Fearless, Authors and Illustrators, various
Marvel’s Fearless is yet another attempt to showcase female creators and female characters working in comic books today. This one is slightly less sad than the previous attempt of Girl Comics but it still has some pretty cringeworthy moments.
It’s just really unfortunate that we even still need a special volume to highlight that female content creators do in fact work for Marvel comics. I really hope that one day we’ll no longer need to make a point of gender or race or sexual identity every time a minority writes a good book. Unfortunately, we are clearly not there yet.
Fearless has a couple of decent stories within the pages and I enjoyed the overarcing summer camp story that tied the issues together. But as with many collections of short stories, most of them are forgetable.
Unfortunately, the one that sticks most in my mind is there because of all the wrong reasons. How about, when trying to be feminist, we don’t have a whole story dedicated to fashion, shopping, taking selfies, and other bullshit that has nothing to do with the characters? Seriously, the story ends with cut out fashion dolls.
Even when I was a kid I hated these things. I knew there was something fishy about my brother getting to play with a batmobile and me getting to play with paper dresses. The target audience for this book wouldn’t even have nostalgia for these stupid little toys, what were they thinking?!
So please excuse me for thinking that a book written in freaking 2019 (!) should be able to do better. This isn’t feminism, it’s pandering at best. At worst it’s indoctrinating young girls into thinking they should like models more than superheroes.
That specific offense aside, the stories are worlds better than the aforementioned Girl Comics. It helps that the stories actually focus on female heroes instead of Wolverine. Marvel is taking baby tiny little baby steps in the right direction. Maybe in another ten years we’ll have the final women of comics showcase and it will actually be awesome.
These collections should be driving readers to check out these female content creators. I love the work of Kelly Thompson but if Fearless was the first comic book I read with her as a writer I would probably be hesitant to start a book that she wrote alone. This would mean that I would miss out on Kate Bishop Hawkeye! And I love Kate Bishop!
Let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these collections, I’d like to know how other women feel about them.
3/5 female super heroes 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
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Buy it here: Fearless
Good on Marvel for trying. I cant say I am the target market they catered for here though..
Yeah, it’s weird they’d still do the cut-out dress stuff nowadays. I think the original Millie the Model comic (in the 50s/60s) had those cut-outs and it was a pretty big seller with girls back then. I think they even let readers send in ideas for new outfits and all that jazz, but maybe girls were still stuck in the wife/mother mindset back then and the comics were just catering to it. There are probably some girls who’d still be into the fashion stuff in Millie, but you’re right that most women today probably prefer a bit more depth to their role models, LOL.
It just seems so outdated now! Maybe if it had been obviously retro fashion it could’ve been cute and nostalgic but it was more cringey than anything