Comic Book Question of the Week Results: Best Treatment of Female Characters

We've been talking about how female characters are portrayed in comics. There have been some big strides in treating them with more respect over the years but there are still those moments that really make you cringe. We put the question out to the Comic Vine Community to see who you felt knows how to properly treat a lady.

The results are in!

We had a slightly smaller window for voting but still had over 400 cast their votes and a lot of comments.

• Marvel 41%
• DC 28%
• Image 23%
• Other 4%
• Dark Horse 3%
• Dynamite Ent 1%

Several commented that many publishers have both good and bad portrayals and had difficulty narrowing it down to just one. The reality of it is, a lot of the depiction is not necessary. We see complaints about not enough people reading comics or not enough female readers existing. With some of the stuff we see, it's not too surprising. Just as comics have come a long way since the Silver Age with how women are portrayed, let's hope things can continue to improve.

Did you remember to vote? Are you surprised by the results?

When's mahvel

Marvel and DC leading. Smh.

BB

Is dynamite that bad with female characters ?

Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris and Vampirella

@billy_batson: It's not really surprising given how many people don't read from the other publishers

hey that picture is a poster on my wall =) love the ladies of marvel

are you saying that these are bad representations?

Of Course

how are they any different than the women at Marvel and DC? they're strong, confident women who can actually carry their own title

if your argument is what they wear then how is wearing what they wear any worse than what Wonder Woman, Psylocke, or Miss Marvel's costumes?

dont marvel wives always get treated like crap: sue, bobbi, wasp etc...

http://www.cracked.com/article_16512_the-6-worst-comic-book-super-husbands_p2.html

must be a reason theyre all marvel characters on that list

Captain Marvel and Psylocke wear very appropriate costumes now. and wonder womans is iconic.

The thing you have to consider with Dynamite is that so many of their characters are still being written like we are back in the 50's. Most of the women in them are being written to be submissive or less intelligent. Perfect example would be Margo Lane from The Shadow. A potentially interesting female character being ruled by the strong and distant male protagonist. The trade off is that while they may read as though they are fairly authentic to the original character design, I imagine its still pretty degrading for women. It seems unlikely Dynamite will grow out of that type of portrayal of women if it makes the characters seem somehow less organic to the story. Authenticity is the price of progress.

I was of course referring to their old costumes

and you're telling me that Red Sonja and Vampirella aren't iconic?

I knew your were referring to there old costumes. But Marvel was smart enough to change them. DC is dumb because of the whole Powergirls costume dilemma in the new 52.

And yes, Red Sonja and Vampirella arnt nearly as iconic as even Psylocke and Miss Marvel, definetly not was iconic as WW.

Wow......Marvel?......wow.....why did i not vote on this?..

Clearly last yrs Marvel have little respect to female characters....wheather it's because they have done nothing,or something not so good.....and i dont mean Pepper Pots or something,i mean front line F-male characters,from Spider-Man and X-Men cast...

Well there it is!

Their personalities are fine, however I'd say for their leading ladies their costumes are extreme even for some of Marvel/DC;s less conservative ladies and even those ladies you mention, most of their costumes have been changed or tweaked in some way. Psylocke and Captain Marvel have completely different costumes now. Red Sonja costume isn't that bad to be fair. Dejah runs around wearing pasties.

Oh deeeeaaaarrr.

maybe because only marvel keeps marriages. just throwing it out there.

I'm sorry I missed this poll. I'm not sure how I would have voted given that I mostly read DC and Marvel and am therefore less able to comment on the other publishers. I would like to point out that iconic and sexist are not mutually exclusive terms. The former does not excuse the latter.

I'm pretty sure that you if you asked 100 random people on the street there would be more people who know who Red Sonja is than there are that know who Miss Marvel and Psylocke are

Red Sonja has after all had her own film

just because a female character wears revealing clothing doesn't make them a bad representation of females....all three of the characters listed are strong, confident female warriors whose depictions aren't continuously tied to a male character

wouldnt keeping these marriages actually degrade the woman? i mean take sue, she gets treated like shit constantly be theyre still married. wouldnt it be nice for her to stand up and leave him, now that would be treating a woman right

@turel_hash_ak_gik: Lol what? Ok

Pretty much what I was going to say though maybe over raiting the Red Sonja film just a tad but the point stands.

@peppeyhare: oh my bad. i thought you were refferencing woolie from two best friends on youtube. i apologize.

@fil123: i meant that marvel keeps marriages in general, not these particular ones. that marvel isnt against marriage, unless you're spider-man.

UTTER BULL! RED SONJA IS VASTLY MORE ICONIC THAN MS MARVEL OR PSYLOCKE!

the idea that women cant be sexy and bad freaking ass and properly represented AT THE SAME TIME is absurd, look at sara pazzini / witchblade especially after ron marz took over the book

Really? I'm shocked tbh. I guess some ppl define "best treatment" differently than I do...

Didn't vote, didn't really know what to vote... :/

Those crazy superheroins! You never know what's gonna happen!

Dejah thoris, red Sonja, Jane porter and however at dynamite are just as strong as the DC and Marvel women and just because they are revealing does not mean their weak or sexualized. People don't understand that is actually a difference between being just revealing/plain nude and oversexualized/slutty and Dejah thoris and red Sonja are not sluts they are confident in their bodies and fully aware of their capability against male dominance. Dejah thoris lives in another world or society where everyone is naked or revealing in equal terms so its a cultural thing according the original text of Edgar rice Burroughs so there are people on this site not familiar or researching the books.

Lmao at some of these posts. The white knights, you know who you are, would be ALL over DC/Marvel if they put out a female character dressed like one of Dynamite's women. You wouldn't even give that character a chance to grow you'd instantly shoot her down because of the costume. Anyway I've put enough words into peoples' mouths but its the truth!

Not surprised.

I don't think Marvel handles their female characters any better than DC does, so it's a matter of opinion and how far developed these characters are. I haven't read any of the Dark horse, Dynamite comics, and the only images comic book series I've followed were either Spawn or Wild storm characters, but I like to think that all comic book companies have their up's and down's when it comes to handling their female characters. .

The Marvel fans voted for Marvel. I didn't vote on this one. Like Themanintheshoe said, didn't really know what to vote... :/

She-Hulk, Emma, Wasp, Elektra......don't think so Marvel.

Are you guys kidding me...

Now wait just a cotton-picking minute. If you're going to do this for female characters, you should do Male characters too. You know how Liefield portrays all of his males as muslcebound jocks? Yeah....

Marvel does have stronger and more realistic women than DC. Its not really a debate imo.

I would say DC treats women better than Marvel. Marvel shelved so many huge female characters. They've cashed in on Jean Grey's corpse but they never want to resurrect her, they married Storm off and took away her leadership of the X-men, Psylocke was Claremont's little pet for the longest time, the Scarlet Witch was gone for years, Mystique has been completely marginalized to become a 1-dimensional baddie, and they also released Milo Manara's X-women which was basically softcore porn. Their cartoons don't even really feature women and they didn't even release many action figures of female characters in the movies. They've changed a little but only very recently....

DC, on the other hand, gave us "Birds of Prey" for years and has titles for Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Batgirl, and Batwoman. They've put a lot of female out there front and center and have featured them all over the place. Granted, we still need to see a WONDER WOMAN movie or (as I'd prefer) a CATWOMAN movie with Anne Hathaway which they've failed to deliver. But still, I think DC sees their women as more of a commodity and don't need to have titles with "women" or "girls" in it in order to sell for female characters.

@hexthis: Storm is the leader of a group of the X-men again, and she is separated from Black Panther, though I don't see how marriage lessens a character.

Actually,I have asked over 20 people,friends and family alike. None of them knew who she was.

And out of that 20+,4 people knew who Ms Marvel was because of EMH. And 3 knew who Psylocke was.

Not saying Red Sonja isn't popular (not even IMPLYING that or saying that Psylocke or Ms Marvel is more popular),but using that argument is......tricky. I didn't even know who Red Sonja was.

I don't even see what popularity has to do with ANYTHING. It doesn't really make a character better imo.

And yes,revealing clothing doesn't make them bad characters,but people did throw a s*itfest with New 52 Starfire and many others. And same with Angela in Marvel NOW as if her previous costume was any better. I am not trying to paintbrush anyone and generalize (this would only apply to certain,specific people that it DOES apply to) and I am not even saying that some people don't have their legitimate reasons for why they dislike the costumes,but some people can only find something wrong with costumes and such when it pertains to the Big Two. Again,not really generalizing. this applies to the only people that it pertains to (although this whole paragraph is probably irrelevant to what you said).

Anyway,I agree.

@greenenvy said:

Yet no-one seems to argue when Tarzan and John Carter go around wearing only a loincloth....

stronger?,false,more realistic?,hahaha,yea because mutants that control weather,humans with alien DNA,cosmic beings are so much closer to real life,please get serious.

When they say respect I'm looking at if they are respected enough to be put in their own titles, what they wear doesn't matter to me. I think what count's is their actions in these comics and whether or not the comic companies respect female characters enough to put them in their own title, mini-series or ongoing series Marvel wins in this category no doubt. I also have to say this isn't about marvel or Dc. There were other choices so let's just let that notion cease!

I'm actually kind of surprised that DC is so high... I will admit that Marvel does do a good job at treating women the right away. But DC? I read more DC than Marvel, but even I will admit that DC demeans women quite often. I personally voted for Image because Image tends to show the strength of female characters and how good of leaders they are. Im just surprised that DC is that high.

@herokiller12344 said:

But they aren't being made to be objects of sexualization. That is the main difference.