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The Size of the Pie
This idea has been stuck in my head for a while now.
Yesterday, I was reading an article about DC's latest reboot; they now have only two women working on the 52 DC Universe titles (one author writing two titles, and one artist doing one cover). That's out of 209 artists/writers/cover artists.
The sole female writer called on DC to hire more women, and one of her fellow creators was unhappy about that. His argument, albeit not in so many words, was 'which of the us do you want to get fired for this?'
And this seemed like entirely the wrong question. DC and Marvel's superhero comics are read by, I dunno, maybe a couple million people. Out of the seven billion people in the world, these giants in the field are reaching maybe a thousandth of a percent. And it's not that people don't like superheroes: I'd guess that at least ten times as many people watched Captain America as read even one superhero comic in 2011.
So this guy is saying 'I don't want to lose my job to some woman just because she's a woman and there aren't enough jobs for everyone'. Which is totally understandable. Except that it ignores the ability of people to MAKE MORE JOBS. It ignores that maybe if the DC Universe wasn't a No Gurlz Allowed club, maybe it would appeal to more people. Not just women, but men too. Maybe if you weren't so jealously intent on protecting your little bitty pie from anyone else getting a slice, you'd find out that you could make a much bigger pie.
But it's not just this one little thing. It's so many things where I feel like we as humans are totally misguided, where we act as if resources were not just finite but narrowly bounded, as if there's a fixed amount of wealth in the world and there can never be any more so we have to grab as much of it as we can and keep anyone else from getting their hands on it. We can't let immigrants into our country and steal OUR JOBS. We can't let people get rich because that should be OUR MONEY. We can't be happy for a friend's successful blog because those should be OUR READERS.
One blogger called it 'slottiness', when aspiring writers would get jealous of another being published, as if that author had taken their slot. But we do it with so many things. It seems like common sense to think that if one person gets X, the next person can't.
But it's still wrong. There's so much that we can create. Life is not zero-sum. We don't have to make sure someone else loses in order for us to win.
Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.
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And it's not as bad as you're making it out. Marvel's branched out into making comic book versions of published novels, and importing popular European comics and releasing them under their label. DC's been putting out random non-superhero comics under the Vertigo category for decades. Both of them are trying to take their core IP and revitalize it for new markets by going into movies and video games (on the theory that the comic book format itself is the problem).
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But I feel like comics are not the problem -- there's a huge audience for manga! And superheroes are not the problem -- the superhero movies have mostly been blockbusters! The single paper issue may be a problem: they're expensive to make and hard to stock. Maybe the monthly deadlines are too tight. I don't know. I just can't help feeling like they gave up on superhero comics and are just trying to sell them on what the suits think are their strengths: exaggerated anatomy, T&A, and exaggerated violence. Everything else -- plot, characters, continuity -- is irrelevant.
But I've been out of it a long time, so maybe it's not as bad as the glimpses I get of it make it look.
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...and I didn't see it. She changed from 'optimistic and dorky' to 'bitter misfit' which doesn't seem like a huge stretch. She wears skimpy clothing for the same reason she always wore skimpy clothing which is that she's socially awkward and overly proud of her heritage, and doesn't care what it makes people think about her (that's *their* malfunction).
And she's in a story about 'Red Hood' tracking down the evil demigod who had a bunch of his friends assassinated. She's the muscle. Last issue someone pulled a superman-kryptonite style gambit on her to take her out of the picture. I don't see how you can reasonably say she's there for T+A.
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One of my coworkers is a big superhero comics nerd. I should ask her what her favorites are, because now I'm kinda wanting some. :)
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Anyway, I definitely agree: If you're in a struggling business, you can't be looking at the idea that you've got a finite pie that can only be sliced up so many ways. Cutting up the pie into smaller pieces just for the sake of doing so will have the predictable effect of ... just making smaller pieces. However, if you're running out of pie, then get back there and BAKE ANOTHER PIE.
Now I'm hungry for pie. Apple, specifically. Ala mode would be nice.
Getting back to my mangled metaphor, hiring a new artist or writer who's DIFFERENT than the current crew can be worth it as a gamble (it might or might not pay off, of course) if the intent is to generate new and different material to appeal to people who wouldn't otherwise be buying your product, rather than "cannibalizing" your own readership.
That's what I'd hope would be the plan, anyway.
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And, yeah, I am not into diversiy-for-diversity's sake generally, but when your organization is 99% male, you gotta at least consider the possibility that you may be missing some useful perspectives. c.c
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After you pointed that out last night I picked a fewrandom comics from my stack looking for that sort of horrible poses and didn't find anything. Well, zero examples of the stupid 'boob and butt' pose or the detached leg silliness but one example of someone with way too narrow of a waist I guess.
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Just to be clear, I was thinking of the superhero comics that I remember from when I was still reading them (which was 15+ years ago!) and the images that I've seen from new ones online (which could easily be cherry-picked to be stupid, obviously). It's the look I remember from Marvel/DC/Image. I didn't think it was common outside of those three, although I guess Escher Girls had some manga in there.
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I think of the posed-ness as part of the continuing exaggeration in superheroes to make them more "super". Akin to the way that the figures have always been 8 heads tall and have exaggerated chests and narrow waists and broad shoulders (this applies to male and female), but applied to pose instead of just shape. So that everything looks over-the-top and extreme and action-y. I can see why the artists make the choice, and I'm not saying it's all about objectifying women by any means. But I really don't like it.
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I am honestly not trying to tear down or deride comics as a whole. v.v I read dozens of online comics and still love them a lot. There's probably tons of variety even in superhero comics, and I'm just not seeing it. v.v