Ideas.
The idea of my practical element from from the start was to re-design
comic characters to not be sexist. I considered the idea of drawing the
men with outfits as revealing as women, like this work to the left and right, by Anna
called: If Male Superhero Costumes were Designed Like Female Superhero
Costumes!
The issue with this, similar to 'The Hawkeye Initiative' is that making characters look comedic and silly doesn't solve the issue. In my opinion, it would be more effective to show an alternative way for comics to remove sexism, such as make the women less sexist.
The quotes from my dissertation that enforced this idea was quotes like William Marston saying "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetypes lack force, strength and power." Also quotes from Luara Mulvey such as "As long as the alpha female is 'still female' (read: counts hetrosexual-appeal among her most powerful weapons), she safely remains an object of entertainment for the traditional male viewer" and "The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact." Some of these quotes are meant to be a critique of hollywood films, but they to me seem to be even more relevant to comics, (I would say American comics, but arguably Japanese comics can be worse). Quotes like these I found when researching my dissertation made me realise that comic need to be more ethical, realistic and stop sexualising women all the time, and it would benefit the industry too, as they would gain a larger female audience possibly increasing their sales by up to 50%.
So I began to choose which characters I should re-invent. One thing was certain - I wanted to re-design female characters. There is no point in making male characters sexualised, as it one only evoke the same outcry and there already numerous examples such as stated above and Ellu Kaska's cosmopolitan avenger pieces, which I saw at London MCM Comic Con.
So I knew I wanted to re-design female superheroes. Which ones was the first problem. Wonder Woman and Super-girl were immediate choices. Wonder Woman, because as I found in my dissertation, she is seen as this feminist icon, as Janelle Asselin said "Wonder Woman as a feminist icon is so imprinted in her history and in analysis of the character, that separating her from feminism should be near impossible" (a quote in my dissertation) and was invented to be a character just a strong and powerful as men, and she has been reduced over the years to wearing a thong in the 90's. Supergirl was a choice as she was invented as an answer to the comics code authority, and as comics broke out of the comics code authority she too became more and more sexualised until she wore a crop top and miniskirt when Michael Turner re-designed her, which Mike Mandrid argues is the development of the character being based off popstars like Brittney Spears, who had recently released 'Hit me baby one more time'.
So I had two characters. The next idea was Catwoman, but though she has been very sexualised in the past, such as wearing even less in Halley Berry's Catwoman film, Anna Hathaway's portrayal in The Dark Knight Rises was not really sexualised and the costume, though tight, was not revealing. So she had already been redesigned to to have a functional costume (in the idea that her 'ears' were just her night vision goggles on her head that happened to look like ears) and a non sexist version of the character existed in popular media, so I discarded her as an option.
One idea that sprung to mind was Poison Ivy. She is nearly always sexualised, wearing very little and very flirtatious, in the Arkham game series all she wears is a loose top. Also, and interesting point I thought about was how male plant characters are anthropomorphic, and monster like- such as Swap Thing, Man Thing, and Groot. Even Lord of the Rings's TreeBeard. Poison Ivy is the only female of this selection and also the only one who looks human, and also the only one who is often sexualised. So she too seemed like a good candidate.
The last option as I thought, no character sprung to mind, as usually characters have a design where they aren't sexualised. I thought about Powergirl, but in New 52 comics writers did give her a non sexist costume without her cut-out breast window to reveal her cleavage, but there was such an outcry by fans they quickly changed the costume back to being the sexist one. So I decided to try and find the most outrageously sexist character in comics, and work on her. And boy did I find her. Her name is Star Fire, and she barley wears anything. A reason for this is often tried to written in to comics but the reason is obvious, that's what male artist like to draw and what male audiences like to see. Though it would be a challenge, I decided she would be my next character.
Looking at these collection of heroes, all are DC characters. And only Poison Ivy was a villain. So I thought about the possibility of these characters being in the same story, maybe even a team. But why would Poison Ivy work for good? Well, the only thing she truly cares about is plant life, so if she fought for plant life and their safety it would make sense in a modern comic for her to fight for the earth and against things like de-forestation, if she was to be a hero. Then I had an idea. what if this team fought for earth, and not just America. They could be a Justice League for Earth, and not a Justice League of America. Wonder Woman would fit into this role, as her original intention was to fight for women rights on earth, another injustice that appears frequently around the world. Supergirl, like Superman, is meant to be a symbol of hope that mankind can strive to be more like, and ideal to unite mankind. And like in the recent Superman film 'Man of Steel' Kyrpton was destroyed because the Kryptonians used and exhausted all the planets natural resources, so a character like Supergirl could arrive on earth to stop the same happening to our planet, which would give her a reason for being on this team, and an idea Poison Ivy could get behind. The last character, Star Fire, is from the Planet Tamaran in the Vegan system, which was a beautiful paradise which valued peace and tranquility. She lands on earth after a series of wars burn her home planet and she flees after being captured and betrayed by her sister. She would have the least reason to reside on this team, other than having a hatred for war and seeing what it can do, she would join a team that fights to keep the natural earth safe and defends it from supervillians and alien invasions. This team would fight true evils such as the destruction of our natural world, protecting all life including animals, inequality, and occasionlly extressital threats if the audience wants more sci-fi action(as there often are in DC titles). But defeadning the earth would still fit into this teams main mission.
When actually creating these re-imagined characters, I hope to do so similarly to keep the recognisable features of the original while still changing the character's look, similarly to how batman has changed over the years but always had the cape, ears, a logo on his chest and had a similar colour pallet. There are the following examples below of re-designed characters and costumes below that I feel capture the essence of the character while still being different. If anything, I hope to challenge this further, or as far as necessary. The best example, I feel, is the second image down of Ms/ Captain Marvel's new costume.
