Nightscrawlers

I just posted in neling's thread about how the new Black Panther is supposed to be female, and then it hit me:

A quite noticeable part of the Marvel universe gets femminized.

Up until now we've got: Black Pantress, Lady Bullseye, Miss Sinister, Kraven the Hunter's daughter.

I mean, if those ladies would have some appealing back story I wouldn't complain, but as it is now they're just the original male characters with boobs and sometimes too much libido.

Actually, out of the four posted up there, Miss Sinister is sexing around to gain an advantage and Lady Bullseye is running around killing her way through everything because she used to be a sex slave. One can't help but to think that writers only bring in female characters when they have some ties to something sexual (you got the underage whore angle with x-23, the Playboy covers from She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel, Emma Frost,...).

What makes the whole affair so sad for me is that I fear this is a campaign to gain more female readers by presenting more "strong" women (how come they always have to point out that these women are strong, but the male heroes are strong by default anyway?).

What do you guys think?

I don' t like Marvel's definition of "strong" women. To me, a "strong" woman has strength of character, not muscle. The only female characters in the MU I really like are: Meggan Braddock when she was an airhead in Excalibur, and Aunt May.

She-Hulk?
I hate to say it, but I feel that way about Spider-Woman and dare I say Spider-Girl. Especially Spider-Woman, who according to canon, always has an awkward exchange with her male counterpart. It's a sad excuse to pull in female characters and it's very sexist.
Oh, and Freak, you forgot Doctor Octopus like... 2.0. When Ben was Spider-Man they rehashed a whole bunch of villains. She was Doc Oc's like daughter or lab assistant or somthing...

My favorite female Marvel characters would have to be either Elektra, Dagger, Dazzler, and Gwen Stacey.


DC tries not to follow this pattern but they fall into it a little too easily.
Especially with Batwoman.

[Edited on 13/1/09 by Ult_Sm86]

Yeah, I think retreading these characters with female versions is just lame and fairly transparent.

One of my definitions of a strong woman is the reason why no matter how much Storm sucks right now I will defend that character’s potential to the end. You didn’t have to be told she was a ‘strong female character’ because she obviously kicked ass. She also stands as a testament to how great Claremont was back in the day, but that’s another story.

Since her introduction and through the 80s Ororo was established as an independent, smart woman with natural leadership skills. While she was sexy, it wasn’t a contrived sexuality – it was just a natural part of her – and she didn’t use it as a tool for manipulation like Emma Frost or this new lady Sinister.

When she was the leader by default of the X-Men, that character grew exponentially, making hard decisions that sometimes changed her outlooks but also taught her to stick to her moral compass. And it was a more interesting and gray moral compass than Cyclops had at the time. She made mistakes and learned from them. She had various showdowns with Magneto, Callisto and the Brood that showed her as a more capable leader than Scott, and later even led the X-Men while she was powerless, beating out Cyclops in a one-on-one challenge for the right to lead the team.

She was mentally and physically just as tough as the guys, but never lost her femininity. And she didn’t use her sex as one of her weapons.

Of course, all that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t try to make her the new Black Panther. That’s something that could be good since she does have an established past, but also could be very, very bad considering that it does seem like they’re just interested in retreading male characters with boobies.

[rquote=33684221&tid=11446&author=Slarti]
Of course, all that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t try to make her the new Black Panther. That’s something that could be good since she does have an established past, but also could be very, very bad considering that it does seem like they’re just interested in retreading male characters with boobies.
[/rquote]

I would say it would more likely be very, very bad to take a person who is very much a well-developed character and make her a female version of a preexisting male character.

I agree about Storm being a strong character who happens to be female, but you don't want to get The Old Broad started on how I feel about most of the girl characters.

Well, okay, I can't resist a few observations:

Mystique is interesting and having a "bad guy" strong female is actually kinda non-sexist without straining to be non-sexist.

I always liked Kitty for her honesty and sense of humor and willingness to learn and her plain ol' gutsy approach to stuff. She's gonna beat that bullet somehow.

I miss the old, old, ooooold pre-Phoenix Jean Grey. The one who was curious, adventuresome, and kind-hearted. That's how I write her in fanfic: totally Old Skule. She'd have made a great nun, and (old-style) nuns are some of the most fun, bold earth-shakers you'll ever wanna meet.

I am sick too of always having to associate women with kinky sex. {Shut up, I can hear you boys drooling.} Why can't they be *people* first and women second? I recently saw some episodes of "Firefly," and the tough First Mate and the ditzy engineer are great female roles. They are girls, but not "just" girls. Token females are an embarassment to men who think they are paying tribute to feminism.

Now I really *am* about to get started, so ... sayonara!

Ult_Sm86 wrote: Oh, and Freak, you forgot Doctor Octopus like... 2.0.

I didn't forget her, I was intentionally bringing up only characters that showed up in the past year (Black Pantress didn't appear yet, but we already knew she would be around then) to point out that this is a trend.

Really, generally spoken the list of female counterparts is tremendous, about each bigger Marvel hero had one at some point.

Seems like making a female version of an existing male character is always going to produce a weak character. Even when they try to give the female version more powers, they end up feeling like pale shadows of the original.

Plus it shows a kind of sexist attitude. I mean, how often do you see male versions of existing female characters? The Scarlet Warlock? He-Wasp? Male-Storm? Emmett Frost? It would be seem ridiculous.

...........
....


Yet hilarious in a fan fic...


*begins to plot*

Didn't ant man become the new Wasp recently?

Also there is a great image where they switched the sex of all the x-men. i think it was in a millenium visions.

[Edited on 16-1-2009 by Entropy]

Yes, though she was kind of an inverted copy that got her powers from him from the get-go.

Plus, he's kind of honoring her name with that, while the femenized versions are mostly just weirdly inspired women or women with about the same powers as a male hero that were too lazy to come up with a new shtick.