The Four Color Media Monitor

In announcing her rather stupid sounding comic project during a Variety interview ("M.O.M: Mother of Madness"), actress Clarke seems to be pushing quite a questionable narrative:

As a kid in London, Emilia Clarke got a distinct vibe from her local comic book shop: “No girls allowed.”

The Emmy nominee and lead of the HBO pop culture juggernaut “Game of Thrones” was therefore doomed to spend her adolescence reading hand-me-down comics from her older brother and meeting caped crusaders on the big screen, she said.

“I read a lot of fantasy novels full of rich worlds as a child, like ‘Lord of the Rings.’ That was always the place my imagination would gravitate toward. Later on, when I went to Comic-Con for the first time at 22 with ‘Game of Thrones,’ I was amazed at what I saw — almost entirely men. Later, as tides turned in the industry and #MeToo emerged, I began to look at the community through those eyes and it was arresting,” she said.

Seriously, she alleges they didn't want ladies' money? Even in Britain, valid queries could be raised as to whether this actually happened, and even years before, there have been comic creations aimed at girls, or could be just as engaging for the same, like Roger LeLoup's Yoko Tsuno. I can't and won't take her claim at face value, because it sounds just so laughably contrived; just another attempt to smear an entire medium's audience as all inherently immoral.

Clarke started dreaming about what a comic book might look like from her perspective — a notion that quickly gained steam. She recruited an all-female creative team and made a comic featuring what is undoubtably one of the most progressive female heroes in the genre.

And that's a sign something is wrong here. She's doing it from a politically motivated perspective, and not a healthy one at that. An all-women production staff alone doesn't ensure artistic merit.

“In doing my research, I found that 16% of comic book creators are female, according to a 2019 study, and only 30% of comic book characters are women. On the other hand, roughly half of comic book buyers are female. Something did not sit right with me in that exchange, and all these signs were telling me to go make my own,” said Clarke.

At least she's willing to make her own tale, as she says here. But that doesn't mean it'll be any good, and she's clearly not willing to admit the reasons not many women are into US comics is because it doesn't pay well, and they don't all get their creative freedom if they're working for the Big Two. And indeed, most comics produced by women today aren't all from the Big Two, which is actually for the best, seeing how poor their approach to business really is. Now about the premise, it just sounds so gross:

“She’s a single mum that’s got to get shit done. This was born from the idea that single mothers are superheroes. You need superhuman strength to do that. When you get into your 30s and your friends start having kids, you’re like, ‘Oh my god. I was not aware of what it took. Holy shit,'” she said.

Another key identifier for the character is that all of her powers manifest from her menstrual cycle.

“The bloating, the hair growth, the mood swings, the [acne], all of it. We hate that when it happens, speaking for myself and everyone I’ve ever met who has had a period. What if we turned that around and made the period something that we can feel as this unique, crazy, superhuman thing that happens in our body? When Maya is scared, she goes invisible, when she’s angry, she has superhuman strength. She can swing like Spider-Man from her armpit hair,” Clarke says.

Through both lenses, Clarke and her creative team sought to lionize the single mom, whose media depiction is usually one of struggle, sadness and efforts to rebalance her life with a male partner. When it comes to menses, the actor thinks it’s way past time that we normalize something that over half the world population experiences (in upcoming editions of the three-part comic miniseries, Maya utilizes “inflated boobs” to help thwart a human trafficking ring).

So what we have here is another example of making single parenthood in itself look like nothing's wrong, and whatever they're doing with menstruality, even that sounds crude, as does the part about armpit hair. I won't be shocked if the part about using "inflated boobs" comes off atrociously too. If this is what comicdom is being used for today, tales that are more like ideological statements, then something is wrong. And to top it all off, she exaggerates how fandom is being conducted. A real shame this is what the medium's come down to nowadays.

Labels: Europe and Asia, indie publishers, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics