Amazing Spider-Man #674 preview

[cyberghostface]

Look's like Carlie decided to come back from her home planet...and with a new makeover to boot.



So once again, Carlie's Mary-Sueness is in full effect, having deduced what the cops around her couldn't figure out (especially since this isn't the first time in the Marvel universe that supervillains have killed people via dropping them from heights) and ends up looking better for it with the cops disrespecting her. Seriously, look at that cop's sneer. Poor Carlie, how could anyone hate her?

Of course, turns out Carlie has yet another new look with her only distinguishing factor in her appearance being that she has glasses.

Just a reminder, this was how Carlie looked last issue. This is becoming ridiculous now--has anyone ever thought of making a model sheet for the character to pass around to new artists for some sort of consistency? She's been around for years now and no artist has agreed on what she should look like. 

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

Eh, most of those are semi-consistent actually. The only one that really stands out is the first one.

Honestly, while I'm no fan of the character I find some of the commentary here vaguely misogynistic and unsettling.

[cyberghostface]

How is anything in this discussion misogynistic?

All the comments have pointed out are:

1. The inconsistency in her character design
2. The writing in the scene from the comic and how it relates to other tropes/cliches

[arilou_skiff]

Calling her an alien? That's pretty textbook dehumanizing.

[cyberghostface]

It's a reference to Poochie from the Simpsons...

[valtyr]

An alien dog? Surely doubly dehumanising.

[fifthie]

An alien dog voiced by Homer Simpson! Inhumanity cubed!

[schmevil]

Why are we doing the Poochie thing again? Come on.

[fifthie]

Calling her an alien? That's pretty textbook dehumanizing.

Comics: dehumanizing Superman every day since 1938.

[auggie18]

It was a reference to a joke that somebody made in the last last Carlie thread. A joke that got somebody banned.


Also, it seems like this board has a generally good attitude towards aliens.

[cleome45]

...A joke that got somebody banned...

Uh, no. It didn't. I personally thought a couple of the jokes had creepy-ass lol!fridging overtones and asked a mod about it. Two people who made jokes got mod notes. Somebody else who white-knighted for them after the fact (and was a complete butthead about it), got banned.

Go back to the top of that thread and read it again, if you don't believe me.

[auggie18]

....I didn't say that the person who posted the joke got banned. I said the joke got somebody banned. No joke would've meant no white-knighting and no ban.

[cleome45]

Not how I would've put it, but... okay.

Well,

[pervymax]

That really seems like.....quite a stretch.

Mod note

[greenmask]

Please don't react to suggestions of misogyny with italic emphasis and a "well PROVE it" attitude.

If you really want to know, ask in a way that does not put the commenter on the witness stand. Calmly.

[fifthie]

I too am unsettled by people reacting to terrible characters by disliking them.

[auggie18]

Laughter. Actual laughter. (LAL?)

[cleome45]

I'm fine with people disliking characters because they're badly written/drawn, shoehorned into a narrative badly, etc.

But there's enough misogyny coming from the actual Big Two's canon without fans adding to it just because a female character's not all she should be.

Sorry

[pervymax]

But a character, female or otherwise, who's not all they should be lacks character, by definition . Since 'she' is badly developed as a character, then people tend to point that out.

The fact that 'she' also visually inconsistent underscores this point, since 'she' is not really a she: 'she' is a piece of imagination give (lack of) form via her visual representation and her characterization. Both of which are, as you might say, 'not all she should be' .

Re: Sorry

[valtyr]

What's your point? cleome45 didn't say any and all negative responses to Carlie Cooper are misogynistic.

It is possible to be misogynistic while discussing a poorly designed and executed female character. It's even possible to be misogynistic while making legitimate critiques about characterisation.

Re: Sorry

[cleome45]

I didn't say it's wrong to critique how the character's written and drawn, did I?

What I find creepy are jokes like "Carlie Cooper died on her way to her home planet" or and then a clown car pushed a refrigerator on her and crushed her like a pancake.

No matter what the original context of the joke, against the backdrop of the Big Two's canonical misogyny, jokes along the lines of haw haw she should die are really off-putting. And unnecessary.

Re: Sorry

[an_idol_mind]

Just curious - not being snarky or sarcastic here...

Would it be all right if those exact same jokes were made about a male character? Because if so, that strikes me as both hypocritical and something that flies in the face of actual feminism, which is supposed to be about equality between the genders, not handling one gender with kid gloves.

I can see how one could call criticism of Carlie misogynistic if she's being ripped as too "girly" or even if the criticism focuses around the fact that she's Spider-Man's girlfriend. But to be overly restrictive of criticizing her on the basis that she's a female character would not be serving a positive purpose.

Now if people would be having the same objections to Hal Jordan being the butt of a Poochie joke or something similar, then at least that's consistent. But I get the feeling that nobody would bat an eye if the same things were said about him, and I don't think that attitude serves the community well at all.

Re: Sorry

[cleome45]

"Kid gloves?" Really?

I think it's pretty understandable if women feel protective of women characters, given how rare they are and how seldom they're the center of cultural narratives.

Equality would be nice, but I'm not going to judge these situations now as if we've already got it, when we don't. Or that as the less powerful gender in the equation, the onus is always on me to be high-minded and turn the other cheek no matter how much this shit pisses me off.

If we don't speak up when dissymmetry bothers us, how will there ever be equality? The powerful will just continue to claim that they didn't know there was a problem since nobody ever complained.

Also, I really don't recall seeing tons of jokes about how Peter should be killed because he's being written OOC or drawn poorly. If they've been abundant on the Spiderman threads, I'd really like some links, please.

One more time: In the context of misogyny in comics, jokes about killing off female characters for the "crime" of being badly written, drawn, or unliked by fans is gross.

Re: Sorry

[cyberghostface]

Also, I really don't recall seeing tons of jokes about how Peter should be killed because he's being written OOC or drawn poorly. If they've been abundant on the Spiderman threads, I'd really like some links, please.

I've made quite a few of them. In particular, when Ultimate Spider-Man died, I said "It should have been the other one." and numerous other people said "Hear hear." I've said that I wanted Norman Osborn to kill him during Dark Reign. Etc.

Carlie's an annoying Mary Sue, but NuPeter is a complete asshole.

Re: Sorry

[cleome45]

Okay.

I stand by my opinion that the context isn't the same, though.

I've made at least one joke about how I'd rather they bumped off Wolverine instead of the Scarlet Witch. (When somebody started a thread suggesting that Wolverine kill the Scarlet Witch.) But Wolverine to me is overexposed, horribly written compared to what he was like when he debuted and, consequently, boring as shit.

Again, the situations can't really be comparable because the status of male vs. female characters is so different.

Joking aside, though, I really don't like death-o-rama in superhero comics at all. It's rarely done well, it's rarely permanent, and I tend to think that writers who can't think of any other way to dispose of disliked characters aren't very good writers.

Mod Note

[salinea]

Context matters. Women and men aren't viewed and treated the same way in our societies, and that's why some words are judged to be more harmful to women, when the most equivalent words used against men do not have the same impact or the same heinous connotations.
Moreover trying to object to the existence of that context and pretending to do so in the name of feminism is a classic derailing criticism. (If you don't know much about derailing, check this out). Please, don't do it anymore.