12/31/2023 0 Comments Invisible woman comicsYes, we can object to how she is portrayed, but being a fictional character she cannot feel anything. Essentially, as I read I thought “that is not Sue Storm.” The pity I felt was not for the character as she was written in those cases, but that she’d have to be written that way to begin with and having such thoughts written into her head. 1, #169 (April 1976) – Words by Doug Moench, Pencils by Rich Buckler, Inks by Joe Sinnot) Who is he to tell a woman how to identify, even if I agree with what he’s suggesting about her being a grown-ass woman and not a “girl.” Luke Cage doesn’t buy it either, but he has the good sense to reply “It’s your business, lady…” and keep his mouth shut. She replies that her old name just “sort-of stuck,” and that “Invisible Woman” is “long and unwieldy” like “chairperson.” It’s a sad excuse, the kind of justification given by those that will tell you that language doesn’t matter, but that they will stubbornly refuse to change their use of it in the same breath, not seeing the irony of their position. I felt pity when I came across a few panels in a mid-70s issue- Fantastic Four #169, written by Doug Moench-wherein Luke Cage (a temporary fill-in for the Thing) asks Sue why she’s the Invisible Girl and not Woman, considering her own superpowers and the fact that she’s a mom. Thankfully, they do back up this wack argumentation with examples of Sue saving the day in a couple of previous adventures. While her teammates come to her defense, the “Lincoln’s mother” analogy they give is nearly as bad, reducing her value to the support she gives great men rather than the things she can accomplish herself. Kirby and Lee drew and wrote a story in issue #11 wherein the male members find a crying Sue upset about reader letters calling her useless and asking that she be removed from the group letters not unlike those actually published on the letters page of each issue. I felt pity reading those scenes in Lee/Kirby issues, because, as much as I love those early stories, Sue Storm, one of my favorite characters from my comics-reading 80s childhood, has had to repeatedly justify her existence both inside and outside of the narrative, and at least once, both at the same time. Reed always be diminishing Sue’s capabilities, even when he is trying to make her feel better (Fantastic Four Annual #2) I guess, the fact that the FF gig lets her get all dolled up like a 1960s beauty queen is some kind of advantage over the unkempt look that Kirby gives her when her slavish fate “as a drudge for merciless lizardmen” is imagined And I winced, when in issue #16 the FF are captured in the Microverse and Sue is threatened with being held in servitude as a scullery maid, because the terrible fate is presented without irony, despite her actually serving as maid for the men in the group. In another issue, she serves as the group secretary, as if Reed Richards could not invent some supersteno-bot to take notes. In Fantastic Four #14, the first family returns from an adventure exhausted, the men lying about, as Sue-who presumably would be just as tired as they are-decides to “do a little housecleaning.” Despite how the world Fantastic Four imagines frequently challenges Cold War ideas of masculinity and family, it still cannot imagine a woman as a rational independent human being who is not beholden to serve her male peers. This was not the first time in reading those early issues that I started at the acceptable degree of sexism in the comic. Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm frequently actually do act out in childish ways, but I don’t know of Reed admonishing them in a gendered way. The scene really reinforces the unwillingness of men to listen to women and treat them as they would other men, with discernible motives, concerns, and individual idiosyncrasies. “If only he understood women better,” she thinks, but she should be thinking this about Stan and Jack, not Reed, whose attitude is portrayed by the creators as reasonable male frustration with women having agency. Her rejoinder-”Oh, go polish a test tube or something!-is a fine zinger of a masturbation reference at the gray-templed egghead, but the next panel has her skulking in bed like a teenager, thinking to herself that she is only angry because she knows “he’s right,” reinforcing Reed’s characterization of her as infantile and prone to petty feminine whims. Reed calls her “scatterbrained and emotional” and suggests he knows better than she does what is in her own best interest. They are colleagues and teammates, but his respect for her as such is questionable in the scene. In the issue, Sue and Reed get into an argument, and Reed’s response is to adopt a patronizing tone that cannot be justified by his being her husband or even officially her boyfriend (since he wasn’t either yet)-not that such a relation would actually excuse his attitude.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |