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“Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics”

Monthly Archives: January 2023

30/01/23 What Race Are My Cartoons?

I was experimenting last year with a MS Paint technique that produced semi-naturalistic results. The last image in the file is dated September 7th — two days before my fall classes started.

This one is dated September 6th, three days before classes:

The digital process is both odd (I showed part of the process here) and painstaking (I suspect actual artists would just draw something with a fraction of the effort), so it’s not surprising that I didn’t carve time out of my semester for more of these.

I’m now well into my winter semester, and though I was hoping to develop some of these images into comics, not only are they time-consuming to make, I don’t have the skill to create two detailed images that seem to represent the same person. In comics-theory terms, I call that recurrence, and the more naturalistic two (or more) images are, the harder it is to produce the viewer perception.

That’s one of the reasons most works in the comics medium are drawn in a cartoon style. Not only is the simplification practical (fewer lines to draw), but the exaggerations also defines a character quickly and distinctly.

Style also involves line quality. I have a pet peeve against computer-graphic line art that looks like computer-graphic line art — I think because of the artificially perfect sameness of the line widths? So for me, creating a recurrent cartoon requires designing not only an easily reproducible set of lines to represent a simplified and exaggerated character, but also a line style that’s interesting apart from the subject matter.

I started with this:

Not sure if the top lines register as hair or a nun’s habit. The absence of a body doesn’t help to clarify. So I expanded, still emphasizing a quick gestural representational style.

Technically, those figures aren’t made of single lines but of double lines that together scissor out shapes from a black background (my MS Paint hacks are easy to demonstrate but hard to describe in words). I’ve also been experimenting with using layers of words as texture, which (for reasons I don’t understand) reveal/create hidden colors when layered:

I like the effect in other contexts, but not particularly here. The process is interesting though. To create the word textures (“text-ures”), I started by making colored shapes, unsure which I would convert later:

I wasn’t planning on keeping any colors, and though I needed literally any three as a step in the process, my unexamined choices don’t seem random. Brown is a skin color, auburn is a hair color, and vibrant green only makes sense in clothes. Though I probably have a vibrant green shirt somewhere in my closet, my own hair is dark brown, and my skin could be called beige (probably Type II on the five-part Fitzpatrick skin scale).

If I had been subconsciously imitating my own skin, I might have created this:

I have also been working on a next monograph tentatively titled “The Color of Paper: Representing Race in the Comics Medium,” which includes analysis of the paradoxically representational qualities of background colors. Looking again at the text-ured versions, the interior areas of the figures’ skin is literally the white of this digital background. But I’m not sure if viewers register that white as “White” skin:

To explore that ambiguity further, I changed to grayscale colors: black lines, dark gray shapes, light gray shapes. The combination often creates the impression of black-and-white photography: the figure exists in color (somewhere) but is depicted (in the image) as though actual colors have been converted to naturalistically corresponding grays.

What does that reveal about impressions of race and ethnicity? I’m not sure. Is this a White person with dark hair in a medium-dark dress?

Is this a Black person with white hair and a white dress?

I don’t know the answers — including whether different viewers experience the images differently. I just applied for summer research funding to conduct a study about those sorts of perceptions (hopefully to be included in “The Color of Paper”), but while I was trying to design a cartoon, my visual preference first fell on this combination:

Which I then tested to see if I could create new images with a recurrence effect for viewers (including myself). Is this the same person?

More recurrence attempts followed, plus a return to “text-ured” clothes and hair:

I also vacillated on skin. Should it be light gray or should it be the background white of the negative spaces within the black lines?

The light gray I think is racially/ethnically ambiguous since the color ranges of skin for White people and Black people overlap (in the center of the Fitzpatrick scale). The background white could suggest very light skin and so would be less racially/ethnically ambiguous — although I can cite examples of Black characters depicted in this style too.

So I kept experimenting:

I eventually settled on a final design: white hair, light gray skin, text-ured dress, and width-fluctuating black lines. I chose that combination in part because the interior light-gray shapes interact with the black lines, imperfectly filling the spaces and so leaving inconsistent white edges. I find that stylistically interesting both to create and to look at. The “text-ures” are also fun to warp in a way that suggests fabric to me, and leaving the negative space within the area of the hair adds a contrast to the other two approaches.

So what race is my cartoon?

I still can’t say. Light gray interiors make the figure ambiguous — at least when judging race and ethnicity by skin color alone. Facial features are at least as important, and when skin color is indeterminate, the significance of facial features rises accordingly.

But that’s a topic for another blog.

My co-author Leigh Ann Beavers and I wrote in our textbook Creating Comics: “You have a character. Now you need to know what it looks like from any point of view. Draw it fifty ties (yes, fifty!). You’ll be the world’s expert by the end of this exercise.”

I’ve not hit fifty yet, but I’m getting there.

Though, who knows, maybe I’ll go back to semi-realism again too. Here’s one of my first from last May:

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23/01/23 Feminist Third Wave Rechristenings of Marvel’s Phase Four Superheroines (part 2 of 2)

Earlier this month I overviewed the Second Wave origins of Jane Foster, Carol Danvers, and Jenifer Walters. This week their characters transform even further.

Captain Marvel

Because Captain Marvel never became a popular character (Marvel published Captain Marvel only every other month before cancelling the series after #62 [May 1979]), Marvel allowed Jim Starlin to script and pencil the 1982 graphic novel Death of Captain Marvel, in which Mar-Vell dies of cancer.

Unlike the vast majority of superheroes whose apparent deaths are retconned as non-deaths, Mar-Vell is likely the only major Marvel superhero not to be restored after more than forty years. The editorial decision prompted Marvel to create a new character, presumably to maintain control of the trademark. Scripter Roger Stern and penciler John Romita, Jr. introduced Monica Rambeau in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 (October 1982) who transforms into an unrelated superhero and adopts the name “Captain Marvel” with no apparent reference to Mar-Vell.

Though Third Wave feminism begins several years later (arguably when Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989), because Rambeau is a Black woman, she reflects the later shift away from feminism focused primarily on white women. The vast majority of Marvel’s female superheroes, however, remained white.

After featuring Rambeau in The Avengers during the 80s, Marvel changed the character’s superhero name multiple times, applying “Captain Marvel” to other characters (including briefly Mar-Vell’s son, Genis-Vel), before Carol Danvers (who had also undergone multiple name changes) was rechristened “Captain Marvel” in scripter Kelly Sue DeConnick’s and penciller Dexter Soy’s Captain Marvel #1 (September 2012).

Deepening Danvers’ claim to her new name, scripter Margaret Stohl further retconned Danvers’ origin beginning in The Life of Captain Marvel #1 (September 2018), revealing that the Kree device that Thomas scripted in 1969 and that Conway retconned in 1977 to have duplicated Mar-Vell’s powers in Danvers had instead awakened Danvers’ own powers inherited from her Kree mother who had defected and lived as an Earth woman.

Ms. Marvel

Since Danvers’ assuming the name “Captain Marvel” left the name “Ms. Marvel” unused, editor Sana Amanat assigned scripter G. Willow Wilson and penciller Adrian Alphona to create Kamala Kahn in Ms. Marvel #1 (February 2014).

Like Amanat, Kahn is a New Jersey teenager of Pakistani immigrants. Because Kahn idolizes Carol Danvers, when her Inhuman superpowers emerge, she initially shapeshifts to look like Danvers (in the Ms. Marvel costume introduced by artist Dave Cockrum in 1978) before assuming an appearance of her own (which included the scarf of John Buscema’s original 1977 design).

Thor

Later the same year, Jane Foster assumed the title role in scripter Jason Aaron’s and penciller Russell Dauterman’s Thor Vol. 4, #1 (Oct. 2014), which replaced the previous Thor series that had featured the original character (though Thor’s Donald Blake identity had been discarded since 1983).

After Thor’s hammer chose Foster, she assumed the name “Thor” when in her superhero form, and Thor became known by the full name “Thor Odinson,” retconning “Thor” as having always been an abbreviation of that full name. Aaron’s Foster now calls him “Odinson,” explaining to him as she succumbs to cancer:

‘There must always be a Thor.’ That’s what I said right before I lifted Mjolnir and was transformed for the first time. I was honored to carry that mantle for a while. Honored that you bestowed upon me your own name. But it’s time you reclaimed who you are. […] There must always be a Thor. And now … once again … it must be you. […]  The hammer made me the Thunderer. But not you. You did that yourself. Odinson, look at me …”

Foster remains the title character until Mighty Thor Vol 2 #706 (June 2018), when she dies (though soon resurrected), and Thor Odinson returns beginning Thor Vol. 5 #1 (August 2018).

She-Hulk

After her initial series, The Savage She-Hulk, concluded on #25 (March 1982), Jennifer Walters appeared in multiple team titles and eponymous titles, including: The Sensational She-Hulk #1-60 (May 1989-February 1994), She-Hulk #1-12 (May 2004-April 2005), She-Hulk Vol. 2 #1-38 (December 2005—April 2009), and She-Hulk Vol. 3 #1-12 (April 2014-April 2015).

All-New Savage She-Hulk #1-4 (June 2009-September 2009) features a different character (a time-traveling Hulk descendant from an alternate future timeline) in the title role. Marvel had also introduced Red Hulk in 2008 and Red She-Hulk in 2009, expanding “Hulk” as a category rather than as a proper name.

When Walters assumed the title role in Mariko Tamaki’s Hulk Vol. 4 #1-11 (February 2017-December 2017), it was the first time she was featured in a series without She-Hulk in its title, and also the first time a Hulk title did not feature Banner, who at the time was dead (and not yet resurrected).

The trend continued with Totally Awesome Hulk #1-23 (February 2016-November 2017), which featured Amadeus Cho (who removed the Hulk from Banner and placed it himself) in the title role, after which the original character was known as “Banner Hulk,” appearing next in Generations: Banner Hulk & Totally Awesome Hulk #1 (October 2017).

As with Jane Foster who is no longer called “Thor” (Foster is currently “Valkyrie,” another superhero name and identity with a complex history I won’t try to cover here), Jennifer Walters is no longer called “Hulk.” Reverting back to her earlier name, Walters was next featured in She-Hulk #159-163 (January 2018-May 2018) and currently in She-Hulk Vol. 4 beginning with #1 (March 2022). The latest title coincides with the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which premiered in August 2022. She-Hulk Vol. 4 #12 is scheduled to be released in April 2023.

Reboots

The MCU versions of Foster, Danvers, Walters, and Kahn are reboots of these originals, condensing and altering their complex comics and inconsistently feminist histories.

In all four cases, the original superhero name (Hulk, Thor, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel) began as a proper noun that referenced one specific (and usually male) character, before the name later became either a transferable title referencing one person (of any gender) at a time or a kind of category referencing two (or more) people (of any gender).

  • “Hulk” originally meant only Banner Hulk, but now “Banner Hulk” means only Banner Hulk, and “Hulk” means multiple people including both Banner Hulk and Jenifer Walters.
  • “Thor” originally meant only “Thor Odinson,” but now “Thor Odinson” means only Thor Odinson, and “Thor” can mean different people including formerly Jane Foster and currently Thor Odinson.
  • “Captain Marvel” originally meant only Mar-Vell, but now “Captain Mar-Vell” means only Mar-Vell, and “Captain Marvel” can mean different people including formerly Mar-Vell and currently Carol Danvers.
  • “Ms. Marvel” originally meant only Carol Danvers, but now “Ms. Marvel” can mean different people including formerly Carol Danvers and currently Kamala Khan.

While the trend is toward gender-inclusive names (with “Hulk,” “Thor,” and “Captain Marvel” formerly male-specific but now gender-neutral), “Ms. Marvel” was and remains female-specific. That’s an artefact of the title originally meaning roughly “female version of Captain Marvel,” just as “She-Hulk” meant something like “female version of Hulk.”

Oddly in the MCU, Carol Danvers never used the name “Ms. Marvel,” and, even more oddly, neither does Kamala Kahn. Ms. Marvel is the title of a TV series whose main character never adopts a permanent superhero name. So the MCU includes Ms. Marvel but not Ms. Marvel.

Marvel Entertainment also chose to keep Jenifer Walters superhero name “She-Hulk,” despite Tamaki’s 1917 Hulk comics influence on the TV series. As a result, the MCU is arguably a feminist wave behind Marvel Comics.

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16/01/23 MLK

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

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09/01/23 Feminist Second Wave Origins of Marvel’s Phase Four Superheroines (part 1 of 2)

With the death of Black Widow and the supervillaining of Scarlet Witch, the MCU currently features only four major female superheroes, all recently introduced.

Captain Marvel (2019), one the last films in Marvel Entertainment’s so-called Phase Three projects, fully introduced Carol Danvers. Phase Four featured Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Kamala Khan in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel (2022), and Jenifer Walters in the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022).

I’m tempted to compare the MCU superwomen with the Fourth Wave of feminism, in part because Fourth Wave is largely a continuation of the Third Wave, much as Marvel’s Phase Four is a continuation of its Phase Three. But Phase Four owes far more to Second Wave feminism.

Though feminist waves are not dated consistently, Second Wave is typically understood to span from the early 1960s (President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law in June 1963) through the 1970s and 1980s, stopping before the 1990s. The male superheroes Hulk, Thor, and Captain Marvel, as well as two of the three female characters who later assume those names, originate in early 1960s comics, but few reflected any feminist attitudes during their first incarnations.

Banner, Blake, and Mar-Vell

The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962), cover-dated five months after the premiere of Fantastic Four, introduced the second superhero title under publisher Martin Goodman’s newly renamed Marvel comics. After caught in the radiation of a Gamma bomb detonation, Bruce Banner transforms into a “man-monster” with a distinct and separate identity.

Stan Lee scripts a pursuing soldier: “Fan out, men! We’ve got to find that – that Hulk!” Lee’s narrator responds: “And thus, a name is given to Bruce Banner’s other self, a name which is destined to become – immortal!”

Marvel followed the Hulk with Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) and Thor in Journey into Mystery #83 the same month. For Thor, Lee and penciller Jack Kirby created Don Blake, a doctor with a disability (Lee uses the adjective “lame”) who discovers an enchanted cane that transforms into a hammer with the etched explanation: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of … THOR.” The hammer also transforms Blake’s body (Kirby draws muscular bare arms and long wavy hair) and clothing (Kirby combines superhero cape and briefs with nominally Nordic boots and winged helmet). Despite the physical changes, Blake’s consciousness remains. After reading the inscription, he remarks: “Thor!! The legendary god of thunder!! The mightiest warrior of all mythology!! This is his hammer!! And I – I am Thor!!!”

Lee was apparently influenced by the pseudonymous Wright Lincoln‘s “Thor, God of Thunder” published in Fox Comics’ Weird Comics #1-5 (April 1940–August 1940), in which the Norse god decides: “I will invest an ordinary mortal with my great powers.”

The absence of a separate Thor grew increasing complex in the Lee and Kirby stories, with the transformed Blake visiting Asgard and interacting with characters who understand him to be the actual son of Odin, including Odin himself. Lee also scripted the character’s speech in faux Old English, further blending Blake and Thor. Eventually, Lee and Kirby retconned an explanation, revealing in Thor #159 (December 1968) that Odin had erased Thor’s memory and created the mortal identity of Don Blake: “Yet ever were thou son of Odin … though thou knew it not! Twas I who placed thy hammer in an earthly cave … so thou wouldst one day find it! … And find it though didst … when thy lesson had been learned!”

One of the last of Lee’s co-creations, Captain Marvel first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #12 (December 1967).

An unrelated Superman-derivative character of the same name had premiered in Fawcett Comics’ Whiz Comics #2 (February 1940), prompting DC to sue for copyright infringement.

When the legal dispute was finally settled in 1953 and Fawcett agreed to cease publishing the character, the market for superhero comics was decimated.

In 1966, after DC and Marvel had revitalized the genre, a third company, M.F. Enterprises, released a new Captain Marvel title featuring an unrelated superhero to capitalize on the now popular Marvel Comics name. Marvel responded by introducing their own Captain Marvel to secure a trademark claim. Unlike the Fawcett original, Lee and penciller Gene Colan’s Captain Marvel was literally a captain (in the military of the alien Kree race) with the last name “Mar-Vell,” which human characters interpret as “Marvel.” Gil Kane updated his costume in Captain Marvel #17 (October 1969).

Foster, Danvers, and Walters

Lee, Kirby, and co-scripter Larry Lieber (Lee’s brother) introduced Jane Foster as a love interest in Thor’s second issue, Journey into Mystery #84 (September 1962), in a variation on the superhero-formula triangle relationship established by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Action Comics in 1938. The Clark-Kent-like Dr. Blake secretly pines for his assistant nurse, who, fooled by Blake’s double identity, secretly pines for him and yet also for the hypermasculine Thor. Like Siegel and Shuster’s Kent, Lee and Kirby’s Blake feigns cowardice, explaining his absence during Thor’s heroics: “I was … ahh …. hiding behind the execution wall! I figured it was he safest place to be!” Foster expresses her disappointment in a thought bubble: “Hiding! Golly, why couldn’t you be brave and adventurous like — Thor!”

After Lee scripted Captain Marvel’s premiere, Roy Thomas took over the series, collaborating with Gene Colan when creating Carol Danvers in the subsequent issue, Marvel Super-Heroes #13 (March 1968). A U.S. general introduces her: “This is Miss Danvers! Man or woman, she’s the finest head of security a missile base could want!” Though the professional position of authority contrasts Foster’s assistant role when introduced six years earlier, Danvers narratively still serves as a Louis-Lane-derivative love interest, attracted to Captain Marvel while unaware of his secret identity when he poses as an earth man she is indifferent to. Mar-Vell also spends a lot of his superheroic time rescuing her.

As the women’s rights movement gained prominence in the early and mid-70s, Marvel introduced a range of female characters (Valkyrie, The Cat, Shanna the She-Devil, Satana, Tigra, Colleen Wing, Misty Knight, Storm, Red Guardian) and heightened older ones. A re-costumed Black Widow received her own series beginning in Amazing Adventures #1 (August 1970), and scripter Chris Claremont transformed Marvel Girl into the far more powerful Phoenix in Uncanny X- Men #101 (October 1976).

In Ms. Marvel #1 (January 1977), scripter Gerry Conway and penciller John Buscema reconceived Carol Danvers as the editor of Women Magazine, an allusion to Gloria Steinman’s Ms. magazine launched in 1972. Conway’s Danvers explains her career change: “Captain Marvel’s appearance at the Cape – and my inability to capture him – just about destroyed by security field career. I kept trying to hold it together, until I finally went back to my first love – writing.”

Danvers also suffers from migraines and black-outs, becoming a female version of Captain Marvel (Buscema’s costume design reproduces Mar-Vell’s, except with bare legs, stomach, and back) who is equally unaware of her double identity. When asked whether she has a name, she answers: “I don’t think I do!”

Though the title prefix “Ms.” was first proposed in 1901, and activist Sheila Michaels had been promoting it since 1961, it did not gain popular attention until Michaels was interviewed on a New York radio show in 1969, and Steinman and organizers of the Women’s Strike for Equality began promoting it the following year (Zimmer 2009). Danvers adopts “Ms. Marvel” by the end of her first adventure, and Conway later retcons an incident from Captain Marvel #18 (November 1969)  in which Thomas had scripted Mar-Vell rescuing Danvers from an exploding alien device, now revealing that Danvers had absorbed his alien abilities as a result.

Dave Cockrum redesigned her costume for Ms. Marvel #20 (October 1978).

Marvel introduced the premise of Jane Foster becoming Thor a year later in What If #10 (August 1978). Scripter Don Glut described the series as “just one-shots” that came about at parties: “We’d get a little bit happy and someone would say something like, “Hey! What if Spider-Man had two heads?” (Imageantra). Glut recalled the question and eventual issue title “What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor?” emerging from such a conversation with Rick Hoberg, who later penciled the story. Glut’s recollection also implies that the notion of a female Thor was as outlandish as a two-headed male superhero.

For What If #7 (February 1978), Glut and Hoberg had imagined that three different characters, including Spider-Man’s first girlfriend, Betty Brant, “had been bitten by the radiative spider.” Spider-Girl, the lone female variant, initially avoids using her super-strength but then accidentally kills a criminal and so chooses to end her superhero career.

Hoberg’s female Spider costume includes bare legs, arms, shoulders, upper chest, and cleavage, but he draws Thordis in a costume closer to Kirby’s original (her legs are bare, and two of the previously decorative chest circles are now protruding breast armor).

The Jane Foster What If issue title also avoids the question of identity by focusing on Foster finding the hammer rather than on her becoming Thor. As originally scripted, when Lee’s Blake transformed, he vacillated ambiguously between two identities. Glut scripts Foster to draw a different conclusion: “Obviously, if I’ve got Thor’s powers now, I’m not really Jane Foster … so maybe I should call myself something else. I remember from nursing school a Norwegian girl named Thordis; that has a nice sound to it. All right, then … that’s what I’ll call myself – Thordis!!”

Ultimately, Odin requires Jane to “surrender” the hammer because “ownership of Mjolnir hath ages ago been decreed by fate.” After the hammer transforms Blake into Thor and Odin restores his memory, Thor is united with his Asgardian love interest, Lady Sif.

Odin has also transformed Foster into a goddess as reward for her service, and she weeps over the “cruel joke” of being “made an immortal only to suffer an eternity — — separated from the man I love.”

She asks to be made mortal again, but Odin instead proposes marriage to her, which she accepts, realizing in the concluding full-page panel “that those very qualities she admired and loved in the mortal Don Blake — — are also to be found in the father of the immortal Thor.”

Jennifer Walters premiered two years later in The Savage She-Hulk #1 (February 1980). As with Captain Marvel twelve years earlier, Stan Lee and penciller John Buscema created the character for copyright reasons. The TV series The Incredible Hulk began airing in 1977, and Marvel feared that producer Kenneth Johnson, who had created the spin-off series The Bionic Woman from a character originally introduced on The Six Million Dollar Man, would create a female Hulk.

Acknowledging the Marvel character, Johnson later explained in an interview that “we had plans for Banner’s sister having a disease where only the blood of a sibling would save her life. We weren’t going to do a bra-popping She-Hulk, but we were going to do a woman Hulk who was crazy and scary and dangerous” (inverse.com). The character would have appeared in the fifth season—but the series was cancelled mid-season in 1982, two years after Marvel debuted their version of “a woman Hulk.”

In Lee’s script, Walters is Banner’s younger cousin, a retconned character who Banner calls “Little Jen” but who he hasn’t seen since before he “quit med school for nuclear physics,” so prior to The Incredible Hulk #1. Walters is also a “big time criminal lawyer” with “Jennifer Walters ATTN” on her office door.

Because she planted a rumor about having murder evidence, she is shot by a hitman while leaving her office, prompting Banner to perform an emergency transfusion. Walters reflects in the final panel: “The blood transfusion must have caused it!”

Like Banner whose transformed self was named descriptively, Walters is described by an onlooker: “It’s a girl! But — look at the size of her! Her skin! It’s – it’s green!  It’s like — she’s some kind’a She-Hulk!” She adopts the name: “whatever Jennifer Walters can’t handle – the She-Hulk will do!”

Though “Hulk” remains a proper name referencing Banner’s alter ego, like the 1974-78 TV series Police Woman or DC’s “Lady Cop” in 1st Issue Special #4 (July 1975), “She-Hulk” distinguishes the character as a female variant of a nominally ungendered but implicitly male category.

(Next week: Third Wave Rechristenings!)

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02/01/23 Indian Diptychs

I’m typing this on January 2nd, at the start of a final day in Kochi, India, before flying tonight and all day tomorrow to arrive back home tomorrow on January 2nd. That temporal diptych is made possible by the gutter of the international date line.

The diptychs below are divided by no gutters, but accepting my own default right-to-left and top-to-bottom reading paths, each is sequenced and so is in the comics form. If this blog counts as an occasional publisher of comics, they’re in the comics medium too, and so are webcomics, as well as photocomics. Most are not (or at least not primarily) narrative though, since each juxtaposition suggests different kinds of visual and thematic relationships.

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