'A-Force' for Gender Equity

Even before it hit comic store shelves in May, Marvel’s all-female series A-Force started picking up attention — most of it well-deserved. Co-written by Marguerite Bennett and G. Willow Wilson, whose other credits include a series starring a Muslim teenage girl (see "Real Life, With Superpowers," Sojourners, August 2014),A-Force is Marvel’s new, lady-led Avengers team, who patrol and protect the island community of Arcadia.

Or as New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore said in a less-than-complimentary essay, "A-Force is a race of lady Avengers, led by She-Hulk, who come from a ‘feminist paradise,’ but I don’t know what that could possibly mean, because they all look like porn stars."

Lepore’s argument is that for all its positing as the latest in a series of progressive moves by Marvel, A-Force’sgender representation leaves much to be desired. The series features heroines who are, in several cases, female versions of existing male superheroes, rather than their own independent characters.

"Marvel is trying very hard to deal with the fact that its superheroes are mainly men and just turning them into women seemed as good a plan as any," argues Lepore, who recently wrote a book on Wonder Woman’s feminist origins.

Lepore also points out the heroines of A-Force are still being drawn in a heavily objectified way, with some characters wearing costumes you’d never see on a male character. And Lepore certainly has a point: For example, why does the female Loki need to have such a revealing outfit, when her earlier male incarnation never did?

Another character, Sister Grimm, has had ever-more revealing costume changes the longer she’s been in print, with her outfit in A-Force the most revealing yet.

In her response to the New Yorker article, G. Willow Wilson argues that men’s superhero costumes are just as silly, but that’s not necessarily the case. Comic fans have yet to see Captain America in a bustier.

Unfortunately, Lepore’s valid criticisms are overshadowed by the way she chooses to make them, in an article that’s dismissive of A-Force as a series, and comics as a genre, without attempting to give either more than a cursory glance. In choosing to only look at the aesthetics of A-Force, Lepore misses the strengths of the series — particularly, that it features a group of powerful but vulnerable women who desire above all else to be a supportive and effective team. The point of the series is to show a whole roster of female superheroes as leaders who are perfectly capable of taking care of their own realm. In that respect, A Force does its job quite well, exploring the dynamics and difficulties of successful team leadership.

To be fair, A Force is still working to find its feet. The ensemble nature of the comic makes it harder to explore the characters’ individual stories, and the result feels something like taking all of your favorite action figures and putting them together in a brand new playset.

However, A-Force also arrived on the scene with heavy expectations. There may have been a sense leading up to its release that the comic was going to bring the Marvel Universe to a level of gender equality that would make everything even. Of course, that was never going to be the case, and it certainly isn’t the kind of thing that can be demonstrated neatly in two short issues of a continuing series. A-Force shows us how far comics have come, but also that the journey isn’t over yet.

Marvel’s female superhero squad still has plenty of room to grow, and it’s going to be interesting to see what directions it grows in. In other words, despite its initial disappointments, it’s nice to see the arc of the Marvel Universe still bending towards justice for its female characters.