Perhaps Wonder Boy's Time Has Come

[snurri]

scans_daily has Alan Moore's three-part essay on women in comics circa 1983, "Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies." Interesting to read that in the context of, well, now. There are more women working in comics, but a lot of the same crap is still happening; and folks like Frank Miller, whom Moore cites as doing right by female characters (i.e. Elektra), have gone a fair ways backwards in recent years. This is also interesting to read in light of the recent Dave Sim/Gail Simone confrontation (if it can really be called that, seeing as how Sim mostly weasels out of actual responses to Gail's fair and thoughtful questions) over at Sequential Tart's forums. That conversation is still going on, BTW, even though Sim has slunk away.

Every time I read an interview with Sim I remember the slimy feeling I got when I was slogging my way through Reads. It went beyond making me ashamed of my gender; by the end I was uncomfortable with being from the same species as such a hateful, backwards person. Yuck. It's amazing to me that he can still inspire these feelings in me a dozen years after I gave up on his work.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You know, when you think about the concept of women simply being sucking voids that drain our percious light it may sound creepy, but in another way it's extremely teh sex!

Anyway, Sim isn't even a sexist. He's clearly a late-onset schizophrenic. He just happened to already have a publishing concern when his brain went *b0rk*, so he wasn't reduced to handing out handwritten leaflets about sperm, Revelations, and gravity at the bus station like the rest of them.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

It's not even an original misogyny. It's an old recycled one.

Obviously, his creative juices have been sucked.

(I quit sometime during Reads, too. )

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

Well supposedly Sim came up with his ultimate story-arc while in the hospital emergency room after doing too much LSD. I stopped around Melmoth or whatever issue it was when it was 12 pages of feet walking down stairs and 20 pages of "essays" and letters.

[barbmg.livejournal.com]

It's a shame because High Society remains my favorite comic book of all time, and he was a genious satirist.

In the end I couldn't really work up much hate for the misogyny schtick because he's so obviously a frothing-at-the-mouth nutball. I lost intrest after Melmoth as well, due to the great big ladlefulls of boring. (I'll admit I did laugh at the "no artistic lisence" pun at the end of the arc, but it was a loooong way to go for a joke.)

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

Wow. I think this is the first comic book thing where we're not on the exact same page. For me, it was heartbreaking to watch a creator succumb to a disturbing strain of schizophrenia and the thread made me sad again. I didn't like reading it.