Moore Girls (Female Characters Roundtable 1b)

After I wrote this post about Laurie Juspeczyk, I got to thinking about Alan Moore and female characters more generally. And it occurred to me — is there a male writer in any genre out there who has written about such a diversity of female characters, and with such thoughtfulness, as Moore has? From army grunts to policewomen to monster-lovers to cavewomen to spies to cab drivers to mystic saviors… I’m sure there are people out there who have a comparable record, but examples don’t exactly leap to mind. (Jack Hill, maybe…though his career was so short he didn’t really get a chance to compile a comparable record. Charles Schulz in his way, perhaps.)

It would be one thing if it were just the main characters — Halo Jones, Laurie, Abby, the women in From Hell, Promethea, Evie, and on and on. But the thing about Moore is that more often than not he’s got a whole cast of female characters in each work. Virtually every character in Halo Jones is a woman; you can only see Laurie as the token women in Watchmen if you ignore her mother, and Joey, and Joey’s girlfriend, and the Comedian’s Vietnamese girlfriend, and the Silhouette. Top 10 has a ton of major female characters, from lesbian cops on the prowl to conservative Christian cops to the main baddy of the original series. Even “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” — there’s Lois, but there’s also Lana, who actually gets to sacrifice herself to save Superman, a nice, and even moving reversal.

Not that every female character is brilliant, and he’s perfectly capable of stumbling over the odd misogynist trope or stereotype. Shooting Batgirl in the stomach to add to her dad’s angst was a low point, (and one Moore has since expressed regret about, I believe.) And the more erotic stuff he’s done in recent years hasn’t worked out especially well; Mina Harker could have been a lot more interesting if Moore hadn’t gotten obsessed with having her screw and screw and screw…and the less said about Lost Girls maybe the better. But when you look at his work as a whole, you really get the sense of someone who respects and cares about women. He doesn’t idealize them, he doesn’t turn them into guys, he doesn’t constantly point out how clever he’s being in treating them like people (as Brian K. Vaughn is prone to do.) Instead, he just has all these really interesting, complicated, fallible people, who can surprise you and themselves (as the bitter, tough-as-nails Sally does in loving Eddie Blake, for example, or as the noble Halo Jones does in coldly murdering her lover.)

Of course, women write intelligent, rounded male characters all the time, so it is somewhat grading on a curve, I know. But with that caveat, I’ll admit it; I find Moore’s willingness and ability to not write women like idiots kind of inspiring. It’s like he’s single-handedly trying to prove that American (and or British, I guess) comics by men don’t have to be synonymous with misogynist douchebaggery. Maybe he doesn’t always succeed, but, as a guy who spends way too much time thinking about comics, I really appreciate the effort.

Update: Several folks in comments point out that my sweeping condemnations are too sweeping, citing the Hernandez Brothers, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison as other male writers who have created a range of interesting female characters. I’ll accept that..

19 thoughts on “Moore Girls (Female Characters Roundtable 1b)

  1. There’s an old issue of SWAMP THING that reveals, in the letters column, that the psychological abuse of Liz is based on something that happened to one of Moore’s own relatives. A few years earlier, Moore got a daughter.

    Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but when I look at female battery in Moore’s work, I really see an honest, sometimes anguished attempt to grapple with the issue. This is most pronounced with Liz in SWAMP THING and Laurie in WATCHMEN, but it also shows up in Mina’s attempt to cope with the physical and emotional scars left by Dracula, and, yes, although it’s a bit rushed, even in THE KILLING JOKE.

    Barbara Gordon is clearly traumatized by the Joker’s treatment, which is even more brutal than the Comedian’s, but in her final scene she almost immediately switches from worrying about herself to worrying about her father, and trying to use her mind to divine the Joker’s intentions, foreshadowing one of the themes of the story: that people do not always break, that it is possible to cling to sanity even in the face of horror.

    Contrast this with any of the Women-in-Refrigerators stuff of the last fifteen years, and it looks pretty uplifting. Green Lantern’s Alex, Sue Dibny in IDENTITY CRISIS, the Savage Dragon’s first girlfriend– all of these aren’t really characters, only victims.

    The only “mainstream” writer I’m seeing who approaches the issue with something like the sensitivity it deserves is Gail Simone in recent issues of WONDER WOMAN. The violence there is female-on-female, and some of its effects are exaggerated by fantasy elements, but those effects still feel grounded in the real world to me, rather than in “Hey, remember how shocking it was when…?”

  2. Gaiman is pretty good with women too. Rose, esp., from “The Doll’s House” sticks out in my mind…but also Lyta Hall, Calliope, Element Girl, Delirium, Death, etc. etc.

    Grant Morrison doesn’t do too poorly either, at least early on (Ellen Baker and Maxine, Crazy Jane)–the later stuff is more hit and miss with women, I think.

    I guess Los Bros Hernandez don’t qualify as mainstream comics, but, of course, they have a wide variety of “human” women–

    Moore is not alone…but it’s definitely a strong suit of his.

  3. Yeah, I probably went a bit too far out on the limb, there. The Hernandez Brothers are a good counter-example. I have mixed feelings about Gaiman, but I’d need to reread some of his stuff to really see what I think. Grant Morrison is pretty iffy; and you’ve got to lose points for the Mary Marvel nonsense.

  4. Whether you like Gaiman’s work or not, I do think he makes an effort to create fully rounded female characters.

    Morrison’s a good example too. Particularly in books like The Bulleteer, but also with Buddy’s wife in Animal Man, Crazy Jane in Doom Patrol, etc.

  5. As I said, I haven’t read those Gaiman books in a while…but Sandman does have a lot of interesting women characters, in retrospect. I liked the witch a lot, actually (can’t remember her name….) Oh, and I really liked his handling of Zatanna in Books of Magic. I thought that was nicely done.

    Buddy’s wife isn’t an especially interesting character overall, I don’t think — strong suburban mom is pretty stock sitcom (not that it’s done offensively or especially badly; it’s just I don’t see giving him tons of points for it.)

    I’ve liked some of Morrison’s female characters: Dorothy in Doom Patrol, for example; I thought he had a nice take on Emma Frost in X-Men; Lord Fanny in the invisibles. He hasn’t centered a series around a woman that I’m aware of…but then, that’s a pretty high bar, I guess. (I havne’t read the Bulleteer.)

    Overall, I’m probably just feeling sour on Morrison because I’ve been thinking about Wonder Woman, and his handling of her in the JLA had some very dicey moments which irritated me. But, yeah, I don’t think he’s that bad overall.

  6. Morrison didn’t perpetrate the Mary Marvel business, as far as I know. I think it originated in Countdown (which Morrison was not involved in), or maybe 52 (which he was). I don’t think he’s the perpetrator. He did use the ‘black” Mary Marvel in Final Crisis though. I suppose he could have just “undone” it somehow, which would have been preferable.

  7. Lord Fanny is actually a male transvestite, so he probably doesn’t count as a genuine female character.

  8. Evil Mary was very much Morrison’s idea. Everything from Countdown was (badly) reverse-engineered from Morrison’s plans for Final Crisis. Although Morrison’s treatment of the character does stack up favorably to what Countdown did with her: While Morrison at least had the decency to blame it all on possession by an evil god, the Countdown crew had Mary go through a whole redemption arc, then right at the end have her consciously decide that she preferred being evil.

    I read an interview with Morrison on Final Crisis where he talked about how Supergirl would have the ultimate battle with Mary Marvel for how women in superhero comics should be portrayed, and cited a very nice little Supergirl/Mary Marvel story by Jessica Abel and Dylan Horrocks as his main inspiration for his Supergirl. This got me very interested to see their fight, but it sadly boiled down to some punching, Supergirl getting angry that Mary called her a slut, then her refusing to kill her opponent. Can’t help but feel there was a lot left on the cutting room floor that might have given Mary’s role in the comic more of a point.

    Bulleteer was an excellent little mini, though. It’s the only time I’ve seen a writer use his artist’s cheesecake work ironically. In fact, I’d say overall Morrison handled his female characters rather well in Seven Soldiers. Shining Knight was a particularly nice subversion of the general depiction of female characters in superhero comics.

    I think the only other thing he’s written that really centered on a female main character was Kill Your Boyfriend, which was Morrison writing a straight up exploitation comic.

  9. I haven’t read Seven Soldiers, haven’t been able to bring myself to read Final Crisis. I read Kill Your Boyfriend a while ago, but don’t really remember it, alas.

    And, yeah, I believe Lord Fanny identifies as a woman.

  10. Well, evil Mary was a bad idea from its inception…so now I can blame Grant Morrison. Bulleteer was ok…but Zatanna was better

  11. Gaiman is pretty good with women too. Rose, esp., from “The Doll’s House” sticks out in my mind…but also Lyta Hall, Calliope, Element Girl, Delirium, Death, etc. etc.

    I kind of disagree about that. IMO he’s done a couple of good female characters (Element Girl, for example), and a couple more with decent schtick (Death, Thessaly), but his female leads tend to be hard to tell apart, at least in the Sandman series. For instance, what’s her name, Rose Hunter, or that other one, Barbie. They struck me as placeholders for the imagined Vertigo reader.

    But his men aren’t all that great either, except when it comes to schtick.

  12. My biggest problem with Gaiman’s character work is his (mis-handling) of queer characters — particularly in Sandman, a series I quite like, all in all. It was like he was physically incapable of writing a queer character who didn’t sleep with the opposite gender, or want to sleep with the opposite gender, or dream of sleeping with the opposite gender…

    Sure, gender identity and sexual orientation can be fertile ground for dramatic character internal conflict, but Gaiman came off as practically obsessed, how often it happened with his queer Sandman characters. And where were all the straight Sandman characters he shoved into bed with members of the same sex? Oh, right… there weren’t any (if I recall correctly). So, apparently these kind of issues only travel in one direction, in Gaiman’s world.

    Other than this issue (which happened with significant Sandman characters of both genders), I’ve pretty much liked most of Gaiman’s female characters.

    Matthew

  13. It’s funny, because Gaiman considers himself so right-on about gender and orientation issues. I remember the trade of Game of You had an intro by Samuel Delany that struck me as an elaborate exercise in irony, with Delany taking all off the bien-pensant, gay-friendly elements in the story and acting as if Gaiman meant them as a satire of uncomprehending liberal condescension.

    On the other hand … I can think of only one Sandman gay who gets it on with the opposite sex, and that’s the plump girl in Game of You. Who are the others? Fox, in that same story, is always gay, so is the crossdressing fellow, and the other crossdressing fellow (in Doll House), I believe.

  14. I really love A Game of You — my favorite Sandman arc. Lovely, sad meditation on identity and self-definition. I don’t think that Gaiman can do no good, but this one aspect of how he’s handled queer characters sticks in my craw.

    The gay/trans guy in, I thought it was A Doll’s House, dreams of sleeping with women/a women. The lesbian in the serial-killer-in-the-luncheonette sleeps with a guy. Luckily, there just weren’t *too* many queer Sandman characters, anyway.

    Matthew

  15. ” It was like he was physically incapable of writing a queer character who didn’t sleep with the opposite gender, or want to sleep with the opposite gender, or dream of sleeping with the opposite gender…”

    I´m going to act as devils advocate Many queer persons actually sleep or try to sleep with people with the opposite sex in real life, for various reasons going from not being completely sure of what their gender preferences are to wanting to have a baby as they can’t adopt or just pure curiosity. Also he has written queer characters that don’t act like this. As somebody said early foxglove is completely sure she is a lesbian since childhood, as she comments on the “The time of your life” volume. Hal doesn’t seem to be interested sexually in women, neither Zelda of the spider women, and I’m sure there are more.

  16. Jeez, I was gonna get into this conversation but then you guys went all fan-boy on me. I guess I need to keep up with more “mainstream” comics as I have no idea what you are talking about with the Morrison stuff. When it comes to zupahero comics I only read the trades that make it to my local library. That being said, they do have the full Sandman series there and I recently reread it after some ten years (has it really been that long?).
    IMO, Gaiman never writes people, they are more like leitmotif’s, recurring melodies which alert the audience to the character’s entrance. They come on, sing their song and leave after having their say. I don’t see any difference in his treatment of male/female/straight/gay as they are all there just to advance the story to the point where Gaiman can wrap everything up and we can all coo over him for being such a clever boy.
    But enough about my problems with Neil Gaiman.
    “the less said about Lost Girls maybe the better”
    Really? Because it seemed to me to be an honest attempt to bring the implied sex in comics to the fore. Lost girls is never sexy like porn. Like it was designed to make the viewer uncomfortable and more than a little guilty. Still, it’s not exactly “mainstream”, is it? So moving on …
    Moore does write good women, complicated, interesting women. I like the ones he’s created more than the ones he’s just written for though. I guess even he is constrained by the continuity needs of “mainstream” comics. How do you write a 2d zupaheroine in skintights into a 3d person anyway? You shoot her in the stomach, I guess.
    One of the problems with females in comics is the audience. Who does Marvel and DC hope to reach? Males between the ages of 15 and 25? Then why should they ever try to depict real women? Nobody is going to pick up all three versions of the hologram covered issue where Kitty Pride gets a bad case of the cramps and then can’t find a working tampon dispenser and then Wolverine makes her a nice cup of tea and watches lifetime with her are they? (actually I might …)
    Women do read comics but they are not written for women. The “mainstream” ones aren’t anyway. Wait, what about Elektra? Sure there was the obligatory physical and mental abuse but there was a lot of satisfying revenge after wasn’t there? I liked Miller’s Robin in Dark Knight Returns as well and that Security Guard lady in Ronin …

  17. I think Kitty Pryde probably did actually have some kind of female audience. Though obviously super-hero comics in general are much more aimed at men– and more so and more so as the years go by, I think.

    Your comments on Neil Gaiman are quite funny. I’m a little nervous to go back and reread Sandman, actually. I liked them a lot for many years, but I have this sinking feeling that they’re not going to hold up….

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