Girly Comics: Marvel Divas
By Lisa Fary
Marvel Divas was bought with all the embarrassment that came with buying my first Cosmo as a teenager. SEX! ORGASMS! the magazine cover shouted as the cute cashier rang it up with a grin and I wished the floor would open up and swallow me. Somehow, the Marvel Divas all doing their best Blue Steel from the comic’s cover seemed worse.
At least the purchase took place in an out of town comic shop where I only shop once every couple of years.
“Don’t laugh at me for buying this,” I said at the counter, holding up the comic. “It’s kind of embarrassing.
“Never,” the cashier said. “You’re in a comic shop, so you must be awesome.”
Why the embarrassment?
For starters, Marvel Divas has “divas” in the title, a term which feels like a relic of the Sex and the City era (yes, it was an era that is no more). You’d say, “She’s kind of a diva,” in reference to a girl who’s preoccupied with the right labels to wear, the right places to be, and the right people to know. You’d say, “She’s kind of a diva,” to describe a girl who constantly makes herself the center of attention at everyone else’s expense and is kind of a bitch.
“Diva” is not a complementary thing to call someone, unless she’s an actual diva in an opera company.
Also, the cover itself just isn’t that great – Hellcat, Captain Marvel, Firestar, and Black Cat striking a Charlie’s Angels pose made me ask one question: how do they fight without smearing their body paint?
(I know their costumes aren’t body paint – they just look that way. You shouldn’t be able to see a belly button through spandex unless it’s a really big outie. And Monica Rambeau looks like she has camel toe.)
The premise of Marvel Divas is simple: Hellcat, Captain Marvel, Firestar, and Black Cat have Sex and the City types of single girl adventures/ problems. I bought it after reading interviews with the writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who seemed really passionate about the project, with doing something different with the characters, and delivering a great story. While the concept of SATC with superheroines did nothing for me, I got the impression that Aguirre-Sacasa would make it something more than that, something deeper, something that said something.
Issue one is purely introductory. Patsy Walker has written a book, there’s a party, we learn how the four superheroines became friends, then there’s man talk. And more man talk. And then? More man talk, with a special guest appearance by cancer.
What I do like about Marvel Divas is that these superheroines are allowed to be girly, do girly things, and have girly conversations. They’re not A-list superheroines, so they seem to have more time to do things like get mani-pedis or go to speed dating events (the funniest sequence in the book). I like seeing this side of them.
The problem is that it seems to be the only side of them in Marvel Divas.
With the exception of Monica, the girls don’t suit up or do superheroine work in this issue (Monica is shown working in New Orleans, but it’s part of her relating a sexcapade with Brother Voodoo). They’re never even called by their superheroine names, other than a quick ID. While I appreciate that they’re allowed to be girls, I’d still like to see them, you know, do stuff.
Stuff other than talking about men. Sure, that’s what the SATC girls did all the time, but Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda weren’t superheroines. Patsy, Monica, Felicia, and Angelica are.
It’s only four issues, so I’m going to buy issue two, but it’s got to give me something other than the stuff I’ve already seen on SATC. Please come through on this, Roberto.
Tomorrow I’ll look at DC’s girly comic, Gotham City Sirens.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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Did you happen to check out Patsy Walker, Hellcat by Kathry Immonen? Wildly uneven, but wound up be way too much wacky fun.
(Hope all's well with you both.)
That one page where Monica was actually doing something? That rang completely true. The rest would have been fine spread over maybe 10 issues of superheroing, but this was just dull. I do appreciate that the inside art was clean and lively, even if it had inappropriate and misleading covers just like the Emma Frost series. And look how well that did, even though it was actually pretty good.