Reset the reset the Days Since DC Did Something Stupid counter back to zero

[james_davis_nicoll]

Who could have foreseen this would be problematic?

Comments

[azurelunatic]

*headdesk*

[rosefox]

Don't forget this gem:

[dsrtao]

But there's both Batgirl and Batwoman out there! Not to mention the female Robin. What were they thinking?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Why is this an attractive prospect? For that matter, how would you train for it? Do you practice being bored and alienated?

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

"Honey, I know you saw your parents murdered. I just don't see why that means you can't come to the Peterson's dinner party Saturday."

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

Urk.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Why not just say "Training to be the Earth-2 Catwoman"? I mean, I think I'd buy THAT t-shirt for a relative.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

My serious response to this one was to speculate if it were made with a selection of nouns in the last place.

My humorous one was to wonder if it were available in XL Mens' sizes.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Oh, how quickly Supergirl is forgotten. I haven't seen the movie in ages and I imagine it has not aged well at all (if it was even good when it was released), but if you wanted to use the logo, well, there's one easy option there.

Unfortunately Marvel is about as bad. Although I'm not sure if they even bother to *make* much merch that might be construed to be for females. I've seen a sad Gamora makeup set and some cheesy cheap-looking clothing for women with Captain America logos plastered all over it (an improvement, but Black Widow/Gamora/Mystique/etc. options would be much better). Also, people have told me about short-boxing/packing female figurines, so yay! (not yay)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

DC actually was marketing a line of clothes with the Supergirl brand a little while ago; may still be for all I know... they were all pink, which struck me as a little weird. Perhaps they were for some reason concerned that Supergirl had the same logo as Superman so pinkness was needed for differentiation.

There was also a pink version of the Supergirl Halloween costume, which my daughter insisted on wearing; she knew it was non-canonical but she liked the pink, so what the heck.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

So they think female babies don't have super-powered ambition? ;-D

Babies probably don't really care that much, but there is a definite ingrained pink is for girls and blue is for boys, which is funny to me, b/c my favorite color is blue. I've never really liked regular pink itself that much for for clothes mainly because I look awful in it.

I don't have any kids at this point, but I do have a niece and I was wracking my brain for superpowered ladies to introduce to her a few weeks ago. (She probably would've been all for the pink Supergirl costume, too.) These days pickings are sorta slim unless I go the Sailor Moon route or Korra (she's still a bit young for live-action Marvel). At least when I was growing up I had things like live-action Wonder Woman, Bionic Woman, and the aforementioned Supergirl. Today feels like a bit of a step back.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I dunno about merch - I don't follow that kind of thing - but for actual comic content Marvel somebody posted on another forum:

Its look like by mid 2015 marvel may have:

14-16+ ongoing Solo female leads. Give or take cancellations.
6-7 (or even more) Women writing monthlies.

Not to mention one of the teams of Avengers just happens to be entirely made up of minorities (plus She-Hulk).

Merchandise is generally licensed out, so Marvel doesn't directly decide what gets made. (Whoever controls the licensing deals can put as many editorial conditions as they want on it, though, so ultimately it's still their responsibility. Just pointing out that it's not surprising that what they're trying to do in the comics isn't necessarily reflected by the merchandising. Just disappointing.)

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't think lots of kids are reading comics these days. You are going to reach more people with cartoons and live-action.

Marvel (at least from the movie side) doesn't seem very enthused about female characters. And that trickles down to everything else, in a way - definitely with merch. They might not control the merchandise completely, but their attitude can certainly influence it, I think. And their attitude sorta sucks right now.

SIGH.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Also:

Re: SIGH.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If you think of her fist in that picture as a sign that she is NOT happy and is about to punch his head off it makes a lot more sense.

Re: SIGH.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Actually, her fist in that picture is because in the original she was lassoing Superman, but the designer cut it out to make Supes look like Fabio ravaging a damsel.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Supergirl Smash! (don't seem to have a She-Hulk icon which would have been my first choice)

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I've been thinking for awhile now that the obvious reason there's been no Black Widow movie is that Scarlett won't sleep with Kevin Feige. It's just the sort of delusions-of-ownership thing Feige would think it reasonable to insist on, plus he's probably now all butt-hurt by Scarlett having a life and preferences of her very own.

Things are indeed worse; it's bad insecurity management to start with, the amount of insecurity around masculinity is going up -- the patriarchy is obviously a bad idea in an information economy, the value of "manly" being sold has collapsed to "violent entitled idiot" (of a time, "husbandry" and "generosity" and "self-rule" were masculine virtues) -- and the people making money decisions around the comic-book franchises can't possibly be in favour of justice because their own just fates are harsh.

[izeinwinter.livejournal.com]

Some sort of distressingly unprofessional personality conflict seems highly plausible because the money case for making black widow movies - yes, plural, is so strong.
Does a black widow movie need tonnes of CGI? Nope! Lots of big name actors? Nope! Just Scarlett herself, and while she is well paid, by hollywood standards she isn't a break-the-bank name.. Will people go watch it? I have one word: "Lucy". Yhea, they will. So.. Why on earth have they not moved on this?
Personally, I'd be really tempted to go with the read on the widow that she is age-immune due to WWII supersoldier experiments and there you go - movies during any era you care to use.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

If the capital is making indefensible decisions, either there's no competition (there isn't), or someone is defending a business model (betcha there's what are effectively forced sales because choice is so poor for girls, and forced sales are predictable), or there's a very strong irrational component (Oracle pricing as a function of the ocean racing team's need for money...) which in this case is probably fear of the gay and misogyny and the kind of monumental investment in strict gender roles really unpleasant guys get; absent the vast mechanism of social coercion, they're not going to be found desirable by anyone and they know it.

[solarbird]

Can we just, I don't know, unplug that counter until we actually need it?

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

My reaction to the constant stream of these sort of things was finally to sit down and start doing my best to write superhero stories with characters that would be admired regardless of gender, and girls would actually want to be. It doesn't help the merchandizing fails, but it's what I can do.

It's amazing how powerful a motivation "That's awful. I can do better, and will" is. Even if you don't succeed, the practice helps.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's appreciated.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Kudos. One of the better ways to respond.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

" ....but I expected better of Target...”

She did? What ever gave her that idea?