[September 23rd] Super Blowup Dolls to the rescue

As you know I've been keeping close tabs on The New 52 DCU reboot. This week DC writers have introduced readers to the brand new liberated sexy ladies. The examples are Catwoman and the new Starfire in Red Hood and The Outlaws. Laura Hudson discusses the issues with DCU's take on women with provocative characters at Comics Alliance:

But the problem isn't Star Sapphire. Or Catwoman. Or Starfire. Or Dr. Light raping Sue Dibny on the Justice League satellite or that stupid rape backstory Kevin Smith gave Black Cat or the time Green Lantern's girlfriend got murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator. The problem is all of it together, and how it becomes so pervasive both narratively and visually that each of these things stops existing as an individual instance to be analyzed in a vacuum and becomes a pattern of behavior whose net effect is totally repellent to me. As an anomaly, maybe Starfire could be funny, the way the big-breasted, over-sexed Fritz (who even got her own porno comic, Birdland, which is pretty good if you're into that) is often funny in Love and Rockets, mostly because the series is already packed full of incredibly diverse, fully-realized female characters. But as the 5,000th example of a superhero comic presenting female sexuality in tone-deaf ways, it's just depressing.

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And the problem is that when I look at these women, I would very much like to see confident ladies who enjoy sex and are having a fun sexy time. But what I see instead are women who give me the same impression as creepy dead-eyed porn stars mechanically mouthing "oh yeah, I want it." And that feeling of coerced sexual enthusiasm is the creepiest, saddest, most unerotic thing I can imagine. And if I were able to have a boner, seeing something like that would make me lose it every time.

I've had issues with both titles, more with Red Hood rather than Catwoman. Laura nails down all that made me cringe and not connect with the titles completely. I think that the issue with the end panel in Catwoman, where Selina is riding Wayne, is that the sexual release acts as Selina's go to method for dealing with bad days and depression. Yes, Selina is down and the way Batman consoles her is with a Bat-gadget that only he can provide. This is not to say that I didn't find the panel erotic or tasteful. Batman and Catwoman are wonderful together and I expected Selina to get Bat's pants down, but the timing is off.

Instead of seduce him, she clings to his anatomy like some people cling to food, sappy music or movies [or whatever you do when you feel sad] and the panel in this case takes away from her power rather than empower the character. Selina's just one of those girls with a complex or low self-esteem issues that need to have sex to feel better. That's not the case, but to me it looks like it is.

Starfire is the worst example of how sexually objectified women are in comics [at this point I can even say that the Star Saphires are better presented]. First, I don't have a background with her as a character other than the Teen Titans animated series, where Starfire appeared as the goofy and kind hearted and sweetest girl ever. Tamaran, in the animation, praised love and emotions. I believe the animation used these cardinal principals from the comics.

In the New 52, Starfire can not even remember her teammates, because to her every human looks the same and therefore is not worthy to remember. While this character trait promotes racism [white people and Asians, anyone?] the biggest issue is the absence of love in sex for her as a Tamaranian. Never about love. It's physical and basic. What happened to the love? To veneration of emotions? Forget about pleasure, the stilted and casual deliverance of the line "Just that love has nothing to do with it" combined with the catalog posing in previous panels, is just wrong. Starfire is not a woman, she's a husk. A super powered blowup doll.

I'm saddened to see sex brought low-brow. I don't mind seeing sex. Yes, superhero stories are not by definition sexual as action and violence dominate themes. When I do see sex in comics I'd like to see my heroines as avatars of sex and not the cheap, imitations, the superpower blowup dolls you can contort into pale resemblance of sexuality and sensuality.

[Character Development] Baba Yaga/Wicked Witch of the East

While I've completed "Hurricane Drunk", the darkest and moodiest piece I've ever written, I am still in the throws of creative passion [after edits are due now that the computer is back online]. This is why I'll post the creative history of my witch, the main antagonist and evil beyond salvation, though to be honest she does display affection in the cruelest and sickest of way so as to not give the readers a cardboard representation of EVIL.

In the seed that spawned "Hurricane Drunk" in its dark, gruesome glory, there was no other character. My 'Dorothy' was alone and stuck in a house, which was forever trapped in the arms of a magic hurricane. Eh, so at random I decided to insert random images in the house to see what may happen [I was bored, in class and that story was not even a priority]. What I initially inserted was a witch like this:

"Riding High" by Gil Elvgren

NOT exactly as sexually charged, but I wanted a beautiful witch, who could seduce and at the same time appear wholesome [kinda like the Girl Next Door of Witchcraft]. Of course, I imagined the witch seduce a man in front of my Dorothy. For the witch, the man is nothing more than spell ingredients and the other white meat, to young Ukrainian-Dorothy it's one of her first associations with the word family.

Cannibalism came later. The witch, at that particular moment, seemed good. She lived a life that spelled mystery, but still I could give her motivation or something worth writing about. I do not write good people, so I resorted to creating an evil witch.

Since I had created a version of Dorothy, I felt that I could borrow a bit more and write an incarnation of the Wicked Witch of the East, because of those ruby red slippers. I only took the slippers and did not bother much with the actual character, for I had no idea what role in the Oz universe she played and how I could twist it [which is why I don't have an image of her] in my favor. So, I had an evil witch. This is better, because now she'd have to keep all her horrifying doings secret. Fertile for tension, but still nothing in mind. How did Dorothy get to the witch, etc, etc.

Parallel this brewing process, I was inspired by Theresa Bazelli's work on her novella, Two Sisters, which is currently serialized at Serial Central. She decided to go obscure and used myths and legends from Slavic folklore [my folklore], which made me look at my stories [all oozing Ancient Greek vibes] and crave to involve a Slavic figure in my stories.

Wham, the two ideas merged and my sexy witch, semi-involved Wicked Witch of the East morphed along with Baba Yaga the most notorious witch in my folklore. Like witches from old stories like Hansel and Gretel, Baba Yaga enjoys kidnapping children and doom pretty much everyone else:

"Baba Yaga" by Markus The Barbarian

But I am sure there is a story behind this one:

"Baba Yaga" by Waldemar-Kazak

Subsequently, Dorothy's cottage became Baba Yaga's Hut with big chicken legs, while the story became a coming-of-age discovery of evil and accepting the wickedness inside.

"Baba Yaga's Hut" by Yoitisl

Dorothy of Oz

While I am still enjoying the passionate throws of writing my possibly darkest short story yet and not pulling punches I decided to show you what my Ukrainian version of Dorothy came to be with some images I have found on the web. At first I wanted to write something with a sexy Dorothy in the style of J. Scott Campbell [did not feature this because it is group illustration], who has done some very sexually charged images for Zenescope comics. I work very well with striking visuals and Dorothy as a Vixen came to me as striking. Something like this:

Art by WakenTheDead

BUT then I realized that apart from being a sexual object, that Dorothy had no story to tell and I did want something dark [like my own Red Riding Hood with a chainsaw] so somehow that morphed into a hard-core Dorothy much like this:

Art by Kennon9

There is a story behind that image, no? I have to say that I thought of making her a bit like Storm from X-Men, but that seemed obvious. EVENTUALLY I wanted Dorothy to be strong, but not physically. Physical strength and force does not make a character strong. I have advocated that over and over [the standard Urban Fantasy heroine has me rabies-ridden], so it did not make sense to make my Dorothy a bred warrior. My Dorothy is a captive. She is in the position of a victim, of which she gradually becomes aware and does her best to liberate herself. She is an innocent, forced into doing some horrible things simply because of her situation. Pretty much like this:

Art by Emilia Paw

This picture carries a very American McGee's Alice in Wonderland vibe. It is dark. Dorothy is shown as the victor of a battle, yet she is vulnerable. You wonder what made this girl kill and you sense that the story will be uncomfortable and saddening.