Spider-Woman’s New Look Cements Industry Change
Readers of USAToday this morning were treated with the first reveal of the upcoming new look for Marvel Comics’ Spider-Woman. The reason why Jessica Drew will soon be wearing a new, more practical costume than her sprayed-on spandex I believe is blatant pandering for marketing purposes — but for all the right reasons.
When I first saw this new design I was excited, but that was tempered by my assumption that it was simply a follow-on to the success of the redesign of Batgirl over at DC Comics, done by Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr (shameless plug for our interview with Babs from a few months ago). After all, it does have certain similar elements — the hip-raking yellow belt, the pants and jacket combo.
But I remembered that Jessica Drew’s best friend, Carol Danvers, got her own costume makeover from butt cheek-revealing spandex to a completely covering leather-like jumpsuit when she changed her hero name from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel — long before Barbara Gordon became a hipster with yellow Doc Martens.
And this is where the pandering comes in, albeit pandering of the best kind. The new look for all three of the above-named heroes is a direct nod to the growing awareness in the comics industry of the number of female readers. Notice I said growing awareness — while I don’t doubt the number of female comic readers have grown somewhat over the past decade or so, it was already a strong sector of the market and almost completely ignored.
Granted, this wave of practical costumes for female heroes isn’t new. Back in the early 1970s, DC swapped Wonder Woman’s star spangled bathing suit for a completely covering all-white jumpsuit — and stripped her of her powers, to turn her into a martial arts master to capture the Bruce Lee martial arts movie craze. Talk about the wrong kind of pandering.
While Wonder Woman’s transformation wasn’t popular and didn’t last long, this current wave of changes to the way female heroes outfit themselves is very popular. Just look at the new Ms. Marvel. The girl taking over the name from Carol Danvers is Kamala Khan, a teenage Muslim Pakistani-American wearing a costume that completely covers her from the neck down, as is appropriate for her traditions. And her comic book is Marvel Comics’ biggest seller among its digital titles — a position it rocketed to within months of its launch and still holds.
Did the infamous Milo Manara variant cover of Spider-Woman No. 1, in which Jessica is essentially in a pose only found in porn, presenting to the skyline behind her, have some influence on the decision to change her outfit? I don’t doubt it, but it was probably just a matter of time before it was going to happen anyway. Personally I am enough of a dudebro to lament each loss of skintight spandex in the comic book world. But I am also enough of a decent human being to realize that the idea of designing the look of a female hero solely to appeal to my libido is stupid, and insulting to women.
If every redesign is as cool as Spider-Woman’s, I will only occasionally have pangs of loss for the spandex.
