Your average comic blog is easy to find in this crazy world called the internet. Just google “Final Crisis,” and you’ll find pages and pages of boys talking about comics. But there’s one that outblogs all the other blogs ever blogged.
Living Between Wednesdays is the best, most hilarious, funnest comics blog out there. It’s written by my co-worker/band-mate/BFF, Rachelle Goguen, but personal bias aside, it totally rules.
Rachelle has a deep, undying love of comics, coupled with a critical eye for sexism.
She is also hilarious. This is one for my favourite posts, about an Archie comic where Dilton starts a band.
Living Between Wednesdays might be best known for Rachelle’s Rating the Super Hunks posts. This is where she posts pictures and rates super hero guys on personality, sexiness of powers, costume, etc. My favourites are Daredevil and Iron Man. The comments page often turns in to a debate between readers who are outraged that like, Cyclops only got 7/10 on personality or whatever.
Rachelle also posts about the sexist crap that so often appears in comics. Her post about the now infamous Mary Jane statue started a huge inter-debate. The statue was of Spider-man’s wife, Mary Jane, looking anatomically insane, bent over with her boobs hanging out and a thonged butt, washing Spider-man’s suit in a bucket. Totally gross. Lots of people were outraged, while others argued that it was not sexist, but just “fantasy” so it’s okay to be totally unrealistic.
You can count on Rachelle to point out sexism in comics in the most hilarious, snarky way possible. I think she’s really part of a driving force that’s changing women and comics. It’s like, you know how when some dude says something creepy to you, and you’re by yourself, you feel all angry, and sad and scared? But when you’re with your friends, and a dude says something creepy, you can laugh at what a total idiot he is and basically think of the meanest possible things you can say about him? Yeah, that’s how Rachelle is making ladies feel in the comic world. Totally BACKED!
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six comments
This is great. I spent like an hour reading her Super Hunks column, and I don't even know a thing about mainstream comics. Come to think of it, it would be sweet to have a companion column for underground comix, where you can rate Julie Doucet's skeezy boyfriends or something.
Posted by Anna
June 30, 2008, 10:24 PM
I think the Super Hunks thing is great. And really subversive.
Characters in mainstream comics are so hyper masculinized, and the situations are often pretty homoerotic, but the comics scene is so much of a straight boys club. Yet Batman and Captain America and all those dudes are pretty much designed to be perved on. I'm glad that Rachelle takes advantage of that!
Posted by Tiina
July 4, 2008, 6:39 PM
Maybe this is an obvious point that everyone reached years ago, but it seems indicative of something or other that no one worries about male comic book heroes posing the threat of unrealistic body standards to young boys the way it is with female bodies in comics (and everywhere else). I guess I never realized the extent to which male superheroes are portrayed as these insane fleshcake muscle-hunks. But jeez louise, after a while even I started getting a complex about my pecs. I wonder why it is that male comic characters aren't held to the same standards and critiqued the way women in comics are.
Is it that women's bodies are so hypersexualized that any skintight costume and oversize anatomy automatically equals something naughty, where for men it just shows strength (supposedly, though Rachelle's column has definitely given me an eye for a tight super-booty)? Is it that girls are assumed to be more susceptible to feeling bad about their bodies? Is it just that, having been on the business end of an oppressive patriarchal culture for centuries we gals are just more likely to get outraged at how we're portrayed?
I'll mull over that one in bed.
Posted by Anna
July 5, 2008, 12:52 AM
Rachelle is clearly a genius. Who could ever knock Batman out of top hunk position?? I did used to have an inexplicable crush on Beast in the X-men cartoon, I love a sexy unpredictable nerd, even if he is um hairy and blue...
Posted by Shawna
July 5, 2008, 2:39 AM
Anna - this reminds me of the countless articles I read criticising Bratz dolls for hypersexualising young women, and giving them unrealistic ideals early in life. And I couldn't help thinking, "Ok, but what about GI Joes and Action Man? Why is nobody asking why every little boy has to grow up wanting to be this heroic macho ideal?"
And I think it comes down to the contradictions in society's demands of women - you have to look like sex, but not have sex. And if you spend your childhood looking at too many scantily clad women, you might grow up to be a slut. But don't, whatever you do, put some clothes on that doll, because if nobody can see your breasts and your hips then obviously you're a man, or at the very least you're completely undesirable, and that's EVEN worse than being a slut. Who's confused?
There's no ambiguity about the message guys are sent growing up: you must be tough, you must be strong, you must be action man.
Posted by Cate
July 5, 2008, 6:51 AM
Aw, thanks Tiina! This makes me feel even worse for not doing a companion Catwoman post.
Posted by Rachelle
July 8, 2008, 10:12 PM
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