Monday, June 3, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

New X-men team is all women

Posted: 02 Jun 2013 09:15 AM PDT

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A new page for women in comics, as the X-Men features an all-women team?
There is something slightly different about the latest X-men issue to hit the stands: all the X-men are women.

X-men #1 features Rogue, Storm, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke and Rachel Grey as they fight off an alien invasion and a feud between twins that has spanned millenia. It is the first time the X-men team has consisted solely of women.

Despite having stong female characters, there has been a lack of female-led comic titles in the Marvel Universe. In 2011, Wolverine’s clone X-23 had her series cancelled. At the time, it was Marvel’s only female-led solo title.

Jump two years and things have certainly improved, with five female-led comics: Captain Marvel, Red She-Hulk, Journey into Mystery, Fearless Defenders and of course X-Men. Unfortunately, due to low sales Red She-Hulk has been cancelled, with the final issue appearing in July 2013.

When it comes to women and comics, part of the issue lies not only in a lack of female characters, but in the way they are depicted.

With inhuman body proportions, very revealing costumes and posing in uncomfortable and hypersexualised poses, female superheroes have not always spoken to women.

Although this new X-men line-up is a welcome move to showcase more female characters, not all fans were pleased when Marvel announced the new series.

Some of the responses from existing fans when Marvel announced the new series were disappointingly predictable.

Jeanine Schaefer, editor of the series, said in an interview with the Mary Sue that she could have created a set of pre-printed set of bingo for the comments: “pandering”, or even “countdown to adding men to the line-up”.

Brian Wood, writer of X-men, tweeted about some of the letters he had received about the series, letters which called the female crew ‘reverse sexism’ or argued that male characters would improve the book.

However, these reactions don’t reflect the response the issue has received since its release.

Kelly Thompson from Comic Book Resources gave the issue five stars out of five, saying that ‘Teeming with powerful, fascinating characters, enticing action, a smart villain, high stakes and stunning visuals, “X-Men” #1 is on the short list for best superhero book of the year’.

A poll saw almost half of respondents give the issue five stars out of five.

Perhaps part of the success of this issue lies in the fact that although the all-women team signals a departure from the norm, they have not been relegated to a special edition one-off or spin-off. They simply happen to be the protagonists in the new X-men series.

When it comes to how this series was launched, it is clear that it was a natural progression rather than a shoe-horned exercise.

Brian Wood, writer of the series, had as his last X-men team a predominantly female team, with one male character, Colossus.

After seeing how well that team worked, Jeanine Schaefer asked Brian whether they could try an all-female team. As she explains in an interview, he loved the idea and ‘had about 75 ideas for stories he wanted to tell and characters he wanted to play with’.

With the X-men and its wealth of complex female characters, an all woman team could be created without their gender becoming the focus, or becoming a particular ‘thing’, because ‘they’re all X-men’.

The focus is very much on the X-men being about what they have always been about.

As Schaefer stated, ‘Saving the world, punching villains, romance, it's everything you'd expect to find in any X-Men comic’.

Many people have asked why this series, featuring isn’t called X-Women rather than X-men. It’s very simple, tweeted Brian Wood, ‘They’re classic X-men, they haven’t been anything but’.