Race + Comics Notes: The Missing Women Of Marvel

June 28th, 2010 by Arturo

Blonde Phantom: Golden Age representative.

Spider-Girl (third from the left, bottom row): Homegirl’s had more series canceled than Joss Whedon.

Valkyrie: Formerly dead. Now part of Marvel’s heavily-promoted Secret Avengers book. Actually, looking across Marvel’s “Heroic Age” line of books, the only women of color featured are some trainees in Avengers Academy – unless Shuri gets promoted, “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” looks like an even more exclusive club than Marvel would like us to believe.

One more so-sad-it’s-funny note on these covers: they’re actually less diverse than Marvel’s past attempts to highlight its’ anniversaries. At least in these two images below, Storm had Luke Cage and/or Shuri (and, to be fair, Psylocke in one case) around to ease the potential awkwardness.

As a result, the image that’s supposed to represent a step forward for characters like Pepper ends up marking a shove to the back for way too many others.

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Posted in casting, comics, diversity | 2 comments

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  • Anonymous

    Yes, this. She was a rich, upper class English woman with political connections (her brother is/was Captain Britain) who was either surgically modified to “look” Japanese or else had her brain meats decanted into a different body. Both the way she was treated (her physical body was basically disposable) and the way her appearance was treated (exotic! sexy! fetishized! costume is just a thong and strips of cloth!) is pretty gross.