Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them

by Colleen Doran

  But how? In thinking about what to do with their near-omnipotent villainess, whose mere presence threw ordinary action stories off-kilter, Claremont and Byrne had considered several options. Dark Phoenix was going to fly off into interstellar space to be an occasionally returning bad guy like Galactus. Or she was going to be stripped of her powers and turned into a nice little human, Scott’s wife, a secondary character. Or she’d have the “bad” Phoenix Force removed and have to live with what she’d done. Jim Shooter, Marvel’s editor-in-chief at the time, thought that the last idea was morally ludicrous, to say the least, and demanded her death. So she committed suicide with some huge blasty raygun-thing on the moon. It was a lousy end to the story, but so were all the others. Diminished, she was dead anyway.

  Comics being what they are, she was reborn several times, coming to several more bad ends. No one could figure out what to do with her. She had the power of a nova and could eat stars and was a redhead to boot: too hot for the Marvel Universe to handle, really. Jean Grey was finally killed off, and though the Phoenix Force is still drifting around occasionally possessing someone, when that someone isn’t Jean the effect’s just not the same. The real Phoenix is the woman who burst defiantly from her drowning grave, shouting the corny and epic lines, “Hear me, X-Men. No longer am I the woman you knew. I am life and fire forever. I am Phoenix!” Yes she was. And then some.

  Tune in Tomorrow

  Sue D runs the blog DC Women Kicking Ass, which celebrates female comic book characters. She also appears in the 3 Chicks Review Comics podcast feature on Comic Book Resources. Her lifelong love of comics began after seeing Batgirl on TV, and she may have been influenced to go to journalism school because of Lois Lane. She was probably wooed by her future spouse, in part, through gifts of Catwoman comics. And her bedroom is definitely overrun with an extremely large collection of Batgirl memorabilia. She is happily creating a new generation of comic book fans and her children consider “Free Comic Book Day” to be only behind Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and their birthdays as “the best day of the year.”

  The words are simple and straightforward. They promise nothing, yet create a sense of anticipation. They signify a conclusion and the start of something new.

  “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”

  “Tune in tomorrow!”

  These words end episodes of the 1960s Batman television show and episodes of the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives, respectively. They represent the two fandoms I’ve belonged to for more than two-thirds of my life: superhero comics and soap operas.

  Beginning to watch a soap opera is a challenge, very much like picking up an issue of an unfamiliar comic book series. You don’t know who all the characters are, you’re not sure what it means, and your reaction may be driven by others already in the fandom. My mother watched a number of them but her favorite story (as she would call her soaps) was Another World, a program that appeared on NBC for 35 years. Her favorite character is, she tells me as I watch for the first time, Iris Carrington. Within moments, I see Iris is impetuous, manipulative, and haughty. She is the show’s villain. But I will soon learn that Iris Carrington makes things happen.

  After a few minutes of recounting the back history, my mother tells me that Iris is about to get payback for an unpardonable sin: not passing along a phone call from the show’s heroine, Rachel, to Iris’s father Mac (who is married to Rachel – this is a soap, after all), which resulted in Rachel losing her baby. This moment is a huge payoff for months and months of teasing. The moment is so intense and welcome that my mother jumps out of her chair and claps her hands as Mac storms into Iris’s home. It is mesmerizing. I was hooked. Iris would become one of my favorite characters.

  Comics and soap operas are incredibly similar. Both offer stories that never end. Characters have the same names, but wear different faces and possess tweaked histories. There are villains so evil they cause the heart to palpitate, heroes so complex they fuel tales that go on for years. Each has a cast of characters that require flow-charts to figure out who is related to whom. So why aren’t more soap opera fans also superhero comics fans? And why aren’t more fans of superhero comics fans of soap operas?

  Soap operas were a phenomenon, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine. At one point, there were 16 daytime soaps on the air, each of them attracting millions of viewers. Like superhero comics, they reflected social changes. In the 1960s, soap operas were primarily produced by soap companies such as Proctor and Gamble. Their shows had a common look and style – and their stories and characters reflected white, middle-class, Midwestern values.

  DC was the king of comic books at this time, but it would soon find itself competing with Marvel. Marvel was the younger, hipper publisher who changed comics with new, younger characters like Spider-Man. These characters had real-life problems and their stories took place in more realistic settings. Similarly, new soaps appeared reflecting the real world. One Life to Live and All My Children contained the classic tropes of soaps, but included contemporary aspects such as classism, drug addiction, and conflicts about both the Vietnam War and the emerging women’s movement. The shows now featured black actors as stars; simultaneously, the first black superheroes began appearing in comics. The real world had permeated both daytime and comics, and they began to attract a new audience with shows like The Young and the Restless – in which the cast spent their time hopping in and out of bed.

  Here, from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, the confluence of soaps and comics is most apparent. In 1975, Chris Claremont was charged by Marvel to take on the X-Men. Claremont made Uncanny X-Men into the longest running soap opera in comics. Under Claremont, the characters still fought evil and saved the world, but they spent pages upon pages talking about their feelings, their desires, and their loves, both fulfilled and unrequited.

  I recently read some of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne runs on Uncanny X-Men and was amazed at the way the stories emulated the soaps. Let’s look at Uncanny X-Men #183 from July 1984. On the cover you have a typical superhero battle, but when you flip open the comic, you see a young man and woman sitting on cliff. The looks on their faces show this is an uncomfortable conversation. Beside them we see the title of the issue in a typeface that looks like draped ribbons: “He’ll never make me cry.”

  The two star-crossed lovers, Peter Rasputin and Kitty Pryde, could easily be any of the soap “super couples” that reigned during the 1980s – Luke and Laura of General Hospital or Bo and Hope of Days of Our Lives.

  And the dialogue in this scene? He’s given his heart to someone else. She listens, eyes like saucers brimming with tears as her internal monologue rumbles with angst while he betrays her.

  This is classic soap opera moment. Kitty has plenty of moments of pure heroism in Uncanny X-Men, but in this issue, she will go off to her room to cry into a pillow.

  Just as the soulful angst of Luke Spencer and Laura Baldwin topped the television charts and become a pop phenomenon, so the trials and tribulations of Kitty and Peter, and Jean Grey and Scott Summers, climbed to the top of superhero comics. (Coincidentally, when soap operas adopted the outrageous plots of superhero comics, as General Hospital did with its “Ice Princess” storyline in the 1980s, the shows had their greatest success even attracting a large male audience as well.)

  DC Comics responded with its own youth-centered team book: The New Teen Titans, which was filled with stories of young male and female superheroes who spend as much time in moments of romantic angst as fighting evil.

  I’m a DC girl, so my preference is NTT over Uncanny X-Men. The character I focused on was Donna Troy, a.k.a. Wonder Girl. Except for her ability to fly and super strength, Donna resembles the typical soap ingénue – upbeat, in love with life, a friend to all, and a woman in love. She wasn’t just a superhero; she had a successful career as a fashion photographer. She also had great hair, easily the equal of any soap actress. She wasn’t a pushover; she was both strong and resolute. She made things happe
n.

  The leading characters in soap operas are mainly women. While there are many popular male characters, the stories really aren’t about them. They are about Viki Buchanan, Carly Corinthos, and Erica Kane. The New Teen Titans and Uncanny X-Men both made women leads as well. Uncanny X-Men was as much about Storm and Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde as it was about Scott Summers and Wolverine. The New Teen Titans was as much about Donna Troy, Starfire, and Raven as it was about Robin, Changeling, and Cyborg.

  Some say that soap operas are pure plot. I disagree. Soap operas reuse the same plots over and over. It is the characters that make me tune in tomorrow.

  Characters keep me reading superhero comics. While I enjoy and admire Batman, I identify with Barbara Gordon. I respect Superman, but identify with Lois Lane, the hard-driving reporter who combines a great career with a great marriage. When I pick up a comic, I enjoy the idea that there is more than just a story on a page. I love that the actions of a character are driven by years of history just as in the soaps. Yes, I also enjoy when each of them go off to vanquish evil and kick ass, but these moments of connection are just as important.

  The comic market has changed dramatically. The market that once sold half a million copies per month of Uncanny X-Men is lucky today to get maybe a couple dozen books each month selling 10% of that number. Soap operas have also suffered a slow decline. Now soap operas and superhero comics are trying desperately to survive. Two of the remaining soap operas, All My Children and One Life to Live, were cancelled in the last year. DC Comics recently underwent a massive makeover while also adding digital distribution.

  Traditional soap operas are close to dead. Comics, for now, live on. But I think there is still the potential to bring more female readers into the fold of superhero comics. Not every woman wants to read a superhero comic with the dramatic beats of a soap. But I think many women want to read female characters that are strong protagonists who, like the characters I enjoyed growing up, “make things happen.” When the big two – Marvel and DC – create books like DC Comics’s Birds of Prey, female readers respond.

  Who knows? If the stories are there and marketed properly, readers may – as the soap operas once instructed – tune in tomorrow for another episode. Or, as I do, download the next 20 pages the following month.

  An Interview with Greg Rucka

  Greg Rucka is the award-winning author of over 16 novels and countless comic books. He’s been privileged to write some of the greatest pop-culture icons in modern history, including Batman, Superman, Wolverine, and Wonder Woman, and is currently the author of The Punisher for Marvel Comics. He is renowned for having written a number of series that have greatly advanced the profile and development of female characters in comics, including Gotham Central, 52, Detective Comics (featuring the acclaimed Batwoman: Elegy storyarc), Whiteout, and Queen & Country. Rucka lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, writer Jen Van Meter, and their two children. When not parenting, writing, or sleeping, he is most often thinking about parenting, writing, or sleeping.

  Q. How did you first become interested in comic books?

  A. I found them young. I remember being in the checkout line at the Nob Hill Market in Salinas, California – I couldn’t have been more than eight – and getting one of the little, digest-sized, Lee/Kirby reprints that had re-tellings of the original Hulk stuff in black and white. I also remember picking up Archie and Jughead. I think that was sort of the natural entry point into comics for a lot of people in my generation: The comics were around, they were in front of us, we read them, we liked them.

  I had a bonus impetus in that I have an older sister, Brandy, who has Down’s Syndrome. When we were growing up, we watched The Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, and she developed the craziest crush on the Hulk. And she didn’t differentiate between the two – she got that Bixby and Ferrigno were supposed to be aspects of the same person.

  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it – and I used to say this was a little glib, but I think it may be accurate – but in large part the appeal was here was this guy, David Banner as played by Bill Bixby, who is really the gentlest, kindest soul you could ever encounter. Yet, when people around him were threatened and he became enraged, he would turn into this incredibly powerful – yet very gentle – protector who would deliver a smack-down to the bad guys, but never, ever, ever do wrong to an innocent. I think that spoke to Brandy, very loudly.

  Later, when I was ten or 11, I went into my first comic book store – it was in Monterey, California – specifically to buy The Incredible Hulk magazine, which had these stories by Doug Moench. I bought a particular issue that was essentially the Incredible Hulk vs. Three Mile Island – it was exactly what you would expect, but when I presented it to my sister, she had no interest in it at all. And, of course, she wouldn’t have done – it was a completely different animal than what had appealed to her. But I was fascinated by it. I remember taking it to school, and trying to copy the panels – I can’t draw, and that was pretty much when I learned from the attempt, that I couldn’t draw! I would literally trace it and it still came out bad!

  Q. Was there something about the comic stories being a literary experience that appealed to you, made you more engaged with the characters than their TV personas did?

  A. Like many writers, I had a very isolated childhood spent mostly reading. About the time I entered eighth grade, I changed schools and fell in with a group of like-minded geeks. They all collected comics, and in particular they collected Uncanny X-Men. That was what all my peers were doing, so that was what I did – and it was the last straw, the final act that turned me into a passionate lover of the medium. And this was, you know, later in Claremont’s run. I think the first issue I got was Uncanny X-Men #160, and I fell in love with Kitty Pryde immediately. Because on top of everything else, she was Jewish, and I was seeing representation!

  That soon led to my going to comic book stores and finding stuff all by my lonesome, such as the Miller/Mazzucchelli Daredevil: Born Again storyarc. And that was another turning point for me: I’d found this material on my own, I had recognized it as very special in the context of everything else going on in the medium. It was the first book that I actively hunted down and collected on my own.

  When I left for college, I sold my comic collection, thinking, “I’m not going to be able to do this in college.” But, lo and behold, somebody very wise in Poughkeepsie, New York, had opened a comic book store a block and a half from the Vassar campus. So I went right back in. At that point, we’re talking post-The Dark Knight Returns, post-Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, and in particular when Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan started on The Question.

  Q. You’ve become very associated with that character. Is it fair to say that the O’Neil/Cowan run was a seminal experience for you?

  A. It was another one of these comics that elevated the form for me. I was a freshman in college, and my best friend in the world – Nunzio DiFilippis, who’s another comics writer – was a psych major, and he was reading The Question with me. And he turned to me one day and said, “You know, [Thomas] Szasz is this very famous guy in psychology, known for this book called The Myth of Mental Illness, and it’s very deliberate that Denny O’Neil is doing this...” All of a sudden, I realized, I’m reading something else than I thought I was. It was a great series all along, a really beautifully executed comic – but when you look at that run now, it’s an examination of what sanity is and how we judge it. So many of the people that [the Question] encounters in the first 24 issues are people who are doing things that look insane. They are doing things for reasons that make perfect sense to those characters.

  Q. Did this re-ignite your love for comics?

  A. Absolutely. From that point on, I was buying comics consistently, unless economically I couldn’t. I went to grad school after Vassar. Jen [Van Meter] and I had just gotten married, and we were desperately poor. I’m fond of saying we were so poor, we were gaining weight; we were eating past
a all the time. But once every two weeks or so, we scraped together enough money and – although I was going to U.S.C. and hated driving in Los Angeles – we’d grit our teeth, climb in the car, drive out to Santa Monica to Hi De Ho Comics, and preciously buy ten dollars’ worth of comic books. And we’d take them back and love them until we could go out again.

  Q. At what point did you progress from being an avid comic book reader to someone who wanted to write comic stories?

  A. I tried to write a comic with a friend of mine when I was at Vassar, and that didn’t quite work out. It was my first attempt at writing in the form, but the desire was there the whole time. Even when I was looking at my graduate work – which was, “Well, I am writing a novel, I want to be a novelist” – I was reading comics. I got started in the industry directly as a result of that.

  Q. How so?

  I had two novels [Keeper and Finder] published, and a friend of mine who was working at DC started showing my novels around. Patty Jeres, who at that time was in marketing at DC, took an interest and eventually put me in touch with Bob Schreck when he and Joe Nozemack were starting Oni Press. That’s how I ended up writing Whiteout for them.

  Patty also introduced me to Denny O’Neil, after she brought my novels into Denny’s office. The story goes that Denny had read the first one and didn’t know that the second one had come out. Patty said, “Well, it just so happens he’s here in town right now, would you be willing to meet him?” Denny said sure, and so he and I went to lunch. The result of that lunch was Denny saying, “Okay, why don’t you try to write me something?” I said all right, and that was the start of the Cataclysm storyarc running through the Batman titles. Jen and I were living in Eugene, Oregon, at that point, and I spent the flight back drafting what ultimately became the first of the Renee Montoya/Two-Face stories.