The Gold Standard #55 – A Mission Statement And The Women Of Marvel

Columns, Site News, Top Story

I just want to lead off by saying that a lot of things have changed since I started writing this post, which could be easily seen as me being a lazy spoot (I’ve been watching a LOT of Angry Beavers on NetFlix Instant Queue) since I should be able to pound out an article like this in an hour or two, but it’s a reasonable thing for a change.

You may have noticed back in May that we started beefing up the content; starting with the news, debuting the Spoiler Warnings, adding columns, several different varities of reviews, the works! And you, our loyal readers, have been amazing. Our hits have tripled over the past two months, and despite the new readers we’re bringing in, our goal is still the same as it was when I started writing here two years ago.

To bring you the content that you, the readers, want.

Now when I started writing here it was because I was relatively directionless, but had a deep love of comics and a desire to do something with them. A good friend of mine put in a good word for me, recently returned Nexus staff writer Mike Maillaro, and our former Boss Man and Editor in Chief, Manolis Vamvounis was nice enough to give me a shot.

I started relatively strong but I got flaky, and the directionless aspect of my personality kicked back in. Motivation was hard to come by, and while I was still reading and talking about comics all of the time, I just couldn’t find the urge to put it on paper anymore. A few months ago, fellow columnist Pulse Glazer got in touch with me and said that in Manny’s absence he was being put in charge of Comicsnexus and that he wanted me to come back and write full time. Beyond that, he wanted to make the site matter, he wanted us to be a go-to site for the masses, and not just the loyal. At first I was impartial, and I started doing it as a personal favor.

Two months later I’ve found myself fully dedicated to making this site something special and important, and while maybe not as big as Newsarama, Comicbookresource, Bleedingcool, or even Comics.IGN, I still want us to be a go-to site for anything and everything comics. Insidepulse as a whole is a great website, a great community, and I’m proud to be able to contribute to it.

Which brings me to my next point, the entire reason I’m typing this prologue to my column (oddly enough as an interlude, as I’m about halfway through the actual column and stopped to write this).

I want you guys to meet the new boss, not quite the same as the old boss. After a month and a half of working under Glazer, and then half of a month of learning how to do his job, a few days ago the discussion came up with a few others on admin side of things and….I’m currently the new boss. My jobs won’t have changed too much from what I’ve been doing the past two months, but my new position does offer me a few cool things. Like being able to bring in new writers to our already awesome staff, and to be able to take a proactive stance in providing you, the readers, with the best content possible.

It’s been a fun ride, and it’s only getting better. Here’s to the future, Comics Nexus.

The Gold Standard

We now return to your irregularly scheduled programming…..

Marvel is doing their big push with girls in comics currently, filled with mini series, one shots, and even a few ongoing books. All featuring female characters, female creative teams, the works. It’s not a bad idea either, as there really isn’t a giant market in the big two for books starring strong female characters that aren’t used as T&A. DC is pretty solid with it, with Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, and the Birds of Prey, but Marvel? Marvel has Black Widow and……some minis and one shots? That’s where my problem kicks in. For as many strong female characters as Marvel has, they don’t really exist outside of intergender team books.

Ms. Marvel just wrapped up a few months ago with issue #50, and Carol has been moved back into New Avengers full time. Given the right creative team, she could be more then just a viable female character, she could be a corner stone of the Marvel Universe. It would just take the right marketing push.

She Hulk wrapped up her fourth volume last year, I believe, and given that I can’t even remember when it wrapped up should let you know what kind of a whimper it went out on. But it is also worth noting that it took four volumes to get to the one hundred issue mark, and even then it took almost twenty years. Under Dan Slott the book was a lot of fun, but it never really got a chance to truly shine before Slott was pulled off of it to do higher profile work.

Spider-Woman is a favorite of Brian Bendis, to the point where he put her on the Avengers, made her centric for Secret Invasion, all kinds of good character pushing things. He even promoted a solo series for her with art by Alex Maleev, promising us a reuniting of their creative run from Daredevil. The book was delayed, seemingly, for years, and then when it did come out it was a seven issue run. Hardly an ongoing series, hell, aside from being their first step into Motion Comics, it was an insanely forgettable run.

Arana got a twelve issue series after a run in Amazing Fantasy that went nowhere fast, in part because they failed to draw importance to the character. She existed, but she never really went anywhere. Hers was an easy book to put out and cancel with a simple “Didn’t sell, chopping block” explanation, and she was an easy character for most writers to completely ignore the existence of. Hell, I think she had more appearances in Spider-Girl then she did in the Marvel Universe proper after her cancellation. They didn’t market her well, and the writer given the title, Fiona Avery, was best known at the time for the issue of Amazing Spider-Man where Spider-Man and Loki ate hot dogs together.

Elektra has had several attempts at solo series, she’s had several centric mini series, and yet she’s never been seen as viable. She does fine in her guest spots, but they’ve never managed to create enough of a hook to maintain an ongoing series. This despite her having a crappy movie that actually managed a theatrical release.

How many female characters have Marvel tried and failed to market into a solo series? Dazzler, two previously unmentioned Spider-Women, Mystique, Emma Frost, Rogue…..wow, I didn’t even think about it until I started listing, but Marvel really seems to have all of their female eggs in the X basket….wow that sounded dirty. Maybe that’s the problem though, not the dirty part so get your minds out of the collective gutters, but that they don’t give too many female characters outside of the X umbrella a chance to shine on their own.

avengerwomen

Wasp has been around since June of 1963, and her “death” came recently in January of 2009, but during all of that time she’s lived and thrived in the Avengers titles, whether it be Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Mighty Avengers; it didn’t matter. She existed in Avengers and only in Avengers, well, not counting her debut in Tales to Astonish. She didn’t even get a self titled mini-series during her forty-five and a half year tenure at Marvel, how sad is that? Iconic female character, founder of the Avengers, and she can’t even get a mini-series to herself, not even for four issues.

Scarlet Witch had a similar run, before her heel turn during Avengers Disassembled. Debuted early on in (Uncanny) X-Men, joined the Avengers as part of Cap’s Kooky Quartet, and while she at least can claim she was on Force Works (something Jan can’t do….though would she want to?), she also has another leg up on Waspy. She had a twelve issue maxi-series once….called Vision and the Scarlet Witch. So while she was in it, and in the title, she didn’t get top billing. Not saying that it was man-centric, as I’ve never actually read it, but that isn’t a solo run. That’s like saying that Hawkeye and Mockingbird can be called a solo book for Mockingbird.

Speaking of Mockingbird! No, seriously, I’ve got nada on Bobbi as I just found out while doing research for this paragraph that she was created in 1971 and didn’t become Mockingbird until 1980, and then her death came in 1993. She spent most of her later years in West Coast Avengers alongside husband Hawkeye and was given a lot of spotlight. Though this was a time when the marketplace didn’t exactly appear (keep in mind, this is me theorizing about things that happened before I was born and before I was old enough to read) as if most characters were supporting solo titles outside of the big names, leaving most characters to live life out of team books.

So why is this not an excuse for Jan or Wanda? Or other characters that I’ve yet to go into? Because of the 90’s. Because of a time when any character that got a little bit of buzz around them was getting a mini series, and Bishop was getting them every other week. Because of whatever you want to call the past decade, when Wolverine literally was getting them every other week. Marvel displayed that they had enough of a market to pump out new ongoings and limited series based around a small handful of popular characters while pushing others to the wayside.

There was a time in the 90’s when Spider-Man had four ongoing monthly titles, FOUR. And he had an Unlimited title that hit quarterly. It was fine, they sold. Just like all of the X books, the Superman books, the Batman books; the books that were franchises. But there was a market for books, everything was selling a lot, everyone was making a lot of money, there was definite ability to toy around and try new titles and properties out, even if just with a mini-series to test the water. It was the difference between trying and not bothering, and while tons of male characters were given one-shots, mini-series, or even failed ongoings, you just didn’t see the same treatment with the women.

Good lord this is starting to sound like a sexist rant, but it really isn’t intended to. It’s just to say that there was no real attempt at building female characters, or even a female readership outside of the one that they were getting with what they already had going. This was a problem that never really got solved, unfortunately. Sure, there were female characters, but they were the minority. DC had Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and the Birds of Prey and Marvel had…….well, I’ll get to that. Marvel only has one female solo title to ever get to the one-hundred issue mark, after all.

So I guess I should maybe get to that point instead of just beating around the bush and post the cover that broke the record for longest running female solo series in Marvel Comics history.

Tha’ts right! Grey’s talking about Spider-Girl again!

Now fun fact, that cover right is to issue #60, and the women on the cover behind May is actually done to signify the fact that all the women of Marvel are proud of her for succeeding where they failed. This issue was a milestone, not just for Spider-Girl, but for Marvel.

Want an even more fun fact? Here’s the cover for the next issue.

The book was going to be cancelled at #60. It was going to set a record, and then it was going to end. Marvel has wanted the book dead for over ten years, and while yes, the grim reaper’s axe appears to finally be doing it’s job, that doesn’t change the fact that the book held on through so many failed attempts at cancellation to becomes Marvel’s most successful female starring title.

Want to argue it? Find me another female character at Marvel who has had her own solo series for the better part of the last twelve years.

I was tempted, VERY tempted, to go on another rant about her….even if going through my archives I’m discovering that I really have not ranted too much about my girl. So that means I’ll probably need to do a big rant after her book ends.

But let’s level here, I mean, the book isn’t exactly selling stellar numbers, and it never has. It’s sold enough to stay afloat, but Marvel obviously wants bigger numbers if the book has “Spider” in the title. Sure, they could market it, but then they’ve have to acknowledge that there is a continuity where Peter and MJ aren’t only married, but have a teenage daughter with spider powers that wears Ben Reilly’s outfit, and occasionally teams up with her uncle Kaine.

Spider-Girl is for those of us who loved how Spidey was in the 90’s, and no, I don’t mean for those who loved the Clone Sage (though it helps), but for people who loved the writing style that was used for most of that decade. The kind of book where you can pick up any random issue and be able to get a feel for what’s going on. Sure, the Clone Saga was convoluted, but how many readers came on mid arc and stuck with it? Spider-Girl was that kind of a book.

It was the definition of new reader friendly, even if it did require an alternate reality where Peter Parker’s daughter didn’t get abducted and retconned. DeFalco had a style down for the book where you were reintroduced to the characters everytime you picked up an issue, and it didn’t get irritating if you were a long time reader, it was just part of the charm.

But no, I’m not going to gush about my May right now. I’m just going to point out that it ran for twelve years. It went a hundred issues in the first run, and aside from a fill-in issue by Sean McKeever, Tom DeFalco wrote the entire thing. How many artists? Well, aside from that fill-in issue, and I could be wrong (correct me if I am!), there were two. Pat Olliffe and Ron Frenz, two top notch artists who made this book stand out. This book had a level of consistency that Ultimate Spider-Man could learn from, and it showed us time and time again that you can have teenage characters in a book of this variety without having to token them. Even better, it showed that you could juggle the school life and superhero life of a teenage character without short changing either, as DeFalco managed to give you enough of both to be happy.

What kind of crap is Marvel preparing to push down our throats? Let’s take a look.

Her-Oes.

High school equals: bad cafeteria food, bullies, gym class and…people with secret super powers? As if!! Janet Van Dyne’s no stranger to the pitfalls of teenage living, but it’s about to get a whole lot trickier now that she has powers of her own. It’s hard keeping a secret like that in high school, especially when it would be so easy to send some blasts in the direction of her nemesis and popular ice queen, Namora. Maybe Janet would get a break then. Too bad she’s stuck pretending she’s normal. Too bad she’s in this all alone… or is she? Jenny Walters has some anger issues herself, causing her to Hulk out! Turns out the school theatre isn’t the only place you’ll find some drama this year!!

Is it old news? The last issue comes out this month. Do I have a point? Yes.

Aside from this and another mini that wrapped last month, the Girl Comics, or Female Reader Initiaitve, or whatever the hell you want to call it has been a random assortment of one-shots thrown out about anyone that may be buzz worthy.

But wait, didn’t Black Widow get an ongoing series? Didn’t that almost always prominent character in the Avengers, or Captain America, or Iron Man, or Daredevil, or Wolverine, or any book she wants to appear in because the character can appear in all of them get her own book? Widow is a character I was amazed didn’t already have a book, and her current relationship with James “Captain America” Barnes only increases her profile.

X-23 is getting an ongoing in a month or two as well, but again, this isn’t a comic for girls, this is a continuation of everything else that has been going on with the character, and it will be marketed as such. And given that the character has been an assassin, a hooker, and a mutant assassin I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that she’s still aimed at the X-Force audience that she has been drawing the last couple of years.

But when you think of top name Marvel women, are Black Widow and X-23 who you think of? Actually, better question, who do you think of?

I think of Ms. Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Wasp, She Hulk, Storm, Invisible Woman, and Kitty Pryde.

At least two of them could support a book right now just on name value, and if you put a name brand writer on the book it would do even better. And push it to keep coming, don’t give it the twelve issue book.

And I hate to say this, I really hate to say this, but let’s see them do it with….

Spider-Girl.

About halfway through writing this column is when I first heard that Spider-Girl was being cancelled so that Marvel could give the name to another character, and it angered the hell out of me. I mean, I’ve seen legacies handed down at the wrong times, and I lived through Green Lantern Rebirth and the loss of Kyle Rayner having a solo title, but this one bothered me.

Arana

In large part because the new Spider-Girl is Arana, Arana who could be marketable as Arana had Marvel ever bothered to give her a marketing push that wasn’t “She’s latina!”, because when that’s your selling point, your only selling point, it isn’t going to sell. Had they put a bit more effort into it, or better yet, let her book keep going past twelve issues and maybe had some name brand guest stars, or even a crossover with Young Avengers or Runaways, then maybe it would have sold. They didn’t try, I mean, their version of trying was giving her a solo title spinning out of Amazing Fantasy.

So now their method of choice is rename her Spider-Girl, give her Julia Carpenter’s costume, strip her of all of her powers, and somehow make her more like Spider-Man.

I’m sorry, where’s Arana? Where’s the original character that was being worked on?

I saw her in the Nomad backups in Captain America, she had her old costume and powers. Then all of the sudden she was in Young Allies with the new costume and no powers. And then the Grim Hunt, where she got the new costume, didn’t take away her powers! And better then that, she refused to be called Spider-Girl!

SO WHERE THE HELL IS ARANA?!

Look what DC did with Batgirl, they took an established character in Stephanie “Spoiler” Brown, and they had her replace fan-favorite Cassandra “Batgirl” Cain. They had a story reason for the mantle being moved, and then they went ahead and built Steph up into the role. The first year just ended, issue twelve, the chopping point for a lot of Marvel books (if they make it past issue five), and not only does she feel like Batgirl, but the second year is ready to go. They let the writer have a long term plan to write his book, to create a fanbase for this new version of a character, and it’s working.

Supergirl is up in the fifties right now and it has grown into a solid title despite the early years being almost completely unreadable. Sure, the Super makes it easier to sell, just like the Bat does in Batgirl, but all it takes is a little bit of effort to make a character interesting to the readers. Does Supergirl sell just by being Supergirl? Sure, but it sells even better when the quality of the title is up.

DC gave Manhunter an extended chance, even when it was on the brink of cancellation, and while yes, the book eventually was canned, the character was moved to Gotham and put into Streets of Gotham as the backup story. Despite the book being unable to maintain sales to warrant an ongoing series they kept trying to build intrest in her.

The last time Marvel tried to generate intrest in a character it was Pixie and people wound up getting annoyed pretty much immediately. I say this as someone who likes the character, but she isn’t the next Kitty Pryde, and trying to get us to think she is will just cause the same level of resentment Jubilee gets from some fans.

I’m going to wrap this before I get too off topic, but my point, above all else, is that if Marvel wants to bring in the female readers then they don’t need to force feed us female characters, or books that would make Archie Comics hang their head in shame. They just need solid creative teams on books featuring any number of their female characters and then they need to support them. Don’t give up on it after five, six, or twelve issues; commit to twenty-four, thirty, even fifty. Give fans a chance to settle in and grow used to a character they might not be with it, just like what was done with Ms. Marvel a few years ago.

Maybe this time try it with Storm, as her status change to the Queen of Wakanda took her somewhat off of the buzz worthy list. Show us what her life is like now, have her go back and forth between Wakanda and the X-Men, create new conflicts in her life. Create a rogues gallery for her, I mean, she’s a Goddess in Africa, you could create new villains from there. There are any number of things that could be done with the character, who has a built in popularity that hasn’t diminishd throughout her career. Give her a shot.

Bring back Ms. Marvel! Maybe not with Brian Reed at the helm, but give Carol a new title. It’s the Heroic Age, and she’s the only character you’ve got named after your company, AND she’s an Avenger. Take full advantage of this! Carol Danvers is money in the right hands; someone like Jon Hickman, Brian Bendis, Matt Fraction, or even Marjorie Liu.

rogue

How about spinning a Rogue solo title by Mike Carey out of X-Men: Legacy and either letting him shift the focus of the book to another character or passing the book to someone else? When he came on board with X-Men before Messiah Complex he started a process that has culminated with Legacy. He has done the unthinkable….Mike Carey has made Rogue….INTERESTING! I know, I’m going to get flak for that, but I dreaded her in any title for years and he finally has me liking her. And I mean, if Wolverine can support three solo books, there is room for a Rogue book that the reader is made to understand is important. Something that does tie directly into the X cannon, possibly even featuring the students, or even Hope given their current relationship.

New titles are hard, I know, everyone is afraid to jump on with something new for any number of reasons. Not sure it’s going to be any good, it’s just going to get cancelled, what’s the point it’s never going to get mentioned anywhere else, etc. So fix those. Get a quality creative team together, tell them to plan on nothing less than twelve issues, and then make the characters exist in the larger universe. Give the reader a reason to care and you will cultivate the readership.

Guys, girls, when you read it’s all the same. You just want to read something good that you enjoy, and when it comes to a comic you find a lot more enjoyment when you know that it’s going to be around in a month, and in two months, and in six, and in a year. It’s so hard to be a fan of something that you know has no chance because you get so invested in what’s going on only for everything to just have to….end, generally suddenly.

Nobody wants to see their favorite book get cancelled. But everybody wants a chance to add another title to their favorites list. Even if the book is about a girl.

Think about it.

The Gold Standard

Grey Scherl is the Head Editor at www.ComicsNexus.com, as well as a Staff Writer for www.PulseWrestling.com. You can follow him on http://twitter.com/GreyScherl for updates on all of his News and Columns, or e-mail boostergrey@gmail.com with any questions or comments. He is also not normally this bitter, but he is a very big Spider-Girl fan and is currently feeling hurt on a deep and personal level. Yes, he’s not ashamed to admit that, real men can like girls in comics too. He also likes his Birds of Prey, which is getting a cheap plug here in the end. Why? Because for some reason you’re still reading. Have a great day.

A lifelong reader and self proclaimed continuity guru, Grey is the Editor in Chief of Comics Nexus. Known for his love of Booster Gold, Spider-Girl (the real one), Stephanie Brown, and The Boys. Don't miss The Gold Standard.