Mostly.

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were the issues.  I don’t want to sound like a broken record but boobs on display in a high risk profession such as being a Gotham City criminal is not exactly clever – is it?  Harley was very nice to see as a significant part of the story that is out to scupper your plans, but her being called some less-than-charming things by the Joker’s own thugs was tedious to say the least, and when you actually fight Harley herself she is defeated ridiculously easily – in a cutscene no less.  Disappointing.

“Please don’t punch me in the chest, Batman. It’d be terribly inconvenient and I might have to reconsider my outfit!”

Ivy, when you first meet her, is lounging about in her cell – apparently the only female inmate – not wearing prison issues but her own clothes displaying her sizeable bust.  Later, in her boss fight, for some reason she decides to float about attacking you in what – as our ed described to me in an email – “appears to be a giant laughing vulva-plant which flaps open periodically to reveal she still isn’t wearing a great deal…”.  Super.

I’m pretty sure she gets referred to as some less-than-charming things too by henchmen.

Fast forward to Arkham City, which I got in another sale (but it still cost me £20), and now you can play as Catwoman too!  However, she appears to have fallen foul of Rule 1 of Sensible Female Armour: her suit is only ever zipped up to just below her breasts, allowing for ample cleavage.  When you fight thugs as Catwoman, you get called a ‘bitch’ but for some reason, if you’re Batman, you don’t get called a prick, a wanker, a bastard or even a knobend.  Really, people?

The assassins of Rā’s al Ghūl’s order are all for some reason scantily clad sex icons – as is his daughter – and the concept art is mainly essentially the sort of softcore you might find in lads’ mags.  In fact the vast majority of the concept art involving any female character is pretty oversexualised and repugnant.  We get to meet Ivy again, too, but it seems she still hasn’t bothered to find any clothes since the laughing vulva-plant incident.  And Harley is wearing even more revealing kit than last time.

Great graphics, but do we really need to see that much breast?

Now, even if we leave aside all of this sexist nonsense, Arkham City is somewhat disappointing anyway.  I finished the storyline in less than a day; the ending snuck up on me and was rubbish.  I won’t say what happens, but… just… what?!  That’s even before I get to the complaint I have with the huge continuity hole left at the end.  I was so disheartened by it that I did a Ragequit of Disappoints and haven’t gone back on it since.  Even though I still have lots of side quests and puzzles to solve, I just haven’t found the heart to go back to it.

Arkham Asylum was worth the £5 but City was definitely not worth the £20 – let alone the standard retail price in the range of up to £39.99!  The first game offered something new and interesting with a gorgeous noir feel much akin to Nolan’s reimagining of Gotham on film, if not grittier.  The second game whizzed past all too quickly, with no real indication that one should slow down, do side quests, do the puzzles and so on, lest you face the atrocious storyline ending.

Benefits of the second game, however, do exist; the world is larger, you get more gadgets and there are no area transitions between outdoor locations.  Plus you do get to play as Catwoman, even if she is just eye candy to be abused by burly henchmen. (Are there really no female crims in Gotham?)

Both games do fall down woefully at the Treating Female Characters with Respect hurdle.  Would it truly be so hard to think logically about the design of these people?  Does Batman walk around without his Kevlar body armour, flexing his pectorals, with a big “SHOOT HERE” target on his chest?  No.  No, he does not.  So why should Catwoman, or Ivy, or Harley?  Basic boob-sense would say maybe a comfy sports bra would be better than leather basques and flimsy shirts with only one button done up.  At least then the breast tissue wouldn’t detach during all this acrobatic criminality.

Also, Catwoman has anti-gravity boobs.

Image copyright Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean / DC Comics 1988

A while back I told you about my favourite cyborg, Battle Angel Alita. Well, now I’d like to introduce you to my favourite flying plant woman, in the second in my series on really old comic books I have a tenuous excuse to blog about. Here comes the excuse…

Like feminism? Like Neil Gaiman? Then you may be happy to hear that there is a new book being put together of essays about JUST THESE THINGS. Abstract submissions have just closed, and Death, Desire, Fury, and Delirium: Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman is on track to be published in early 2012.

This got me thinking back to Gaiman’s 1988 story Black Orchid. Unusual, poetic and full of references, I think it’s a cracking comic. And it’s illustrated by Dave McKean (channeling Georgia O’Keeffe) so it’s beautiful. Really – alternately lush and gritty, humming with colour, splattered with monochrome… it ruined other graphic novels for me from a very early age.

Since this is Gaiman, there are also some classy cameos: Lex Luthor, Batman, Swamp Thing (obviously) and a trip around Arkham Asylum which includes a for-once-actually-pretty-scary Poison Ivy.

What’s the story?

The original Black Orchid was a Bronze Age superhero who sounds pretty kickass (being invulnerable and superstrong and able to fly ‘n’ all…). But rather than simply rebooting the character and reworking her origin story, Gaiman does something pretty daring: he kills her off. On page ten. And with her the story sloughs off a heap of superhero clichés and leaps to somewhere and something altogether different.

As Black Orchid dies (caught out trying to infiltrate LexCorp) another being wakes up in a greenhouse somewhere else with some of her memories. The story follows her quest to discover her identity and protect herself and her clone sister – another human-plant hybrid – from the clutches of those who were pursuing the first Black Orchid, and from the abusive ex pursuing the woman she used to be.

Genderfun

I probably don’t need to say that there’s a lot of interesting stuff about identity and memory in there. There are also a lot of very feminine tropes about nature, healing, nurturing, non-violence and motherhood – the older Orchid acts as mother to her younger sister, and even Poison Ivy has some disturbing ‘babies’ in Arkham – which are certainly not commonplace in your standard superhero comic.

Poison Ivy. Image copyright Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean / DC Comics 1988

But this isn’t your standard superhero comic – this is a story about a superhero who isn’t a superhero. Who isn’t the same character she was when you started the book. All sorts of assumptions come tumbling down. Who’s the Big Bad? When’s the big fight? What’s her snappy comeback?

Like its contemporary Watchmen, the story questions the superhero myth and structure, upends and subverts it, teases out the stories stuck between the monoliths of Good and Evil. But it comes at it from an entirely different place. You could argue that in Watchmen the myth of the superhero consumes itself in a hyper-masculine world of science and violence, while in Black Orchid superheroic power is rejected for a hyper-feminine power of nature and passive resistance.

In fact Dr Julia Round has argued the second bit. In her paper ‘Can I call you “Mommy”?’ Myths of the female and superheroic in Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Black Orchid she explains firstly how the “non-egoistic collectivism” of Black Orchid’s shared, continuous identity overturns the “heroic individualism” of the superhero myth.

Even the look of the book resists the powerful iconography of the traditional superhero story – think of Superman’s ‘S’ and the bat sign, the cape, and even the idea of the costume itself:

Black Orchid inverts expectations of this type, as the Orchids are not costumed or linked to any specific logo. Instead they are characterized by splashes of colour in a monochrome cityscape and, in their natural surroundings, simply merge with the background. This aesthetic contributes to Black Orchid’s redefinition of the superheroic, using painted artwork that is feminised in its watercolour appearance and use of purple shades.

As the plot progresses, Black Orchid resists and escapes the men pursuing her, but doesn’t attack them. Batman encourages her to become a crime-fighter like the first Black Orchid, but she retreats. As Round says, “she is not a masculine defender of the state, but instead wants only to retreat from society and reproduce.” Yes, really. I did say hyper-feminine (‘a woman’s just gotta nurture!’)  Much as I love Black Orchid, it certainly throws up some problems. How can I give a thumbs up for her non-violent resistance and at the same time be hoping she’s going to impale the bad guy on a tree?

The final showdown between Black Orchid and Luthor’s henchmen isn’t a heroic battle, as Black Orchid refuses to go with them but also refuses to fight them, saying just “Do what you have to do.” I won’t spoil the ending, but I can say it’s not the way Alita would have done it.

Ecofeminism

Image copyright Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean / DC Comics 1988

That said, Alita does sacrifice herself at the end of her series to save the world. But only after she’s exhausted every possible ass-kicking route. In fact Black Orchid makes an interesting contrast with Battle Angel Alita, as the ‘cyborg feminism’ for which I think Alita makes such a good figurehead was proposed as an alternative to the popularity of ‘ecofeminism’ in the early 1980s. And I can think of few better poster girls for ecofeminism than Black Orchid.

Broadly, ecofeminism is a branch of our beautiful multiple complicated movement that focuses on a connection (and an implied sympathy) between the exploitation of the natural world and the oppression of women. There are a lot of sound reasons to make this link: women are usually affected first and worst by environmental damage, women make up the majority of the world’s agricultural workers, and yet it is overwhelmingly men who own land and control access to natural resources. And the association of the feminine with nature and Mother Earth is a deep and powerful one, which has been cast in a renewed positive light, thanks largely to ecofeminism.

Sadly though the movement has also spawned a lot of guff – about wafty earth goddesses, women’s spiritual connection to the natural world, their innate love of cute fluffy animals and the terrifying, all-encompassing juggernaut of their need to nurture something, anything – to which I do not subscribe.

But to show I don’t hold the theory to blame, I’d like to direct you to some brilliant and important work being done in the name of ecology and feminism by the Women’s Environmental Network. Also: go and read Black Orchid, and tell me what you think.

A couple of disclaimers…

• I’m using ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ to refer to the traits, qualities, symbols and associated ideas that are loosely grouped around those words in most Western culture and emphatically NOT referring to men and women.
• When I’m talking about the ‘superhero myth’ I’m using ‘myth’ in the semiotic sense (as Round does in her article) rather than ‘myth’ in the straight up stories and legends sense. There’s quite a good definition here for anyone who’s interested.