IDW Publishing Forums

[Sprite]

[ultramagnus1]

[Focksbot]

This is a great topic, Sprite, and both links you posted make for good viewing.

I think an interesting question with regards to Transformers is: can you conceivably write them as gender neutral, or are they always going to be a bunch of guys with a token female around? Physically, most of them are built like men, and the pronoun 'he' is the default, which means that however much we tell ourselves that they're sexless, we basically accept most of them as male characters.

I do think Fables is pretty good, as far as comics go, and so are some of the X-Men comics. What's really needed, though, is more female writers being accepted and championed in the industry, because then it will naturally bleed through to representation. It's nice that Joss Whedon, say, writes a lot of 'strong female characters', but the industry shouldn't be patting itself on the back if, a few years down the line, they have a surfeit of these strong female characters but they're all still being written by men.

On that note, I'm really looking forward to Marjorie Liu taking over X-Men. She writes the best Gambit I've read in years.
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[Sprite]

I think the comics industry suffers from several problems when it comes to the portrayal of female characters. More female writers would definitely be a start, but they won't exactly flock to the industry when a lot of the output is actively off-putting to women. Several things need to change and I think one of those things would be actively combat the persisting sexualised stereotype. Because more female imput won't help if that is still the dominant image out there.
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[Focksbot]

Yeah, I guess it's a bit chicken and egg. Start reforming the stereotypes, then more female writers will want to come on board, then HIRE them, and repeat!
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[CyclonusArmada]

Still, we have at least moved beyond this...

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[Damolisher]

To be honest, I think Japan generally did it the worst with female Transformers. Arcee basically became the Autobots' live-in Secretary/Babysitter in Headmasters, and Minerva was your stereotypical "Shy female who often needed the boys to step in for her" in Masterforce.
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[Cattleprod]

[Sprite]

That's the bunny, thanks.
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[bassbot]

Hey guys, I haven't popped in much on this thread (although on Facebook it's been great to talk about this issue with some really intelligent conversation - like here) -
but -
It's getting quite off-topic. I'd almost consider moving it to chit-chat forum (which may already have a thread like this) - but I just wanted to pop in see if people wanna keep it on track. Only because of the four pages Transformers discussion has been very limited so far, but if it continued to go deeply into Star Wars for example i'd be inclined to move it.
Cheers
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[The Father of Grain]

To keep this Transformers related:

Octane has some very good tastes in robo women
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[The Father of Grain]

[hook line and sinker]

But I have met several girls who read comics who are just fine with the women characters.

As in they never mention these types of things unless it's in some passing joke.

Maybe because they don't need to see themselves in the women on the page?
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[Urzu Six]

Every woman is different. What they take from life, from comics, whatever. I have a female friend who loves all the revealing costumes that these characters wear. How she feels about the actual characters, I'm less sure. But she take the superficial out of it and appreciates them on that level. Whereas Sprite (for example) wants more than just eye-candy from them.
It's a tricky situation. For some male and female readers alike, the costumes are part of the charm. You couldn't change Wonder Woman's costume now, because it's an icon, for better or worse. Some people would be happy to keep the costumes as they are, as long as the character inside them were stronger, and better defined. For others, the fact that the costumes/outfits are so blatantly sexualised is the root core of the problem.

It's impossible to please all of the people all of the time I suppose, but I suspect that a better job could be done than is at present.

I guess the ideal solution is to start with a character, and after you've defined the story and the part they play, then randomly decide if they're a woman, or gay, or black, or whatever. To me, in life, those have always been incidental to what makes a character work. Dreamwaves Sunstreaker was supposed to be gay, for example, but you wouldn't get that from the stories he was in. It wasn't his defining characteristic.
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[The Father of Grain]