Old Man Yells at Cloud: Comics Edition - My S(w)ole Complaint with Mainstream Comics
- Eric Halliday
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I'm going to make something very clear right out the gate because I don't want any of you getting the wrong idea, this is NOT an article against female characters in comics. And I'm not trying to yuck people's yum. But I need to vent for a second and you have the power to close this tab if you don't wanna hear me out but...hear me out.
This article, is actually inspired my Marvel Snap's art, but it covers comics in general. This came about because of my girl Magik from Marvel's X-Men. Her real name is Illyanna Rasputin and she's an absolute badass.
When Illyanna isn't spending time as an X-Men she's doing fun side projects like...you know...being the Queen of Limbo (Marvel's Hell). In addition to being able to do magic and teleport she has a sword bigger than she is that she uses in combat...combat being her go to problem solving device.
And she can do this because strong as fuck. It's not her mutant power. She doesn't have super human strength, she just fights a lot, worked on a farm as a child, and swings a sword the size of a fucking tractor to fight.
And yet, when Marvel Snap comes out with a new card for her, it looks like this one that just came out:
And it's not just this new one, here's a couple other ones of Magik's MANY variants:
This woman fights demons, swings a sword that would make Cloud Strike collapse and runs Hell, and yet she's constantly given that "going out to celebrate my first year of yoga with a Fro-yo" ass body.
And it's like that in the comic too with her having that mid-life cycling classes energy.
Like, I get it, gooners gonna goon and goon bait helps sell comics but come on. X-Men got Jean Grey, Pixie, and a whole bunch of other female characters who couldn't start and finish a bar fight.
And it's not just her. Look at She Hulk. Jennifer Walter's received a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner (The Hulk). Afterwards Jenn found out that she had the ability to turn into the green skinned She-Hulk with her main power being...muscles. That's her power. She becomes incredibly strong and...please note: INCREDIBLY MUSCULAR. That's literally what her powers are supposed to be.
And yet. AND YET. When she's showing up in the comics, more often than not she looks like this:
Like, gang, muscular isn't under the theasaurus next to the word "thicc". Her powers are LITERALLY "grows muscles". Where? Weirdly, all they ever seem to make larger are her height and her breasts and...I got some bad news for people who haven't seen a female body building contest but that is NOT what gets bigger, gang.
And Marvel's not the only one. Like, I'll give Wonder Woman a free pass because she's literally made of clay. You can't really bulk up clay. But let's look at Grace Choi. Grace is a DC badass and left Amazon island to be the coolest bouncer slash adventurer ever.
Her whole thing is invulnerability and, more than that, strength. When she debuted she was ripped as hell. A metaphorical brick house with steel support beams. But more recently, when she shows up she just looks more like she took a couple rock climbing courses.
Like she's still up to strong girl shit, but she got those "free weights for a month" arm bumps.
Listen. Again. I get it. Some of you are straight up gooners and, inevitability you're going to ruin whatever run of whatever comic I'm reading. Even the best "Birds of Prey" trade paperback will prove that when after a really good run they all decide (via a new artist) to put on high heels and bikinis and go to the pool. I get it.
But if there character's who thing is strength, let them be strong. If you can't draw a strong woman, maybe don't draw a strong woman. And for god's sake, if your character is a woman that's super strong and she looks weaker than Cyclops, please go.
Especially when y'all over here drawing Cyclops like he doesn't solve his problems from a distance with pew pews but still make his dumb ass look like this:
