Exclusive interviews: Duncan Jones (Director of Moon) - Andrew Barker (Director of Straw Man) - Tony Grisoni (Screen Writer of Red Riding Trilogy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) - Michael Marshall Smith (author of Spares, Only Forward, The Straw Men etc) - Alejandro Adams (Director of Canary) - Ryan Denmark (Director of Romeo & Juliet vs The Living Dead) - Neal Asher (author of the Cormac series, The Skinner etc) - Marc Robert & Will Stotler (Able) - Kenny Carpenter (Director of Salvaging Outer Space)

Press Conference - Public Enemies - Johnny Depp, Michael Mann, Marion Cotillard

NEWS - REVIEWS - TRAILERS - POSTERS - INTERVIEWS - FORUM - CONTACT


FEATURED REVIEWS - Public Enemies - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Moon - The Hurt Locker

LFF is on Facebook - Twitter - Friend Feed

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Marvel Divas

"In the series, they're an unlikely foursome of friends—Black Cat, Hell Cat, Firestar, and Photon—with TWO things in common: They're all leading double-lives and they're all having romantic trouble... there's definitely that 'naughty' element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means...truly means...to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns. (And I mean both the super hero industry and the comic book industry.) But mostly it's just a lot of hot fun" - Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

According to io9 Joe Quesada was getting a bit of hassle from people saying this all sounded a bit sexist. He responded as follows.
If you're [a] Marvel reader and truly feel we're sexist, then why are you reading our books? Now, perhaps you're not a Marvel reader, then if that's the case, I'm not quite sure what you're criticizing if you don't read our books?

...The cold hard reality of publishing and trying to sell our books to as many people as possible, so here's an example of what happens more often than you may think here at Marvel. From time to time, we'll be launching a title that doesn't focus very heavily on the super heroic. From time to time I'll get a cover sketch and it doesn't have a costumed hero or villain on the cover, what we internally refer to as a "quiet cover." On those occasions, more often than not, I ask my editors to direct their cover artist to give me at least a first issue cover with the characters in costume. Why? Because it will help launch a book that will most likely have trouble latching onto a large audience. We want to give every title the best possible chance to be successful. Marvel Divas is no different and that's why you're seeing our strong female leads in their super hero personas. Let me try an example outside of comics. I'm a huge fan of Pink, I really dig her music and love her voice. Love her or hate her, I would say that she's an amazingly strong and intelligent female performer and song writer in the pop genre. In many of her songs she even criticizes the over sexualized female pop stars of the day and their over the top videos. But when you look at Pink's CD covers, while she's looking strong and like she's looking like she's having fun, she's also looking really sexy. The reason is simple, she's trying to grab people's attention and sell some albums. Comics are no different and as much a part of the entertainment business as any other medium, and the cold hard truth is that if we were to launch Marvel Divas with a "quiet cover," I guarantee you the book would be canceled before it hits the shelves. That's it in a nutshell, I could sugar coat it for you and give you a million other reasons that would sound plausible, but that's not what I do.
Leave a comment on this post below.

HOME

0 comments: