Book Review - Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics by Sam Langsdale

Langsdale, Sam. Searching For Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2024.

Book review by Shane Gomes

Despite a common conception that positive, feminist representations of women have become commonplace (and to the entrenched part of Marvel's readership, unfortunately, too commonplace) Sam Langsdale’s Searching For Feminist Superheroes neatly demonstrates just how lacking the medium is in characters that could, in any reasonable way, be termed feminist. Where is Storm, or Shadowcat? Jessica Jones or She-Hulk? All are characters that frequently are used to demonstrate the supposed space that Marvel has made for positively representing women and femme characters, yet Langsdale's argument about what makes a character feminist troubles the idea of accepting the characters listed above. Instead, the text implies that most, if fact nearly all, women and femme characters are symptoms of what male writers and readers want, even when attempts are made to improve representation. A specific coda, titled simply "The Dark Phoenix Problem", elegantly demonstrates this by explicating the ongoing misogyny and fear towards women and femme characters of all types, but most especially those with exceptional abilities.

The text (fairly) assumes that readers will be familiar with, if not the specific characters being discussed, the medium and its many tropes, especially as they play out in mainstream superhero comics. Little time is spent introducing the structural details of comics, and instead it directly addressed (and critiques) how the medium reinforces, highlights, and occasionally troubles, sexist representations of women and femme characters. While there is a great deal here that a novice reader of comics would find very useful (especially the historicizing that is frequent), an expert in the field may find even more with which to engage. 

The text is broken into four main sections, each with a focus on a character that Langsdale designates as, for the most part, a positive representation of femme and women characters. Further, acknowledging the intersectional nature of comics’ historic sexism, each character’s representation is in some sense unique from the others. Chapter One focuses on Jessica Drew, the original Spider-Woman, and the depiction of her pregnancy and as a new mother. Chapter 2 analyzes America Chavez, one of the characters to take on the role of Miss America. In this stand-out chapter, Langsdale presents a critically brilliant analysis of Chavez’s role in demonstrating what intersectional feminism can and should look like. Chapter 3 discusses the titular character of The Unstoppable Wasp, and the importance of that series in its imagining of what a women-focused approach to STEM fields, and communities therein, could look like. The final chapter examines Ironheart, an especially important representation in terms of how Black girls and women are treated in the medium, and is both the most complex chapter, and the one with perhaps the most critical analysis of the medium of comics and the concept of heroism as a whole. Ironheart is especially important in terms of addressing the question of what it means when the majority of our heroes are visual representations of people who benefit from systemic oppression. 

Chapter One’s examination of Jessica Drew hinges on the depiction of motherhood throughout one of the character’s major runs. Langsdale accurately notes that pregnancy and motherhood are generally depicted as monstrous in comics, often as a violation of bodily autonomy, and almost always as a method of undermining a character’s abilities as a hero. However, the chapter argues that, while the difficulties and realities of pregnancy and motherhood are not erased, the series presents both quite differently than other comics have. 

Throughout the story arc that is the focus of the chapter, Drew’s pregnancy is presented as an encumbrance to her work, certainly, but abject violations of the Hero’s body are a common trope used in comics to increase narrative stakes, and the series treats her pregnancy in a similar way. Likewise, Drew doesn’t fall into the trope of the “Super-Mom”, who somehow manages to balance every aspect of her life adequately and thereby presents an unrealistic representation of motherhood. Nor does she swing to the other extreme, leaving her family behind to focus on her work. Instead, Drew is shown struggling to adapt to her new role as a mother while maintaining her work as a superhero, but finding success through a reliance on her community. Not only does Drew fail to fall into many of the representational traps that mothers usually do in comics, she presents an anti-patriarchal reimagining of motherhood as a communal act. 

Langsdale argument here is effective, and also gives insight into the further chapters. The chapter does not just provide a detailed analysis of the comic, but also the conversations around it within the fandom and culture at large. This proves to be a key strength of the book, as a buffer against the tendency of academic work on comics to insulate itself from fans writ large. 

Chapter 2 focuses on American Chavez, the second character to assume the mantle of Miss America, an especially important title given Chavez intersecting identities. A Latina, lesbian, and obvious leader, Chavez was calculated to address many of the issues within Marvel that Langsdale is unpacking. And unlike some previous attempts, Langsdale argues that Chavez is a successful demonstration of what intersectional feminism should look like. 

Chavez’s strength as a feminist character lies in her specificity, or as Langsdale puts it, her rootedness in “Anzaldúa’s theories of mestiza consciousness” (107). The argument centers on Chavez’s presentation as a character who both metaphorically and literally is empowered by her ability to cross borders. Within the comics, Chavez’s powers come from her ability to cross between dimensions and realities with ease. Thematically, Chavez is vital Chicana representation, and an especially powerful example of a Latinx superhero who broadens the definition of what an American superhero can look like, erasing borders between new demographics of readers and superheroes. As a character who both diegetically and representationally focuses on dissolving boundaries and creating connections between disparate peoples, Langsdale’s argument that Chavez is an overt and positive feminist character brilliantly constructed.  

The third chapter addresses Wasp in direct relation to two especially important feminist concepts: one, the positioning of women working within STEM fields; and two, the importance of women and Femme folk, especially those that hold some position of authority by virtue of age or experience, within the queer concept of Found Family. The chapter focuses on the series The Unstoppable Wasp, which passed the moniker of “The Wasp” onto Nadia Van Dyne, the step-daughter of the original. Langsdale argues that the series “points towards the importance of truly feminist friendships for liberatory communities” (141), an especially necessary concept in places and spaces as tightly controlled by patriarchal norms as STEM professions (and comics). The comic strips out much of the tension that male writers often believe must be present in female-majority spaces, and instead demonstrates the support and strength that such a community would realistically have. As opposed to portraying women as largely professional or romantic rivals, the series incorporates the distinctly Queer concept of found family into Wasp’s superhero team (G.I.R.L.), and also demonstrates the importance of women acting as mentors for younger women within professional spheres. The series strives to present an example of what a professional space by and for women could do, and Langsdale argues that it succeeds. 

But the author rightly notes that the representation of Wasp and her team is doing even more work beyond demonstrating the importance of found families and women mentoring younger women and girls. Langsdale argues that, even beyond the inherent importance of that depiction, The Unstoppable Wasp is critiquing the systemic oppression that is an intrinsic part of Enlightenment epistemologies, which as a whole were created, defined, and regulated by white men. Instead of trying to exist as women in male spaces, G.I.R.L. creates a different way of knowing and experiencing the sciences and the lives of its members as a whole. 

Chapter 4 focuses on Riri Williams, who goes by Ironheart, and was introduced as a successor to Iron Man. Beyond being a hero whose powers come from a technologically advanced suit of armor, Williams echoes Tony Stark in numerous ways. Both are natural leaders, both are assured of their intellectual gifts, and both are scientific geniuses across a range of fields. As a Black teen girl, however, Williams’ identity obviously places her at an extreme disadvantage when compared to Stark, in terms of both economics and also cultural acceptance. Langsdale specifically discusses the character as an Afro-Futurist one, and one who, perhaps more than any other, tackles the problem of what heroism and justice can actually look like when the majority of superheroes are cis-het-abled-anglo men. The chapter is especially complex, a reflection of the character, and is an especially nuanced investigation of the political ramifications of heroism. 

Writ large, the text underscores female characters that are in truth also feminist characters, and supports those assertions with deft analysis and by demonstrating an enviable grounding in the medium of comics themselves. Langsdale’s picks are especially important for two reasons. When we paint with too broad a brush and say representation of women in comics is horrible, it denigrates the positive ones that are out there. Two, more insidiously, that generalization implies that the positive representations that do exist are in fact negative, obfuscating what feminist characterization in comics should actually look like. It’s a huge task to critically examine representations in comics example by example, but that’s exactly what Langsdale is taking on. But importantly, Langsdale does not situate her book as an authoritative resource, but rather as a beginning. She states that she trying to begin an “archive”, a term which implies that others can, and hopefully will, add to it in the future. The text therefore serves not only as the beginnings of that archive, but as a model for what future entries should look like. Combined with the strict critical rigor and attention to detail that the text demonstrates, Searching for Feminist Superheroes is a successful beginning to what will hopefully be a long-running project throughout Comic Studies.

Byline:

Shane Gomes, MA, PhD

Assistant Professor of English Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy

Tennessee State University

Nashville, TN, USA

sgomes@tnstate.edu

He/They

Shane Gomes is originally from Honolulu and grew up in Keaʻau, Hawaiʻi. He earned his BA in Psychology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, his MA in Literature from the University of Northern Colorado, and his PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture from North Dakota State University. His teaching includes courses on Composition, World Literature, and Tragedy, and his research focuses on Comics Studies, Ecofeminism, Post-Colonial Studies, and Large Language Models in Education. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Tennessee State University in Nashville, TN, USA.