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| Female superheroes from Marvel (not my image) |
Date: November 2014, 2nd year City of Bath College Creative Media Level 3 BTEC
Compulsory for my course, I had to make a short documentary with a randomly assigned partner about anything at all.
My partner happened to love comics (particularly Wolverine and the Incredible Hulk) and I enjoy less superhero oriented comics/graphic novels (Ghost World is a classic, Adrian Tomine's work is magical, and Craig Thompson's Blankets is one of my all time favourite love stories!) so we settled on comics as a starting topic.
My partner then brought up sexism in mainstream comics - female superheroes are often just women versions of existing male ones, eg. She Hulk, Batwoman, Spiderwoman, instead of being their own characters like Catwoman or The Female in indie series The Boys.
Even when there are prominent female characters, they are usually always impossibly gorgeous and sporting an unrealistic "perfect" figure.
The conversation progressed to discussing the way in which female consumers of comics and "nerdy, geeky" media are viewed. She mentioned that she had been accused of liking comics just because "they're cool" or to get boys to think she's "quirky" and, when we took to the internet for a spot of secondary research, we found that she was definitely not alone in this.
We stopped by at Bath based comic shop, American Dream, to interview a woman who works there about her views on issues relating to sexism in comics, how the portrayal of women affects sales, her experiences of sexism in the industry and what she would change if she could.
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