Lately, though, something has been stirring in the Tumblsphere (which is definitely a word shut up SHUT UP). Comic portrayals of female characters have been questioned, dissected, and found to be both objectification-tastic, and downright anatomically impossible.

Now, if there’s anything that Tumblr loves, it’s mixing up social justice with fandom.

Thus, The Hawkeye Initiative was born. The rules are simple: find a female character in comics being portrayed as an object and/or in a position that human anatomy would simply laugh at, then redraw Hawkeye in that pose, wearing the same outfit.

It is a thing of beauty. Let me show you what I mean. Click a thumbnail to open each image without leaving this page.

[See image gallery at badreputation.org.uk]

If you’re a Tumblr user, The Hawkeye Initiative is a Tumblr despite its domain, and can be followed like any other. If you have a sense of humour and an understanding workplace, I think it’s unlikely that you’ll regret doing so.

Comics: Gingerhaze

If you’re on tumblr and involved in fandom at all, you might have seen her art around, but if not, Gingerhaze (aka Noelle Stevenson) is a talented young artist based in Maryland, working on her illustration degree and spending her spare time drawing some pretty neat comics on her Wacom tablet.

Covering franchises such as the Avengers, X-Men, Sherlock, Lord of the Rings, Supernatural and The Hunger Games, Noelle’s simply drawn yet instantly recognisable characters, together with her sense of humour, have won her a lot of fans. She says: “I mercilessly make fun of everything I love. It’s my particular way of disguising the sheer magnitude of the feelings that I have.” And the running jokes in her art – the hipster hobbits of the broship of the ring, Marvel Comics’ Loki characterised as Thor’s annoying little brother – could be what keep people coming back.

Here at BadRep Towers, we love her take on the Scooby Doo characters Daphne and Velma: “You hurt my nerd, you’re going down!” There should be a word for bromance between two women, because that is CLEARLY what tattooed, chain-smoking Daphne and hipster glasses-wearing Velma have going on. A ladybromance? We also love how Noelle highlights the marginalisation of Mystique, or at least the limitations of the way the character was written, in the X-Men: First Class movie and fandom in her ongoing GO AWAY MYSTIQUE series (Jesus, Mystique, stop ruining everything, seriously).

Novel: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel

You may or may not know (depending on whether you’ve ever read the Team BadRep bios) that I’m an editor at a science fiction and fantasy publishing imprint. I left Solaris in October to go to another SFF publisher,  so I hope you’ll take that as proof I have no commercial motive when I recommend a badass little fantasy that Solaris publish – Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold. It’s coming out in January 2012.

Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex… other things, runs the best brothel in Scalentine; city of many portals, two moons, and a wide variety of races, were-creatures, and religions, not to mention the occasional insane warlock. She’s not having a good week.  The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, women in the trade are being attacked, it’s tax time, and there’s not enough money to pay the bill.  So when the mysterious Darask Fain offers her a job finding a missing girl, Babylon decides to take it…

Babylon Steel is not for the kind of feminist who thinks all sex workers are evil or need to be saved from themselves, but I really hope we don’t have any of those here – it’s more for the kind of fantasy fan who’s read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books and wishes he’d write one about the, er, Seamstress’s Guild (hem hem!). It acknowledges the bad and the good side of the job, featuring a wicked sense of humour, S&M in the basement, a big green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and a great epic fantasy story with a fun cast of characters, too. 

The Hunger Games Trailer

The trailer finally came out! And it looks just as good as we hoped…

A YA dystopian story with a kickass female protagonist, a great cast of characters and set in a gritty, well-realised post apocalyptic world? Sign us up!