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

[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.)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the early collections (after the first) had some great stuff in them. The "kitchen cabinet" stuff especially.

I don't know that I hate Sim, 'cause that doesn't seem worth the energy, but I felt seriously creeped out and betrayed by Reads; like, this is what all of this is building up to? What a waste of my time. Which is of course the risk you take every time you pick up a book (or go to a play, or put on an album, or whatever) but it felt worse because of all that had gone before it.