2010 – The Year of the…Women?

X-treme Rogue

One of Marvel’s many goals for 2010 was to celebrate women of all types; whether heroines, villains, artists, writers or other contributors to the Marvel Universe. Many believe that one of Marvel’s greatest weaknesses is their perception and representation of women in their comic books. I disagree.

In the past when women were required and expected to be stay at home mothers and generally seen and not heard Marvel (as well as many other comic book companies) had female characters. Marvel may not have made every female character positive but they didn’t make every male character positive either. Fictional characters are boring without depth and faults. Marvel did an amazing job in X-men of creating strong relatable female characters along side their popular male characters.

Uncanny X-men

Rouge, arguably one of their stronger members of the team, was extremely popular with the female fans. She was physically strong and had the power to become stronger by stealing the powers or strength from mutants and humans a like. Rouge's amazing power was also her greatest weakness; she was unable to have physical contact with anyone while she didn’t posses the control of her powers. Her tragic love story with Gambit captured the hopeless romantic female readers. Thankfully the die-hard fans were rewarded with some Gambit and Rogue action in a few comics like X-treme X-men. (Which after hearing about her new control of her powers in this series I immediately went to my amazing local comic book shop to order)

Stepford Cuckoos

X-men also stars strong characters such as Jean-Gray, Storm, and even some tragically amazing villains such as Mystique and Magneto’s daughter the Scarlet Witch. While looking into each of these characters from the X-men universe as well as many more it is easy to see that Marvel didn’t have a vendetta against women. They had character ideas, plot line ideas and the worked like any creative person would. Their characters were not created to promote women in a negative way but just another character created (whether female or male) to have personality, depth and to help the story to progress.

Pixie

Lately Marvel has heard the cries of under appreciated female fans and is trying to over compensate for perhaps not giving the female characters enough ‘lime-light’ or positive qualities. I am afraid that Marvel may be pushed too far and while trying to appease it’s female viewers it may in fact alienate them more. I am glad the female fans and employees are being recognized and celebrated but I believe there are better ways for Marvel to promote their female characters then in this gimmick. The strong female characters deserve more then to just be used as tools to appease some angry female fans. Some women are not of amazing moral caliber and some are the most sincere imaginable. Emma Frost will forever be of low moral fiber and have enough plastic surgery to look amazing and I wouldn’t want her any other way. On the same thought Rogue is a strong female presence (when written correctly) with great ability to be both sincere and extremely selfish, she may have mutant powers but she still has human emotions.

Rouge will forever be one of my favourite characters because of how REAL she is portrayed in the X-men 90’s animated TV show and many of Marvel’s comics that feature her.

Thank you Marvel for recognizing women, but heed these warning ands be tactful.