOT. And I don't deny it. But I definitely think it's worth the effort. There's so much awesome about superhero comics that I'd hate to see up and abandoned.

Besides, when it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, religious/cultural intolerance and misrepresentation, and other such injustices, there is nothing that isn't "worth the effort". Nothing.