Friends and Special Friends.

One of Gail Simone's responses to the whole Cry for Justice #2 thing (you know the one, where Hal gets backed into admitting he had a threesome with the Huntress and Lady Blackhawk) was that it's troublesome to see people write strong female friendships in a way that inevitably lead to sex. Like two women can't just be good friends with each other, because if they're that close they obviously must have some sort of sexual interest in one another.

To drag out a good quote of hers:

"What IS it about female friendship that is so scary or impossible to imagine that it's so rare in comics? Honest to god, and I"m not talking about this book here, but it's something I've thought of often, it's just utterly baffling to me how poorly female-to-female non-sexual relationships are realized.

We have tons and tons of historic bromances in comics, but I really had to invent a superhero female friendship for Diana because she didn't really have one outside of Donna. How dumb is that, in seventy years of stories? The Jla, the Avengers, all that stuff, hardly any lasting friendships between two women.

Once again, JLI was ahead of the game with Fire and Ice. But the vast majority of female team books are of the dumbass Charlie's Angels mode, where everything is about fake lesbian posery and talking about men, as if the characters don't exist without them.

When I wrote bop, we went almost five years with no serious romantic subplot quite intentionally, with the idea of showing that women can actually have real friendships and arguments and all of that range of emotion without having to connect it to guys for it to carry weight and validity. And I think it worked, I think people understood that Canary and Zinda and Babs and Helena loved each other, genuinely loved each other. I think that was the pure joy of the book, really.

Why is that such an unbelievably rare thing, not just in comics, but in all media?"

Yeah. Seriously. Unless it's in a show, movie, or book specifically targeted towards a female audience. Certainly anything aimed towards the male gaze has a lack of them, and even "neutral" things, like, um. BSG (okay, arguable if that's a neutrally targeted show, but that gets into the whole women-liking-scifi thing and I'll save it for another day). Even BSG has a lack of female friendships. Tigh and Adama's friendship is one of the core relationships of the series. The [heterosexual] romantic relationships certainly are, and ended up being the most important plot points of the arc, by the end. (Don't even get me started on sexuality in BSG.) But there was no strong female friendship, despite having lots of strong female characters hanging around.

I'm conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with what Ms. Simone is saying. In comics (and other media intended mainly for men), female friendships are rare unless there's some kind of sexual subtext involved. On the other hand... I ship it.

What I mean by that is something I've talked about before: subtext. I'm a Xenite. That's arguably one of the strongest female friendships in pop culture history. But if you asked me if they were having sex with each other, I'd say "yes" in a heartbeat and not feel a tad guilty about it because I ruined the portrayal of a strong female friendship. In my mind they remain great friends, because ... what's that quote? Love is friendship set on fire. Word.

Here's the thing. I'm not just a woman, I'm a gay woman. (I know, shocking.) And as a gay woman, I have been pretty much starved for representation in the media. Disney princesses end up with Disney princes. Everyone on TV, everyone was trying to be in a relationship, make a relationship work, or dealing with the hilarious hijinks of having a relationship (depending o the type of show), and all of those relationships were heterosexual. Even the cross-species love (Kermit and Ms. Piggy) was still straight love. Every movie I remember watching, re-watching, and eventually wearing the VHS tape out on had a heterosexual relationship at the center of the story (with the exception of maybe Mary Poppins, but I'd argue that).

I completely understand the frustration with turning close female relationships into sexual ones. But at the same time... I'd like to see some ladies lovin' each other. Even now, even post-Ellen, post-Xena, post-The L Word, we're not really well represented. (Yes, I'm a regular reader of AfterEllen.com, why do you ask?) And if we are there, we're usually chaste. Don't believe me? Compare the amount of times you saw Bianca Montgomery kiss one of her girlfriends (let alone get into bed wit one) to the amount of times you saw her sister Kendall get her freak on with various dudes.

Shuttup, I watched All My Children for the lesbian. Sort of like how I watched The OC for those 8 episodes where Mischa Barton's character (um, I don't even remember her name) was dating Olivia Wilde's character (Alex!). Sort of like how I've seen pretty much every movie on the Required List of Lesbian viewing, because it's not like there's a lot out there to go through. Sort of like how I spent hours back in 2001 downloading Real Media clips of the first two seasons of the British show Bad Girls because.. you guessed it: lesbians.

Or bisexual women.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes I really do think the women ought to be together. Not always, no. And I absolutely agree that there is a lack of strong female friendships pretty much everywhere ever (Sex in the City and its genre copiers are exceptions, but all of those women were also defined by their search for men). But sometimes, you know. I just ship it. And maybe I'd like to see some women in comics hooking up with other the same way guys hook up with women. We've got a lesbian leading a comic, let's see how long it takes her to have the amount of sex the current Batman has had in the pages of his older Nightwing and Titans titles. Let's see how long it takes her to kiss someone.

I know that Ms. Simone wasn't saying women who are friends can't have sex with each other (in fact she explicitly said that earlier), and I know that my point of view is vastly different than the intended audience (men), so the above should be read with a grain of opinion-salt. I don't want all female friendships relegated to the dregs of "heh heh, that's hot" land, but sometimes I really enjoy the chemistry between two characters and would like to see them get together.

Preferably without a guy involved, though.

Redo!

Fantastic Fangirls' most recent Q&A asked:

What comics story do you want reimagined or covered, and by whom?

I'm reprinting my answer here, possibly with a few more details, definitely with some pictures, because... it's my blog and I'll do what I want to. You would cry to if it - oh, wait.

Just a small music tangent: Lesley Gore's iconic songs, "It's My Party" and "You Don't Own Me" were given an extra layer of interestingness (flickr invented that word, don't blame me) when she came out as a lesbian in 2005, and said she'd been gay since her late teens. Seriously, go check out those lyrics.

Anyway, my answer!


I'd like to see someone redo Camelot 3000. I really enjoy the idea of the story, but the 80s' idea of the future is... laughable now. I didn't read it until about six months ago, and the art and story both seem dated. I feel like a modern writer/artist team could give it a spin that just feels more correct and holds up better with time. I love retro-future ideas, but most of the ones from that decade just don't hold as well as the ones written in the 50s and 60s. I liked the struggle of the knights to find themselves in the 40th century, but I didn't feel like the 40th century reflected well enough on the 20th century that the writers were coming from.

As for that writer/artist team. Hm. I'm currently enamored with Greg Rucka and Gail Simone. I think Rucka does really interesting things with mythological constructs (I'm basing this on the Crime Bible stuff) and I just like the way Gail Simone thinks about and writes comics (there's a great interview with her on AfterEllen that really piqued my interest in her writing) and I think between them they could put out a good story with interesting characters and a good adapted mythos. I will absolutely admit to mainly wanting to see the Tristan/Isolde story retold by a modern writer, but the rest of it would be great, too. Also, maybe we could ignore the tired old Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot thing. Granted, the resolution in the original was fairly cutting edge, but I think by the 40th century they could just all get together and be happy.

Another tangent: David Franzoni's/Anton Fuqua's weird-but-enjoyable (Sarmatians? Really?) take on Arthur, the one that finally had a Celtic warrior woman (who needed a sandwich, but still), did a good modern twist on that triangle, making it Arthur and Lancelot who were the unrequieted tragic lovers. Not, like, on screen (because Heaven forfend men be in love in an action movie), but the undercurrents were pretty clear. To me. And even if they weren't, Lancelot was very obviously more interested in Arthur than Guinevere.

And artists, hmmmmm. I know less about artists. I really enjoy the more realistic style of Stuart Immomen, whom I recently discovered, and I think it would work well for that kind of story. Also a cover or two by Alex Ross would be iconic and amazing.

That art as it is is... well. Dark and strange. With odd detailing and accents. I'm sure it was very good for its time, but it's definitely not a style I enjoy. It reminds me of Heavy Metal and Ralph Bakshi settings. I don't like Ralph Bakshi settings, because they do the dark-and-bright-at-the-same-time thing in a strangely surreal way that removes me from the story. Seriously, have you seen War Wizards? WTF. I guess it has its place in fantasy (and I certainly like surreal artists like Peter Chung, so maybe it's more that I prefer surreality in science fiction over fantasy) but I'd rather see Camelot 3000 done with a more realistic, modern bent.

Besides Stuart Immomen, I also enjoy the artist doing Batwoman on Detectice Comics right now, JH Williams. Like I said before, I like his noir style. And while Kate Kane may be a bit vampiric, he's certainly capable of adding pigment to people, so I think that'd be fine. A neo-noir Arthurian story would be sort of cool, really. Like Blade Runner meets Sin City meets, well. King Arthur.

So that's my personal answer. I was an Arthurian geek before I was ever a comic geek.

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