We are the ones who want to choose

[zdashamber]

You should all go vote in the Best Comic-Book Writer poll at ign.com. It's Neil Gaiman versus Alan Moore, and Gaiman needs help.

I don't read comics much, so I can't suggest ways to vote in the concurrent poll, but I'd like to see Alan Moore go down. Go! Vote! http://comics.ign.com/articles/646/646667p12.html

I'd feel a lot better about Alan Moore if he had some other way of relating to female characters than Where does the rape come in. Evey? Is introduced by threatened rape. Mina? Is threatened with rape in the first and second issues, and then in the third we meet one of Our Heros raping a schoolful of girls. Whatsername the child of rape in Watchmen, the only female character? I didn't even bother to read From Hell. I can only imagine what he did with Victorian prostitutes.

I mean, leaving aside the creepy-ass WTF-ness, doesn't it show a certain lack of writing ability? Vote Neil!

(I read "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and for a year or two after I was asking people, Is there some other book? Was there some really excellent book that everyone was praising, and I'd accidentally bought the knockoff?)

Comments

[nuadha-prime.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about the rape thing and it occurs to me that:

1) I never defined Silk Spectre (of Watchmen) by the fact that she was a product of a rape. It never affected my view of her character at all. The affect this had on the story was to show just how screwed up the heroes were and in particular, The Comedian. A big point of The Watchmen is asking "what kind of a person puts on a costume and fights crime?" and in Watchmen, the answer was mainly people who are screwed up. Silk Spectre is one of the truly strong characters in Watchmen and I though Moore did a good job of writing her as one of the truly sane people in an insane world.

2) Evey almost getting raped at the beginning of V for Vendetta sets up the fact that the world is screwed up and these horrible people have been given an insane amount of power. While this does start the story off with Evey as a victim, she grows so much stronger by the end of the story and (BIG SPOILERS!!!) replaces V in the end.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

But for both 1 and 2, it goes back to my question: why does he always go for the rape to demonstrate badness? Why's his range so small?

The thing that I haven't obvertly brought up yet is that it seems to me is that the whole rape thing is just a symptom of how his female characters are treated. So far as I recall, Silk Spectre does nothing but provide Dr. Manhattan with someone to talk to. Ditto Evey, who gets manipulated and used pretty much the whole book long. And Mina's effective actions end as soon as the League is together.

[cochese.livejournal.com]

(Just checking to see how the discussion had proceeded.)

The wife and I chatted more about the subject over dinner on Tuesday, but I don't think I could adequately convey her thoughts. If it's something you're interested in discussing with her about, you should talk to her at the con. She's definitely a well-read individual, English degree and all that. And she's pretty savvy to feminist issues. I would not presume to try and distill her knowledge into a post.

I'm responding to this particular item because it brought to mind a question: How would express the awfulness in the world differently? Take "VfV" for example: What would you do to truly express the corruption of the police in a couple of pages of comic book?