Travis and I have decided that we’re going to read a few comics with female leads and analyse how they are portrayed.  Okay, that is fine and good and all, but I’m already spending upwards seventy bucks a month on comics (actually, according to my bank statement, I’ve spent 120 bucks on comics the past four weeks.  But I also bought a box, at least one tpb and seven back issues in those weeks – if you factor those out, it is about 60-75 bucks) and, get this, I’m freaking unemployed and just bought a car in the beginning of September.  Oh, and I have about 2.5 grand in tuition due by the end of January.  And I need to buy gas.

And, yet, I’ve decided to pick up four more titles for the express purpose of poking holes at (or praising) the portrayal of women in comics.

All this because I think that Invincible Iron Man’s Pepper Potts is a terrible character since, well, she has no character.  Despite the awesomesauce of the suit and the electromagnet, Pepper herself is pretty annoying.  First she freaks out when Tony saves her from death-by-skyscraper by putting an electromagnet in her chest (‘oh noes, it’s STARK TECH.  That is BAD because it is WEAPONS and stuff’.  But it ends up not being Stark tech so Pepper is okay with it since it is nonviolent.  Uh, hullo?  She’s been working for a weapons manufacturing company for how many years now?  And, recently, Tony made her the CEO of said company and her only freak out was over the mess he left for her), then she has a stint at being pretty awesome and kick ass (though everything she does is defined by Tony which, to a certain extent, is acceptable since she’s a secondary character) and now she’s freaking out because Tony can become undead (not a zombie undead – wrong universe, despite the existence of Deadpool’s zombie head) since, omg, Happy didn’t have that choice…. and she’s the one who begged Tony to pull the plug on Happy.

Yeah.  Kinda flip-floppy there.  Pepper is just a vehicle to tell a story, not a character in her own right.

Also in IIM, Natasha is kinda just… there (probably for the boobs factor and the lesbian subtext between her and Maria) and Maria went from being cool and kickass to a psycho bitch to a recovering psycho bitch… and for no real reason.  Did we even find out what was on that hard drive she went through all of that effort to steal?  If we did, it must not have been all that exciting of news since I don’t remember it.

Of course, this was also prompted, in part, by the SGU sexism drama – personally, I feel that there is no sexism in the show.  Yes, Chloe is annoying and whiny and too quick to jump into bed with people but that isn’t sexist.  If it was, I’d know a lot of women who are somehow sexist just by existing!  Sure, Cloe is pretty stupid, I’m not arguing with that (I’m not a fan of her myself), but she isn’t sexist.

And calling the Stargate writers sexist?  Even more stupid – how can a group of people who made two shows with strong, kickass female leads be sexist?  And SGU has TJ, who is shaping up to be pretty damn awesome, and Wray, who is potentially kickass and awesome but, sadly, doesn’t have enough screen time.

So, yeah, long story short?  I’m going to be reading three more comics and using that mostly random selection to judge how women are portrayed in American comics.  The four comics we’re going to be reading?  Batgirl (because we were both reading it anyway), Wonder Woman (because she is the female superhero), Black Widow and Marvel Girls (because it is a miniseries and, thus, easier on the wallet as well as having an utterly ridiculous name) and Empowered (because I’ve been meaning to read it and the wiki article sounds like Empowered is a believable character).

We shall see how it goes.

I am, however, resisting the temptation to read the other comics I bought by writing this blog entry.  So far, it is working.

But back to Iron Man.

Wow, is it possible to have two storylines that are more different than the current one in Invincible Iron Man and Iron Man: Armor Wars?  IIM’s has been running for god-knows-how-long now, is angstytastic, vaguely melodramatic and, all and all, a rather heavy storyline.  Don’t get me wrong – I love it to pieces.  I’m always one for some drama, especially the relationship-heavy drama of IIM #16.  Armor Wars, on the other hand, is light, cheerful story – funny, happy and full of the necessary buttwhoopage.  (Even if it is Tony’s butt getting whooped, or almost whooped, a lot.)

Allow me one obnoxious fangirl moment about IIM #16 (yes, I tricked you into seeing this under a cut or by permalink) – eeee Tony chooses death over betraying Pepper!  Shipper me is happy!  Of course, shipper me was happy when Tony slept with Maria a few issues back (and with Maya however long ago that was) – with Tony, I pretty much ship anything.  But I especially ship Tony/Pepper.

Okay, fluff aside, let’s get into the good stuff.  I like how they’re doing the concurrent storylines here.  Very well balanced – whenever they switch between Maria and Tony (or between Maria, Tony and Pepper a few issues ago), I’m pissed because I want to see more but, at the same time, happy at whatever is going on on the page now.  Very nice – I’m usually completely annoyed by concurrent storylines and always tend to skim one so that I can get to the good stuff.  I think, in this case, it’s because 64% of the book is for Tony, Pepper and Whitney, 32% for Natasha and Maria and Osborn gets himself a single page of unhappiness.  Sucker.

And now I’m going to complain about stuff because that’s what I do best.  In this case, I’m going to bitch about Tony’s ‘proprietary’ Western Digital Caviar hard drive.  Last I checked, Tony didn’t own that company.  And WD is one of the bigger hard drive manufacturers – in fact, all the hard drives in the computer-I’m-building-as-soon-as-I-get-home are WD drives.  (And one of them is even a Caviar.  The other is a VelociRaptor but that’s aside the point.)  The point is, any bloody computer out there can read a SATA drive.  Unless, of course, it’s bloody ancient and all.

Okay, okay, so the sticker may have been slapped on there to disguise the fact that it’s a super awesome Stark tech drive and maybe it isn’t SATA.  But then, pray tell, would the crazy guy in a itty bitty room be able to tell Natasha that from a picture of the label on her iPhone?

Apparently nobody working on this title knows anything about computers.

And now for Armor Wars.

Oh man, this miniseries is win!  I think Pepper threatening a reporter with her bright green stiletto sealed the deal for me.  I’m all for Pepper kicking ass.  And Tony’s little thwack on Trump’s head was great too and, well, the entire comic.  (A stapler?  Seriously?)  For complaints… well, I haven’t got any.  That’s new.

I also thought it would be interesting to point out the similarities between the two titles – both of them involve the Crimson Dynamo in some way, shape or form, both involve Pepper kicking ass and both have an incapacitated Tony – IIM has Tony with suits but not the brainpower to use them, Armor Wars has Tony with the brains but no suits.

Interestingly enough, both stories have allusions to the movieverse – the preview of IIM #17’s cover is a pretty obvious reference to the movie what with the suit laying in pieces in the Afghanistan (I assume) desert and Tony walking off in a wife beater.  For Armor Wars, it seems to be more of a blend of the movieverse and the comicverse – Tony’s living in LA (in a mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean with similar architecture as the movie’s mansion) and has recently stopped the production of weapons.  There’s no Stane in sight and Tony referenced how his weapons were sold to people with bad intentions.  It’s not movieverse entirely, however.  Rhodey’s not AF, Tony has a whole slew of suits and he’s operating under the “Iron Man is my bodyguard” facade.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on about Iron Man enough for this week.  Time to read Wednesday Comics!