Once Again, in Defense of the Superhero Comic Book

A while back, I came running to the defense of my beloved superhero comic books when Dave Sim mentioned on his Blog & Mail how (paraphrasing), 'at its essence, all superhero comics are homosexual in nature.' Now I have to do it again because Frank Miller apparently called for (NSFW - CHILDREN, AVERT YOUR EYES!) an "ass-shot."

An "ass-shot" is actually a film industry term, which means to move the camera to the posterior-level. If you really care about these things, keep this in mind the next time you are watching... anything - particularly anything action-oriented. And while the term and practice may have been developed most specifically for shapely women, there is certainly no shortage of male ass-shots - again, watch any action flick.

I missed this entire exchange for several reasons, but probably the most important being: why the hell would I care? For those of you who also missed it, I'll nutshell it: Jim Lee drew a panel featuring Vicki Vale's butt and received flack for it (just a quick aside, even though this is the thrust of this post: WTF IS THIS PC WORLD COMING TO!?), so the script was released, wherein writer, Frank Miller, specifically notes he wanted a "shameless ASS-SHOT."

And chicks everywhere lost their collective shit.

So, let me nutshell where I'm going with this: if superhero comics show insanely-ripped guys wrapping their packages in form-fitting tights, they're "gay" and if they feature a single panel focusing on a single, sexy feature of a very sexy female character, they're misogynist. Makes perfect sense to me.

I think the overwhelming truth here is that a lot of people are simply stuck in "Comics Code" era thinking. In fact, the modern Political Correctness movement is trying its best to do to the real world what the Comics Code did to comic books. And a whole lot of dirty hippies are following suit.

If we all agree that comic books are no longer aimed at kids, we should also be able to agree that sex is an important part of most adults' lives. Whether they enjoy it or despise it, have too much of it or can never find it, have a healthy attitude toward it or have been permanently damaged by it, it's important. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, the first part of sex is physical attraction (unless you've been drinking, but that lay outside the scope of this post). Regardless of your personal sexuality, the superhero genre relies heavily on sweeping the reader into the adventures and allowing him to "ride along" - thus letting him live vicariously through the characters he is reading - and part of the reason superhero guys are so muscle-bound and classically good-looking is so you can "envision" being them. And just maybe to give male, homosexual fans a little eye-candy, to boot. Can you figure out why their female counterparts and dependents are so attractive?

Go on. I'll wait.

We all want to be better-looking, stronger, smarter, cooler under pressure, able to make a real and lasting change on the world around us - you know, be a superhero. That's the essence of superhero comic books and all these neuvo, armchair pop-psychologists completely miss that point.

If you were a grim, gritty, deeply complex man made of rippling muscles, who gets his kicks out of dressing-up like a feral animal and beating-up the bad guys, would you date a "regular, real" girl? You're filthy rich, immensely powerful, and can basically have any girl you want. Now what?

Of course! You are so deep and the constant exposure to the worst the world has to offer has made you so sensitive that you rush home, night after night, and read Thoreau before crying yourself to sleep. Then you go to the hottest parties around town and scope-out the fat chick wallflowers with the Coke bottle glasses and Invisalign braces. Not only because they embody that stereotypical "real" womanness you and Botticelli so admire, but also because, years ago, you pledged to fight unchecked acne, no matter where - nor whom - it may strike.

Whoa there, lesbian comics creators! That's my ashcan. (Gary Groth, take note! I want my own issue of TCJ!)

Face it, people: this is what superhero comic books are all about.

Of course Vicki Vale has a "fine ass." I wouldn't have it any other way! Face it: even the flawed superhero girlfriends are hotter than a $3 Mexican pistol in an Arizona pawnshop and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's just a tenet of the genre on the one hand; on the other, it makes more than perfect sense: even Brad Pitt "traded up," ladies.

For the last decade or so, these neuvo "pop-culturalists" have been trying to strip every facet of the superhero away to make them more "relatable." Ironically, they claim to be doing so in order to "make them more human" - and they really aren't human to begin with! It's ridiculous.

Take away the tights and they're just belligerent bad-asses imposing their will on lesser people - basically, fascists. Take away the muscles and we'd have to sit through panel after panel of solilioquies in thought balloons, as they catch their breath between punches (you can always read Alan Moore comics for that). Take away the superhot girlfriends and they become... fanboys.

Obviously, I'm being facetious with a lot of this, but the point remains the same:

Superhero comic books are fantasy material, and whether they are aimed at angst-ridden teens and tweens or adults, what many women (and a lot of pussified "men" who would desperately like to have sex with those women) have yet to grasp is that we readers know this.

We no more see a panel of Vicki Vale's ass as anything more than eye-candy than we do a panel of Batman swinging across Gotham on a Batarang grappling hook as - you know, somewhat implausible. We're certainly not going to rush right out and treat women like "objects" because of a comic book panel anymore than we're going to throw a towel around our necks and try swinging around town by a bungee cord!

The fact of the matter is the jejune amongst the readers are those of you who think the rest of us are so ignorant that we do. You are actual fascists who are trying your damnedest to tell us all what and how we should feel about these things, and literally damning us if we do not. Worse, you are doing all you can to change the entire industry to see things your way.

So what if musclebound guys in tights reeks of homosexuality? So what if really hot chicks in skimpy clothing reeks of... sex, too? A lot of teen angst revolves around sex across the spectrum - a lot of adult life does, too! If you want to really change all of this, then I'm with you 100% - I personally think at least 95% of America is obsessed with sex and 98% of them are really, really (spectacularly) bad at it - but this whole stream of thought is about as highschool as you can get.

Guys like sex. There's really nothing wrong with that. Get over it.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008