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

Moore and Rape

[gtpooh.livejournal.com]

I'm not taking sides in this issue. I think that they both do a wonderful job and have enjoyed everything I've read by both of them. But I have three thoughts:

1. I think it is important to keep a writer in his/her political and historical context. Moore was writing when women were just starting to really flex their power. . .to demand equality. His pov of going to be as different from Gaiman's as yours is from mine about some things. 20 something women take for granted things that women my age had to fight for. , younger men behave differently toward women than men my age. Why do you think a married a younger man? :)
   
2. As many as 50% of all women endure rape. It is one of the shames of our society. Any author who writes social commentary who fails to address this fails. It's not like he was writing about it to titilate. He writes to horrify. Rape is horrible.
   
3. A woman IS defined by rape. Even as full of opportunities to grow as my life has been, it has been the violation by men I trusted that has been the most difficult. How a woman survives and recovers or does not recover from rape IS who she is.
   

Just a few thoughts from an old woman. :)

Re: Moore and Rape

[cochese.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point about political and historical context. It's amazing how much a culture can change for a group within a relatively short period of time. I'm reminded of an older gay acquaintence of mine being weirded out by how open the gay culture is now compared to the 80s. Paralleling your post was also me seeing the trailer for North Country. I didn't enter the workforce until a couple years after the events in this movie... I was largely oblivious to this sort of thing being young and cozily tucked away in the suburbs.

It's a big scary world out there. =T