Oh, Marvel.
There’s an interview up with Fred Van Lente about the Black Widow Strikes mini, a three-parter set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s debuting in May, but before it gets to comic shops, it’s being debuted in the pages of Maxim Russia!
“It’s kind of a first to debut a comic in Maxim Russia, and that’s a large part of why I’m excited to be involved in this,” said Van Lente.
This is taking a page from DC’s book, where previews for Birds of Prey, notable for its all-female lead cast and Jesus Saiz’s beautiful-without-being-exploitative superhero art have been released as exclusives on the Maxim website.
The article also does a nice job outlining Natasha as “sole female of the Avengers” who “might stand out to some who don’t know her comic past” but don’t worry this comic will prove how totally useful she really is!
I love so much of the Marvel universe, its concepts, quirks, and characters, but there are parts of it that feel posed for a men’s magazine. The frustrating thing is that despite its current inability to keep a ladybook running for very long, Marvel has this huge stable of intriguing female personalities. A lot of them have been Avengers and been quite believable in the role. But instead of introducing the one (1) female Avenger in the filmverse as the world’s top secret agent, they had Tony Stark google lingerie spreads first. They’ll put this comic in foreign Maxim instead of US Seventeen. This’ll be the only comic starring a female character with her name in the title that Marvel publishes in May.
There’s this big tension at the heart of all the been there, done that Women in Comics talk. Are superheroines something for straight dudes to look at or for everyone to look up to? I mean, I know my answer, but the troubling thing is that it’s even a question.
