Who the fuck is Brian Bendis, I hear you ask. He’s a comic book writer, that’s who he is. He has written a lot of big deal comic book “events” such as House of M and Secret Invasion and is therefore a big wheel in his field, otherwise he wouldn’t be worth the time it takes to insult him.
As is common in just about every area of popular culture, feminists have over the last few years done a lot of whining about women in comics, both about the number of comic creators who are women (there aren’t enough of them, needless to say) and about the fictional women portrayed ( they are cool only as long as they act like founding members of N.O.W.)
So, some guy at tumblr leaves this message on Bendis’ page…
“I understand trying to make comics female friendly, but aren’t you guys worried that you’re going to lose your core audience which is male? In the X-books you’ve had more focus on the likes on these females like jean and kitty while it should be Cyclops who has been the star of the X-Men comics for years. What warrants these characters more page time than him? Jean and kitty are secondary characters. You guys listen too much to women bitching. They cause so much freakin drama in comicdom.”
To which Bendis, who is obviously an asshole, and a semi-literate one at that, responds by verbally assaulting one of his own fans, a person who in most ways is lower in the pecking order than he is. Way to go, Brian, you badass, you…
“Wow. you are the first person who I am kind of glad asked your question anonymously because I don’t want to know you.
as a reader of my work I want you to listen to me very carefully: you have major major issues. almost every line of your question reeks of complete misunderstanding of yourself as a man and of women in general.
it’s okay to find yourself more interested in something than others, of course it is, it’s okay to like Cyclops more than Jean Grey, but for you to draw the line at women characters not being interesting to you because you are a man or that you think I am being manipulated by some bitching women is really out there.
and as a reader of the X-Men whose entire philosophy is about tolerance and understanding… you are missing the point.”
Can you believe this schmuck? Perhaps if he spent more time reading The Chicago Manual of Style and less time reading Jezebel, he might one day be able to punctuate and capitalize properly! How the hell does someone with the writing skills of a mongoloid hillbilly get a job writing anywhere, much less in a multi million dollar industry?!?!
But back to the guy who Bendis doesn’t want to know (because, obviously, anyone not toeing the feminist line must be dreadful person on par with slave owners and child molesters,) the fact is that he is mostly right. I have no problem with the focus on Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde and I have always felt that Cyclops’ codename should instead be Captain Bland, but when it comes to his broader points, the guy is undoubtedly, absolutely right — comic book creators do listen too much to women (read “feminists”) and women (read “feminists”) do cause a lot of trouble in the comic book world. One needs only remember the hysterical feminist reaction to Marvel Divas’ “Sex in the City” approach to know that.
Women are a very small percentage of comic book readers, yet the major companies are always sucking up to them despite it having become painfully obvious that women are as interested in reading comics as they are in having a cow shit on their faces. Giving such weight to the views of people representing a demographic that cares not a whit for your product makes as much sense as the editors of women’s magazines spending a lot of time asking men what they want to see in such mags. The latter doesn’t happen, so I can only put this disproportionate amount of attention down to a bad case of female privilege — women are being listened to not because they are customers, or even potential customers, but because they are women. Certainly the input of such people is going to do little to better a product they do not purchase and which they barely know exist.
As for Bendis, he could have used the question to discuss the matter like an adult but instead he issues a series of unfounded and barely coherent personal attacks. How is the fan misunderstanding himself as a man? This is either a variation on “If you don’t think as I do, then you are not a real man” or worse, Bendis thinks that being a man is about keeping your gob closed and doing what women want you to, and that by doing otherwise this fan has shown that he has misunderstood his place in the scheme of things. And how has he misunderstood “women in general” when he is complaining about a specific subset of women, i.e. the ones who actually know comic books exist!?! Then there’s the hypocrisy of implying the guy lacks tolerance and understanding while being so intolerant of the other person’s view that he simply dismisses it rather than engaging with it in any real way! Just goes to show the kind of man our society allows to write works that influence millions of boys and young men – a cringing, servile, gynocentric, intellectually dishonest little turd who wants to teach males to sit down and shut up while the women and he, the one good man, get on with running the show.