Review - Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker by Joe Casey (writer) and Mike Huddleston (artist)

Every now and again something comes along that reminds me why I love comics and Butcher Baker is it. Joe Casey's Wildcats 3.0 has been on my reading list for some time - still haven't got a round to it yet - so when I saw his name on this and the very provocative 'Old Liberty' posing pouch on the cover, I thought... Jesus!

Yes! I am just loving the amount of new stuff that is coming out.

Butcher Baker the hero himself is what Watchmen's The Comedian would've become if he didn't go all soft. He even sports the star on the shoulder-pads like The Comedian. Starting out as a very Captain America-type figure Butcher Baker has done his duty and now is relaxing in jaded retirement which means getting all screwed up on drugs whilst screwing a bevy of beauties. But the US government want him for that usually disastrous 'one last mission'. They send Jay Leno and Dick Cheney to persuade him to come on-board. Why those two? I suspect Casey just thinks it's kinda funny.. and it is. Very cool is that when these two bland men are in the presence of Butcher Baker they're relegated to black and white rendering while Butcher is rendered in lurid coloured glory. Butcher is tasked with blowing up 'The Crazy Keep', a prison filled with all the villains and low-lifes he put in there because 'taxpayers are fed up subsidizing three squares a day for these goddamn deviants'. Well, reminiscing about the past gets Butcher all hot and bothered, so why not? He takes on the job. Hey, it's what superheroes like himself were really created for anyway. Yet, Butcher is looking for something more - the meaning of it all. Does he find it? Not telling. Read it. I said read it!

Huddleston's art slides effortlessly between cartoon, caricature, and comic art styles. The comic art is very similar to Gabriel Ra and Fabio Moon (Cassanova), and that is in no way bad. I could look at this stuff all day. I have looked at this stuff all day. The cartoon style has the influence of classic1940s and 50s cartoon  with a helping of Ralph Bakshi on the side. A lot of effort and thought has gone into the colouring and look of each scene and panel. Flashbacks are seen through a "fuzzy lens" for example. Some art is sketchy while others such as the rendition of Butcher's Liberty Belle big rig is so line perfect it's simply awesome. This truck dominates the page. It could've turned out a mess but everything blends into a magnificent whole.

And Stippling! When was the last time I (or anyone) saw stippling in a comic?

Make no mistake, there's some explicit nudity and sex in here, so if that's not your thing then Butcher Baker isn't your thing. For everyone else, get both your buttocks to a comic shop now and demand a copy. This is goddamn fantastic.

This: Oh, yeah!
Forthcoming: Oh, oh, yeah!

Review - The Infinite Vacation #1 by Nick Spencer (writer) and Christian Ward (art)

So I've come to realise that writing a review of the first issue of a comic is a bit like writing a review of a movie after only viewing the first twenty minutes. You really aren't going to be providing much more than initial thoughts and hoping that the comic hooks you by giving you the hint of where it's going. I'm happy to say that Nick Spencer and Christian Ward's The Infinite Vacation does indeed have major hooks.

The Infinite Vacation provides several hooks to pull us into the story. First is the idea of being able to exchange life experiences for something better, even down to turning up somewhere earlier to avoid standing in a queue. If you don't like how something is panning out, just pay for a vacation where (or when) it does.

This leads our flame-haired main character Mark, to vacation on average 9.7 times per day. It's just easier for him to pay for a different reality than deal with life's little inconsistencies. Unfortunately for Mark, this strategy also doesn't seem to be working as his life just ends up the same - boring and unfulfilled. Then there's the problem that alternate versions of himself are turning up dead. That's the second hook.

And then there's the final hook in the issue: the girl. She's basically Mark's opposite- a Deadender who refuses to 'make life changes even if it means a worse existence for them'. She challenges his continual vacationing attitude. Life is all about taking your chances when they're presented.

This is a radical and original use of the multiverse/multiple universe concept and there's a lot of parallel universe jumping going on in comics right now. In fact I'd argue it's become a staple part of storytelling, for the superhero universes anyway. But in The Infinite Vacation there's no superpower needed or massive changes to the reality. It's easy - accessible through a free phone app. You can just change whatever you about your life if you've got the cash. This would seem to imply that you're able to buy your way out of, if not your whole crappy life, at least crappy parts of it. However the availability of infinite vacations - realities - doesn't change the fact that a vacationer may still engage with each reality in exactly the same way.

We are witnessing a story involving the commodification of reality. A nifty idea indeed. So the question posed is: Does this make the buyer happier or not? The answer I assume will be played out in the relationship between the Mark and the Deadender girl.

Spencer is on the rise as a writer and it's easy to see why - crisp ideas, sharp writing, and great hooks. First issues are hard to pull of but Spencer has done it. He's given a concept background on what's happening, introduced intriguing storylines, and interesting believable characters with dilemmas. For someone who was unknown two years ago, Spencer has certainly made his mark with his creator owned books (Morning Glories, Shuddertown), and looks to have nice career ahead.

A word too here about Christian Ward's art. Ward's pastel and autumnal tones, give the comic a washed out watercolour style look which reminds of David Mack's artwork, if a little less realistic in this context. The panel and page layout are excellent using standard paneling (with and without borders) and complex double page spreads evoking a wonderful sense of distortion, and confusion that is Mark's life. The range of facial expressions - for me, always the mark of really good artist - are great and convey each character's emotions brilliantly.


This: has got it's hooks into me. Excellent.
Forthcoming: Will provide me with a holiday from reality.

Review: Nancy in Hell #1 (of 4) by El Torres (writer) and Juan Hose Ryp (artist), Image Comics.

Nancy introduces herself as the "nice girl" who was supposed to kill the bad guy at the end of the horror picture. Instead she got killed and ended up in Hell. After an initial, very short, period of distress, Nancy takes to the Hell lifestyle quite well.

After setting up a nice relationship between Nancy and "the Philosopher", the bar they're in (yes, a bar in Hell) is attacked by a fellow called Mr Macabre. The Philosopher is unceremoniously whacked and Nancy takes up a chainsaw as her weapon of choice (wonder where that idea came from) to lop off some demon heads. As I said, she seems to take to the Hell lifestyle quite well.

And of course it being Hell, we have an appearance of a brooding, blonde, and buff, Beelzebub who needs Nancy's help.

Rather than the good girl gone bad, we've got the good girl gone to a bad place. Although 'good girl' is arguable as Nancy is into "Hell's Angels parties" and is dressed, ahem, provocatively. This comic reminds me of another girl gone to Hell, that being good ol' Lady Death. Seems like we're back to the bad girls of the 90s (and it's Image too!).

The Hell that Nancy's landed in though happens to look a lot like a male heterosexual fantasy. There's enough gratuitous crotch shots (starting with the cover) and implied lesbianism to fill a teenage boy's dreams for weeks. Apparently Hell doesn't cater for gays, females, or anybody else.

Why did I pick this up? Well, with a title like Nancy in Hell I was expecting something a little more tongue in cheek, but the only tongues in cheeks here are those involving girl-on-girl, action (or demon-on-girl or.. you get the picture...)

There's little on plot, but a lot of demon killing and corpse dismembering. Juan Jose Ryp's artwork is over the top, excessive, and excessively specular. 

I'm over this sort of stuff having seen a lot of it before (girl gone to Hell - Lady Death; brooding Lucifer - Linsner's Dawn, Gaiman's The Sandman, but I'm sure there's a host of 16 year-old boys who haven't and they'll no doubt have a ball with it.

This: Seen it before

Forthcoming: Not for me, thanks all the same.

Part 3 - Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics

Part 3 of 'Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics' covers how armouring the male superhero body is an attempt to elicit self-control and thereby control the feminine that is embodied in chaotic, uncontrollable and changing ‘outside forces’. I further establish how armouring the body is unworkable due to its passive mode of resistance. I describe the next step in the process to control outside forces as becoming the weapon/machine and the consequences that this can have for culture at large.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Armouring the Body

Why have ‘ideal’ male superhero bodies increased in size so dramatically? Superman had ‘the constitution, organs and abilities equal to the rigors of the Machine Age’ (Bukatman 99), but he was never so damned big and rippling with obscene amounts of muscles as these heroes. What the increasing size of the male superhero body indicates is a process of armouring.

A defining characteristic of postmodernism is the decentring of identity, of meaning being found outside of the self. Bukatman states that the bodybuilder/superhero-fantasy represents an attempt to ‘re-centre the self in the body’ (110). Stripped of signs, naked, idealised, this re-centring, armouring of the male body is an attempt to weather the postmodern storm; to re-load the body with meaning.

Simply, the times-are-a-changing and 1990s superheroes didn’t know much else to do other than to be bigger, badder, and just punch on, incarnating problematic and painfully reductive definitions of masculine power and presence’ (Bukatman 96). Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, distinctly postmodern in their own rights, had heralded the direction superhero comics would take. Image comics eschewed any type of self-reflexivity, and instead ran with the surface aspects of the dark, gritty, and violent figuring that extreme sex and violence was the natural extension from Miller and Moore. And for a time they were right. Without realising it they also produced a thoroughly postmodern response, that being that these comics were all surface and little substance. They had no meaning other than armouring the body to hypermasculine extremes against the postmodern condition.

Apart from the decentring of identity, the postmodern condition also signifies the instability of western culture due to its questioning of stereotypes, sex roles, and role models. James Maertens writes that controlling nature is ultimately ‘rooted in the desire for absolute self-control’ (191); for ‘self-control, mastery of nature and of our nature, is a defining marker of the masculine state’ (Frosh 104). Nature necessarily is equated with the female or femininity as Theweleit states – ‘male rationalist thinking repeatedly renews its demand for the oppression of women each time it calls for the subjugation of “nature”’(1987 432). Using the fascist male as an example, Theweleit describes perfectly how the state of controlling the self through armouring the body equates to control of outside forces –

Men themselves were now split into a (female) interior and a (male) exterior – the body armor. …the interior and the exterior were mortal enemies. What we see being portrayed… are the armor’s separation from, and superiority over the interior: the interior was allowed to flow, but only within the masculine boundaries… What fascism promised men was the reintegration of their hostile components under tolerable conditions, dominance of the “hostile” female elements within themselves.

A line from Superman #123 relates how Superman’s inability to control his newly acquired energy powers threatens his existence – ‘that lack of control made him more vulnerable than ever’ (Jurgens, Frenz, and Rubenstein 1997 2). Therefore control of the self and the ‘female’ interior through armouring the body conflates with controlling the feminine as nature, and other ‘uncontrollable’ outside forces such as the postmodern condition. More succinctly, it is the wish to control chaos. However this control and re-centring of the self is ultimately relegated to the realm of desire; it is unobtainable. While being armoured protects one from outside industrial shocks, it imprisons the ego which is then ‘unable to escape the barriers it has raised against a universe that can only be conceived as an enemy’ (Maertens 190). An imprisoned ego is unacceptable to the masculine ideal because armouring the body is a passive mode of resistance, a protective rather than aggressive strategy. In the midst of postmodernism, the characters with reductive definitions of masculine power, unable to ‘re-centre the self’ turn out to just be, bulging, empty, armoured, shells.


Becoming the Weapon

However all is not lost! If re-centring the self through armouring the body is passive, there’s a further step that the male can take to fight this unstable, uncontrollable enemy that is indicative of the postmodern condition: a change from armouring the body to arming it with weaponry. The body is now becoming the weapon/machine, blurring the boundary between the weapon/machine and the body. This is exemplified in Wetworks where the team is enclosed by the symbiote described as a ‘bio-metalloid compound saturated and controlled by nanotech wetware’ (Portacio & Choi Jun.1994 9). The symbiote augments the Wetworks team’s metabolic systems, and adapts and integrates weapons systems so that they function as extensions of their body (Portacio & Choi, Aug.1994 3). The idea of the body as weapon is demonstrated more explicitly from this excerpt – ‘Look at them, Colonel. Don’t you see that you and your soldiers are the perfect weapons I need to bring the vampire nation to its knees’ (Portacio & Choi Aug.1994 4). The idea is not limited to the superhero comic however as the literature of the Freikorps explicates – ‘these men were living guns’ (Schauwecker in Theweleit 1989 179); ‘was I now perhaps one with the weapon? Was I not machine– cold metal?’ (Salomon in Theweleit 1989 179); and ‘What purpose would be served by all these weapons leveled against the universe,  were they not intertwined with our nerves, were it not our blood that hissed on every axis’ (my italics)(Junger in Theweleit 1989 179). Becoming the weapon is a reaction to outside forces, and again we find the recurring motif of the universe as enemy.

As Connell argues, modern day "heroes" such as professional sportsmen are obliged ‘to treat their bodies as instruments, even as weapons’ (58) which ‘ultimately results in violence against one’s own body’ (Messner in Connell 58). But becoming the weapon gives one ‘the ability to recreate oneself into a predictable machine, one which, if it does break down, can be fixed’ (Maertens 191). The predictable body/weapon/machine aligns itself with the re-centring of the self, for predictability necessarily ensures control. This predictability and control of the self therefore translates into a control of outside forces. 

Where armouring the body failed due to the imprisonment of the ego, becoming the weapon/machine is an active mode of resistance against the postmodern universal enemy. This resistance enables the individual to act rather than react. 

The consequences for the feminine and other outside forces when the male becomes the weapon/machine is very disturbing. Becoming the weapon involves a mode of production that Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call machinic. Ideally an individual is a ‘human multiplicity-machine’. Theweleit describes the functioning of the individual as machinic thus:

by manufacturing an infinity of new associations… it is always in search of accessible connections, open pathways, unforeseen spaces, powerful flows. It couples, it uncouples; each component is functionally independent; it may function here, or… elsewhere’ (Theweleit 1989 198).

This human multiplicity-machine has the ability to produce infinite pleasures. Becoming the weapon explicitly negates the desire of the human multiplicity machine, the individual becoming a human totality machine– ‘hierarchized, functionalized, individual; the machine connections are standardized and unified, it flows liberated only if individual components overwhelm and explode’ (Theweleit 1989 198).

As weapon/machine, the human being, a ‘producer of desire’, is transformed into a muscle machine (the armoured body incorporated) that prohibits and persecutes the production of desire (Theweleit 1989 199). In turn the machine also becomes anthropomorphised. The human-

becomes an imperfect machine and the machine an imperfect human being, neither any longer capable of producing, only of expressing and propagating the horrors they have suffered. Perversely distorted, both now become destroyers; and real human beings… are the victims’ (Theweleit 1989 199).

These horrors are the bombardment of the decentring process, and the extraction and distortion of meaning from the human self. The ‘horror’ of these perceived attacks, this destabilisation that the masculine psyche has experienced, can only mean that the attacks will be violently returned against those who are seen as responsible, namely women, the feminine as nature (the environment), and other ‘outside forces’ like postmodernism. It could be argued that these attacks are demonstrated by violence against women such as domestic violence and rape, the continued devastation of the environment when it is seen an economic resource, and to a lesser degree, the call for a return to "traditional" gender roles and "family values". The male, ‘perversely distorted’ as expression-weapon/machine can only express his anger through becoming nothing more than a ‘destroyer’.

The message from the Freikorps through to the superhero comic, indicates that masculinity is unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with the chaotic, fluid and uncontrollable nature of the feminine and a postmodern world. The masculine subject resists rather than accepts these new circumstances. 

Superhero comics seem to come up with ever more elaborate ways of expressing masculine resistance. The energy being superhero is an example of this resistance. Fuji from the comic Stormwatch is an energy being who needs a containment suit otherwise he'll disperse limitlessly into the environment. The same scenario has been played out with other characters such as another Stormwatch character Hellstrike, and for a short time Superman (when he was Electric Blue Superman, May 1997- May 1998). Often it involves a race against time to ‘save’ the hero. Merging with the environment would mean accepting rather than resisting the outside forces of the feminine and the postmodern condition. 

The message that superhero comics communicate to their predominantly male audience is one of fight, resist, and eliminate the female ‘outside forces’, while delighting in homoerotic/narcissistic desire and the worship of impossible ideals of masculinity and femininity.



Conclusion

The female superhero body in superhero comics (especially the Image comics of the 1990s) is endowed with characteristics of a "standard" male body–shoulders wider than hips, a shorter torso and long legs.

For Baudrillard the body is a representation that has been phallicised thus creating erectile parts. This representation of the female is unattainable, derived as it is from the phallus as general equivalent. The phallicised female body is eliminated when it is used as a mirror that reflects male dominance and desire. The female is further not allowed to become a body due to her potential threat of castration (the vagina dentata and the phallic woman) which is eliminated when she is eliminated as female.

In order to control "outside forces" the male superhero tries recentre the self by armouring the body which also is an attempt to control the feminine. This mode of resistance is doomed to failure due to its passive mode of resistance against the postmodern condition. 

The next step in controlling outside forces is to become the weapon/machine. This offers a more active mode of resistance. However becoming the weapon/machine has a disturbing potential dehumanising the individual, becoming an expression-machine/weapon that has the capacity to retaliate violently against uncontrollable outside forces such the feminine and a constantly changing postmodern world, perceived as propagating horrors on the male, such as extracting meaning from the self.

The elimination of the feminine "other", nature or other uncontrollable "outside forces" is effectuated by a masculinity that thrives on homoerotic/narcissistic desire, and the control of the self, which is equated with the control of all else.

Reference

Bukatman, Scott. “X-Bodies (the torment of the mutant superhero)” in  Sappington, Rodney and Tyler Stallings (eds) Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture.  Seattle: Bay Press, 1994.

Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Allen & Unwin, 1995.

Frosh, Stephen. Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.

Jurgens, Dan, (w). Ron Frenz & Joe Rubinstein (a). Superman v1 #123 (May 1997), New York: DC Comics, 1997.

Maertens, James. W. 'The Dragon and the Man-Machine: Reflecting on Jurassic Park and Frankenstein', in Mary Lynn Kittelson, (ed.) The Soul of Popular Culture: Looking at Contemporary Heroes, Myths and Monsters. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998.

Portacio, Whilce, (w,a). Brandon Choi (w). Wetworks. v1 #1 (Jun. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.

----. Wetworks. v1 #2 (Aug. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Volume 1.: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Polity Press, 1987.

----. Male Fantasies. Volume 2.: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Polity Press, 1989.

Part 2 - Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics

Part 2 of 'Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics' uses Baudrillardian theory to analyse the superhero comic Wetworks demonstrating how the phallicised female body is eliminated when it is used as a mirror that reflects male dominance and desire. The female is further not allowed to become a body due to her potential threat of castration (the vagina dentata and the phallic woman) which is eliminated when she is eliminated as female. 

Read Part 1

In the Image comic Wetworks the characters are covered by a gold bio-metalloid compound that’s like ‘having a suit of armour for a second skin… I feel as though it’s reading my mind and working with my body, making me stronger and faster than ever before’ (Portacio & Choi, Jun. 1994, 15). On initial contact the compound covers every orifice, one character having to fight desperately to open his mouth . This ‘symbiote’ makes the body smooth, shiny and enclosed, even the eyes. A goggle wearing character now finds them incorporated into his body. The Wetworks team walks naked and smouldering from their symbolic (re)birth by fire and explosion, their bodies completely covered and protected by the symbiote. Their sex differences erased and the bodies now ‘lacking’ nothing, they literally wear Baudrillard’s second skin becoming ‘more nude than nude’ and a phallic effigy at the same time.

The ‘nudity’ of the energy being superhero is best of all. These energy beings have no corporeal body. As Baudrillard writes, the corporeal body is–

denied in the interests of a second, non-porous skin that neither exudes or excretes, that is neither hot nor cold (it is “cool” and “warm”: optimally air-conditioned), with no proper density…and above all without orifices (it is smooth)…All these qualities (coolness, suppleness, transparency, one-piece) are qualities of closure… (105).

The energy being must have a suit, a second skin (their only one) to contain their ‘design(at)ed nudity’. As Baudrillard argues design(at)ed nudity–

implies that there is nothing behind the lattice of signs that it weaves, especially not a body: neither a body of labour, nor a body of pleasure; neither an erogenous body nor a broken body (106).

The suits could be any shape because these energy beings resemble Brigitte Bardot, who is ‘“beautiful because she fits her dress exactly”’ (Baudrillard 106). They fit into their suits perfectly. Because the energy being’s body is only a body because of their suit, their body is faultless. It has no gaps, no orifices and is completely smooth. These energy beings in their suits are simulacra of ‘real’ bodies but without the lack that comes with a real body. Like the Wetworks characters, the energy being is ‘more nude than nude’, lacking nothing and a phallic effigy.

Both aspects of the fantasised phallic ideal are covered in the depiction of female and male bodies in superhero comics. The first is the exaggeration of the ‘erectile’ legs in the female creating the ‘ideal’ long penis. The extra muscled legs and arms of male characters resemble ‘ideal’ thick and ‘veined’ penis. Although uncommon, some depictions have all three in one– a long, wide and veined leg/phallus.

In superhero comics the female body is incorporated into a system of phallic exchange ‘whereby woman becomes erect and man’s desire will be received in its own image’ (Baudrillard 103). The body of the female superhero is merely a disguised phallus which signals the homoerotic/narcissistic undertones of the superhero comic. This homoerotic desire is also present in mainstream media as Jane Ussher recognises–

The mass media encourages heterosexual women to desire masculine bodies, which are hard, lean and slim – at least in their ideal state. It is this that many women measure themselves against (and are certainly measured against in the media – those cellulite free thighs are very like those of boys; we may wonder whose fantasy is at play here, given it is largely men who create this imagery) (71).

Indeed, as Lynda Nead argues, representations of the female nude created by male artists not only testify to patriarchal understandings of female sexuality, they also endorse certain definitions of male sexuality and masculinity (283). In the case of the representation of female superheroes, the patriarchal understanding of female sexuality is not of woman as ‘other’ as may be expected, but of woman as mirror. The tough, strong, and independent female superhero becomes a mirror reflecting male dominance and desire. It is just as Baudrillard states that when woman is annexed to a phallic order she is condemned to a non-existence (104).

Eliminating Castrating Women

Barbara Creed argues in her book The Monstrous Feminine that the vampire’s fanged mouth is a symbol of the castrating vagina dentata (22). The Wetworks team leader, Jackson Dane, has a dream where he is attacked by a vampire of the “Night Tribes”, (the vagina dentata), and in typically feminised fashion is unable to fight back– ‘All he can do is bleed… and take the pain’. In a scene reminiscent of a rape, the vampire stands behind Dane snarling. Dane screams ‘SSS-stop! No more! PLEASE!’ The vampire replies – ‘Giving up already, my pet?’. Dane hopes his newly acquired symbiote will protect him, but it moves aside revealing his flesh for the ‘fanged monster’ (Portacio & Choi, Aug. 1994 23-4). Fortunately for Dane and reader alike, this is only a dream and could never happen for “real”. Still, this sequence demonstrates how the threat of castration could happen, impregnated as it is with the ideas of passivity, feminisation, rape and violence. In fact it says that castration could only happen through the male being passive and overpowered.

For Baudrillard, as with Freud, the fetishised object/phallic body part is caught up in the denial of castration. The phallic/castrating woman is mirrored in Klaus Theweleit’s description of the proletariat women who appeared in Freikorps literature. These rifle-women (flintenweiber) were depicted as cold-blooded killers, often in the company of several men (which obviously made them whores) and in no way could be trusted. Theweleit describes one image of the rifle-women that was so feared– ‘Hair flying, packing pistols, and riding shaggy horses, the women present an image of terrifying sexual potency. It is a phallic, not a vaginal potency that is fantasized and feared’ (73). This phallic potency also translates to the fear that the rifle-women have a concealed weapon (a gun or a grenade) under her skirt. The phrase that is of interest here is the phallic potency that is ‘fantasized and feared’, which plays right into the depiction of the female superhero – fantasised as phallic effigy, feared as the phallic castrating woman. But we cannot have both. They cannot co-exist.

The pervasive threat of castration embodied by the female superhero is eliminated by eliminating the castrating potential of women. This is done in a number of ways. In Wetworks the threat of woman as vagina dentata is eliminated through the symbiote’s ability to seal all orifices of the body (especially the female body) as well as protect the penis with its armouring properties. The threat of the castrating woman as a phallic woman is eliminated when her body is given male body characteristics. When she is phallusised she is eliminated as female by incorporation into a masculine ideal. Although what I am talking about here is not as extreme as Theweleit’s dissertation on the German Freikorps where the soldier seeks to eliminate the female and the threat of castration by reducing her to a ‘bloody mass’, the parallel is more to do with what he states as a ‘dissolution of the body itself, and of the woman as bodily entity’ (196). If the ‘standard’ female body is dissolved, it has no presence, no corporeality, and no representation. If, as Baudrillard theorises, the body has moved into representation, feminine specificity is thus eliminated, and the only representation that remains is that of the masculine.

To give the female a body of her own is to give her representation, to recognise her difference. Denying female representation denies her an existence, thus eliminating her, leaving only the image of the male.

Read Part 3

Reference

Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: Sage, 
1993.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London & New York: Routledge, 1993.

Nead, Lynda. 'The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality' In Segal, Lynne. & Mary McIntosh (eds). Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate. Virago Press, 1992.

Portacio, Whilce, (w,a). Brandon Choi (w). Wetworks. v1 #1 (Jun. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.

---- Wetworks. v1 #2 (Aug. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Volume 1.: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Polity Press, 1987.

Ussher, Jane. Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex. Penguin Books, 1997.

Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics

In the coming posts I will be going retro and presenting pieces on comics produced in the 1990s, specifically the comics Wetworks, Darkchylde, and Witchblade,

In this three part essay I discuss how the feminine is effectively eliminated in superhero comics by eradicating the difference between the sexes reducing them to an economy of the same.

Part 1 compares standard human anatomy with bodies in superhero comics showing how female characters are depicted with characteristics of the ‘standard’ male body. Male bodies are subsequently rendered as hypermasculine. Using the work of Jean Baudrillard I show how the female superhero body is phallicised thus creating ‘erectile’ parts.

Part 2 uses Baudrillardian theory to analyse the superhero comic Wetworks demonstrating how the phallicised female body is eliminated when it is used as a mirror that reflects male dominance and desire. The female is further not allowed to become a body due to her potential threat of castration (the vagina dentata and the phallic woman) which is eliminated when she is eliminated as female.

Part 3 covers how armouring the male superhero body is an attempt to elicit self-control and thereby control the feminine that is embodied in chaotic, uncontrollable and changing ‘outside forces’. I further establish how armouring the body is unworkable due to its passive mode of resistance. I describe the next step in the process to control outside forces as becoming the weapon/machine and the consequences that this can have for culture at large.

Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics
(Part 1)

Of course the female form has absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics; of course the costumes are skimpier than one could (or should) imagine; of course there’s no visible way that these costumes could stay in place; of course these women represent simple adolescent masturbatory fantasies (with a healthy taste of the dominatrix) (Bukatman 112).

The female superhero body is constructed as hyperfeminine, as a spectacle insistent on breasts, thighs, crotch, and hair. In the quote above Scott Bukatman answers why female superheroes are drawn the way they are – they’re eye candy to satisfy the male gaze. You might also answer that because the vast majority of superhero comic artists are male, they draw female superheroes that way because they can. But what is it about these female superhero bodies that make them so good to look at so that, of course, they must be drawn with absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics? Why are their costumes skimpier than one ‘should’ imagine? There must be more to it, and there is.

In part one of this essay I’ll undertake an anatomical comparison of ‘real’ female bodies against bodies represented in superhero comics. This line of reasoning will explicate how the female superhero body is depicted according to characteristics normally associated with the male body. The male body, in turn, has been exaggerated to hypermasculine proportions. I’ll argue that superhero comics reduce all ‘others’ to the economy of the same by eradicating the difference between the sexes (Irigaray 74). I’ll use the work of the French theorist Jean Baudrillard to demonstrate how the male and female superhero bodies and body parts are phallicised as ‘erectile parts’.

In her book An Introduction to Drawing the Nude Diana Constance recognises that the standard female torso is longer than a male’s, the distance from her waist to crotch is also longer, and her hips are wider than her shoulders – ‘no amount of dieting will ever give her the slim hips of a man’ (Constance 23-4). The ‘standard’ body of a male has longer legs than a woman and his shoulders are slightly wider than his hips (Constance 23). Comparing the ‘standard’ body of a human to that of a comic book character might seem silly or even absurd but there is nothing to say that characters shouldn’t, at least proportionally, exhibit the characteristics of a ‘standard’ body. However, in superhero comics there is a radical inversion of the female’s standard body characteristics where the female superhero body exhibits characteristics of the standard male body. Their shoulders are wider than their hips and their legs are longer than a males (sometimes alarmingly so). Because of this fusion of the female into the male form, the distinctive sexual characteristic of the female – her breasts – are made prominent to distinguish the character’s “femininity”. This in turn makes the breasts appear unrealistic, ‘stuck’ on, and disharmonious with the rest of the body. The effect this has on the depiction of the male superhero body is that male features need to be exaggerated to a hypermasculinity. The male’s shoulders and legs are made wider (by muscles or armour/costume), and the torso becomes overtly muscled and lengthened.

 

There is further evidence to suggest that female and male superhero bodies are ascribe to the one ideal. The ‘standard’ female body requires the pubic area to be just below the mid-point of the body (Constance 23). Moving the pubic area above a females’ natural mid-point, lengthens the legs and shortens the torso thereby eliminating the hips (a defining female body feature), leaving the legs to butt straight on to the waist. With the torso shortened the female gains another ‘standard’ male body feature. This elimination of the female characteristics is demonstrated in the WILDC.A.T.S advertisement (Figures 1 and 2) where the male and the female characters, Ripclaw and Zealot, have virtually the same body (high heels and hair too)! (See further images in the Image Appendix). The elimination of the female body, I believe, has to do with the fetishisation/phallicisation of the female form. The work of theorist Jean Baudrillard provides a useful framework for understanding this phenomenon.

Superman’s value as the first ‘super’ hero was of a symbolic nature. All the drive he needed was the inherent goodness in doing the job. No rewards necessary or wanted. The ‘S’ on his chest is his sign; his symbol of recognition. Without the ‘S’ he’s just a big guy in a blue suit. The costumes of more contemporary superheroes are conspicuously devoid of individual signs, (characters from the Image titles of the early 1990s are a case in point). They are just big guys in colourful suits. Far from being superheroes for the sake of it, many are employed by an individual, corporation, or governmental department, consequently embedding them in the political economy of the sign. By accepting money for their heroic actions they become rationalised subjects, turning them into items of exchange value – the abstract, meaningless value of quantity measured in monetary terms. A superhero’s exchange value can subsequently only be measured against that of other superheroes.

Without individual signs that designate identity (or only ones that align them with a certain group or corporation) the superhero is now merely a sign that reproduces the capitalistic economy. Now to designate a superhero’s individuality the superhero’s body becomes a sign – the guy in this suit is bigger and different that the guy in that colourful suit. However, Baudrillard states that signs covering the body reduce it to uniformity or an ideal type. Signs cover, divide and annihilate the body’s difference in order to organise it into structural material for sign-exchange (101). Thus the superhero’s body can also be reduced to an ideal type. This ideal is derived from one source – a body and an economy derived from ‘a sexuality taken as a determining agency, a phallic agency entirely organised around the fetishisation of the phallus as the general equivalent’ (Baudrillard 101). The hypermasculine male ideal of which the superhero stands as an emblem is designed around this phallic general equivalent. As Scott Bukatman argues –

Indeed, with their thick necks, bulging veins, and protruding tendons tightly swathed in coloured skintight hoods, these heroes really become enormous dicks sheathed in an array of distinctly baroque (and somewhat painful looking) condoms – an effect both menacing and comical (111).

In Baudrillard’s terms – ‘the entire body has become a phallic effigy’(102). For Baudrillard the body has moved into representation, it is a sign that is constructed via a structuralist mode consisting of the phallic effigy/fragment of the body/subject as signifier, and sexuality as signified. The body is not an erogenous zone anymore, but an eroticised zone in a capitalist economy of exchange value. It is a site that does not produce excitement but is produced to excite.

We must remember that for the most part superheroes – ‘Despite accoutrements such as logos, masks, gauntlets, epaulets and other superhero accessories… are essentially presented as nudes (costumes are more coloration than cover up)’ (Bukatman 106). This colouration/costuming of superhero nudity produces ‘Certain marks… (that) render the body more nude than if it were really nude… these marks may be clothes or accessories’ (Baudrillard 121n). Accessories such as ‘the tight fitting bracelet round the arm or the ankle, the belt, the necklace and the ring’ are staple parts of superhero attire which for Baudrillard ‘establish the foot, the waist, the neck or the finger as erectile parts’ (102). While both male and female superheroes sport these accessories, the female superhero body, with exaggerated legs and breasts, is the most prominent in this process of phallusisation. While we have already seen that male superheroes are bulging ‘dicks’. However it is not only certain bodies or body parts that can be transformed into phallic effigies. In fact –

Any body or part of the body can operate functionally in the same way, provided that it is subject to the same erotic discipline: it is necessary and sufficient that it be as closed and as smooth as possible, faultless, without orifice and “lacking” nothing, every erogenous difference being conjured up by the structural bar that will design(ate) this body (in the doubles sense of “designate” and “design”), visible in clothing, jewellery or make-up, invisible but always present in complete nudity, since it then envelops the body like a second skin (Baudrillard 104-5).

Baudrillard is arguing that anything that marks the body as ‘closed and smooth as possible’ (including make-up, lipstick, tattooing, scarring) can be placed in the structural demarcation of phallic effigy as signifier, alongside male sexuality, or phallic agency, the general equivalent everything is defined against. In other words the phallus is the standard marker or measure of identity.

Read Part 2

Image Appendix

Reference

Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: Sage, 1993.

Bukatman, Scott. “X-Bodies (the torment of the mutant superhero).” Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture. Ed. Rodney Sappington and Tyler Stallings. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994.

Constance, Diana. An Introduction to Drawing the Nude. London: New Burlington Books, 1993.

Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.