[pupppet]

Sounds like you're not the audience the blogger was writing for.

As someone who fancies female characters being written as more than a love interest or someone to be raped, and don't believe sexual ambiguity makes a villain more frightening, I'm on board with what she's writing.

[Spooky23]

I agree with the writer’s point too, and I’ve always found Batman to be a cynical character who is a questionable “hero” at best.

But it’s an important character to many people, and I think the visceral reaction to this kind of criticism is because these critics have a ton of political power in certain settings and tend to trigger reactions that go over the top.

[tptacek]

Right, so the observation you'd next make with respect to Miller is that he probably doesn't see Batman as a questionable hero.

[Spooky23]

I wouldn’t only because I’m not a “student” of Batman or Miller and honestly don’t know much about it.

No political axe to grind about Batman or Miller, it’s just not a character or style that I personally care for. My wife loves Tim Burton stuff, I do not. I love old school Star Trek, she would rather watch the weather channel lol.

[avereveard]

I believe that given a pie of content from comic book targeted at young male adult the pie dedicated to action is way larger than the pie dedicated to romance - and the flatness of woman carachter has more to do with audience interests / space dedicated to romance than writers' skills.

that said I too hate that non protagonist women are mostly treated as props to a story and protagonist women mostly embody male tropes in a woman body - I think there can be much more than that.

[JKCalhoun]

You may be right but it's too bad then: they have a platform and an eager audience and are wasting an opportunity to depict a mature and healthy relationship in comics.

[avereveard]

I mean, they are on thin ice - can you imagine the ruckus parents would do at anything but cis? or the ruckus blogger would do if every "mature and healthy" relationship gets portrayed as necessarily cis? I see them using tropes also as a quick way out.

albeit there's some interesting takes if you search around, like in the amazon "invincible" - but I guess a miniseries has more space for it, and it's for a more adult audience to begin with.

[tptacek]

These are Frank Miller comics. The "how would parents react" stuff is right out the window. Gaiman did a whole bunch of stuff with non-hetero sexuality for DC, and he gets TV series to this day.

[Fomite]

The romance fiction genre has about as many sales as the entire comic book industry.

Perhaps publishers are misallocating the pie.

[egypturnash]

The cartoonist who does “Phoebe And Her Unicorn” recently noted that she sold more books last year than all of Marvel. And she’s well behind folks like Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier.

This is an open secret in the comics world, the “comic book industry” dedicated largely to superheros is only a tiny fragment of the comics sold now. Imported manga started eating their lunch years ago, too.

[avereveard]

No, they're producing separate content for both demographics. Why would they produce a bastardised product, inferior to both specialized ones?