Valerie D’Orazio has an entertaining post up about Power Girl. (Via Dirk of course.)
If you want a DC comic that contains new ideas, then you buy something like Vertigo’s Air. The fact that there has to be a separate imprint for comic books with new ideas is pretty telling of how the market goes. Power Girl is going to pull in way more money than Air, though both books feature female protagonists. Power Girl is comfortingly familiar. Even criticism of Power Girl is comfortingly familiar. Where would any Power Girl-related comic be without the same complaints like a broken record regarding the way her body is drawn and her costume designed? Love her or hate her, everyone is comforted by the familiar.
Here’s my version of Power Girl: she’s living her life, wearing this boob-costume, but deep down she hates herself. But she’s afraid to change the costume because of branding issues. It’s hard enough to get ahead in the superhero biz as a woman, and there are a lot of younger superheroines around to take her place. Then one day, after binge-drinking a la “Superman III” (“Do you know who I am (snurf) I’m fucking Power Girl, that’s who! Goddammit!”), she decides to change her costume anyway and cover her boobs up. Now here is the funky part: once her boobs are covered, she becomes invisible. I mean: literally invisible. Nobody sees her anymore. Like an enchantment. At the end of the issue — or, if you want to drag it out (and you’re in mainstream comics, so you probably do), the first arc — she learns that it’s better to be who you are if who you are is well-known and everybody likes you.
As I said, I quite enjoyed the post; I like the idea of Power Girl agonizing about whether to boob window or not to boob window. And any post that mentions Carol Channing pretty much wins.
Still…there are a couple of basic assumption here that don’t parse.
Assumption #1: There is some fairly large group of people out there who are comforted by Power Girl’s familiarity.
Assumption #2: Power Girl is well known and everybody likes her.
Obviously, these two assumptions are actually one assumption, which is that anybody fucking gives a rat’s ass about mainstream super-hero comics.
I mean, yes, sure, there are people who care. There are enough people who care, even, that you can spend virtually your entire life talking only to people who care, if that’s what you want to do. You can surf from comics blog to comics blog on the net, and get into the same discussions over and over again about whether or not Power Girl should have such big boobs. There’s not even anything wrong with doing that. If you’re interested in super-heroes, you’re interested in super-heroes: there are worse vices. But, the thing is, if that’s what you’re doing, you can sometimes forget that that world of people who read or even think about mainstream comics is really, really tiny.
I mean, we’re not talking about Batman here. We’re not talking about Wolverine. We’re not even talking about Iron Man, or Wonder Woman or Storm. This is Power Girl. Compared to her, Aquaman is a superstar. She needs a stool to get up to D-list. The only notable thing about her is that you can say “D-list” in reference to her and the twelve people in the know will laugh like Beavis or Butthead.
So here’s my Power Girl story. Power Girl hates her costume. She hates it so much that she tears it off, and goes flying around the city shrieking ‘You want to see my boobs, fanboy! Here are my fucking boobs!” Five fanboys look up and say, “Wow, I’m sure going to buy that comic!” But that’s it. Everybody else in the entire world is watching a Ciara video or reading the Left Behind novels or playing City of Heroes, or whatever. Nobody cares about Power Girl. Clothed or naked, branded or un, she’s just as invisible as she ever was. And she gets cancelled and nobody gives a shit. The end.
Update: For more critic-on Power Girl-action, check out Nina Stone’s column, which includes the solid gold line, Go fly your Power Girl boobies around the world fighting evil.
I think Assumption #1 applies to readers and Assumption #2 applies in-story, in-DCU. But when you make an assumption you make an ass out of you.. and … some ption.
What you interpret as Val D’Orazio’s First Assumption is nothing more than her saying that there are enough people around who are familiar with Power Girl and like her enough to buy her solo book than an unfamiliar new Vertigo title. Which is just saying something about the size of superhero fandom in relation to the audience of other types of comic books with no reference to either as part of the general population.
What you describe as D’Orazio’s second assumption is what she sees as the attitude of (fictional) people living in the (fictional) DC universe towards Power Girl.
Your assumption that “these two assumptions are one assumption” is a non-sequitur; there is no reason to think that people in the DC Universe have to view Power Girl (for whom PG would be a well-known heroine and media celebrity) exactly the same way as people in the real world (for whom PG is merely a fictional character in a form of entertainment consumed by a minority). In the DC Universe Power Girl – like pretty much any superhero – would not be able to switch on the TV without coming on news coverage of her exploits, in our world she would be practically unknown to people who don’t read superhero comics.
I’m not sure how to break this to folks but…the invisibility story D’Orazio uses? It’s a metaphor. It’s not actually a part of continuity.
Power Girl’s boob window argument is the same as people that hate Hooters for it’s genius marketing of sexuality. I don’t think people would have as much problem with the window if it weren’t for the openly explotative shots some artist make of it. Adam’s Hughes’ variant cover for example.
What’s the genius part of Hooters? I guess the chain must have some sort of special angle or else it would face more competition. But from what I hear the gimmick is just braless young women serving guy comfort food.
How can you draw PG’s costume w/out being exploitative? The costume’s point would seem to be exploitation. There might be degrees of exploitation involved, but draw her and you’re drawing someone who goes all day every day with her breasts hanging out.
Not sure whether your contention that “it’s a metaphor” gives you the right to dress D’Orazio down for something she in my considered opinion did not actually mean. Also, the mere fact that superhero comic-book readers form a small minority of the total population would not change that how much readers get to see of her breasts could make a difference between her title being economically viable or not (otherwise DC would not commission this kind of cover in the first place).
And BTW, won’t those five fanboys you mention in your scenario already have seen all the naked Power Girl they wanted on the internet for free?
Yeah, but to those five fanboys, the naked Power Girl pictures don’t count since they’re not in continuity.
I didn’t dress her down, for Christ’s sake. I said I liked the post. Over and over I said I liked the post.
My point about the metaphor was that she doesn’t mean what you think she means. D’orazio isn’t talking about who likes or doesn’t like PG in DCU continuity, because talking about that would be idiotic.
Doesn’t Power Girl change her costume design, like, fairly constantly? I think the costume Amanda Conner designed for her in this issue was actually different from the one she’s been wearing.
At least a couple of them have been window-less (like, the one she was wearing in JLE with the Atlantean belt buckle, I think? And she had a pretty awful yellow one with a turtleneck at one point, I think). But I saw those in back-issue bins, so they’re probably from the late ’80s…?
Yeah; you may well be right. Her powers and origin constantly change too…it’s the whole not-really-being-very-popular thing, I guess — people keep hoping that if they jiggle things a bit it’ll work.
Have you noticed it’s impossible to talk about the character without stumbling into double entendres?
Here’s how I’d do Power Girl.
I’d give her a supervillain called Dr. High Pants. He’d have an incredible brain, which he could use to save the world if not for his greatest curse. But instead of saving the world he uses his genius to build higher and higher pants for him to wear. He has to build these higher and higher pants because of his greatest shame. His greatest tragedy. His incredibly large cock. A cock so large that no matter how high he builds his pants, he can’t seem to hide it. And that’s why he hates anyone who has a smaller dick than him. Especially those lucky bastards who don’t have dicks.
But I think eventually, he and Power Girl, would fall in love because Dr. High Pants is far more complex than just being a guy with a really huge cock. He also likes his breasts big.
That’s how I’d do Power Girl.
Huh huh. You said “do.”