Heroines of Comic Books and Literature by Maja Bajac-Carter

Author:Maja Bajac-Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Single, Storm’s narratives cast her as a leader of a superhero team that represents what is best in mutantkind. Married, she was written to be not much more than Panther’s wife in Panther’s country. Single, readers were allowed to explore her persona as “a weather goddess” in self-titled projects and solo story arcs. Married, readers were limited to “Ororo Munroe coping with her new life and her new husband in a new country” stories in Panther’s book. If Black Panther had been renamed Panther and Storm after the wedding, readers would have been assured that her high-profile status as a mutant and a superhero would have been maintained in their title. However, in Black Panther, her role was reduced to Ororo following T’Challa around helping him do his work on behalf of his people in order to maintain his superhero status.

There is ample evidence illustrating how Storm was marginalized in Black Panther. Engagement and postmarriage representations of her as a visual and written text placed more emphasis on feminine qualities that marked her as inferior rather than her superhero abilities that maintained her importance. Throughout the first Hudlin relaunch of the title, Storm was dressed in her X-Men uniform—the tiara and caped, full-body unitard uniform that is reminiscent of the classically styled superhero outfits of her teammates.[28] Rhetorically, this should have reminded the reader of her superhero status and position among the X-Men. However, the narratives in Black Panther #16 repeatedly subjected her to the male gaze.[29] In the beginning of the issue, there was a lengthy discussion about her suitability as queen of Wakanda among the country’s citizens. Objections that were raised because she was an outsider or because the courtship was too brief were quickly dismissed with comments like, “But she is beautiful,” as if her physical appearance was the only important criterion to rule beside King T’Challa. When her teammates learned of the nuptials, Cyclops was the only male to lament the loss of “one of our best team leaders.” The other males simply referred to her decision to marry as another lost dating opportunity. In the end, the reader may have wanted to continue “seeing” Storm as a superhero, but the narratives contradicted that view.

Additionally, in Panther’s title, all of Storm’s acts of heroism were minimized. She had the potential to be an excellent superhero partner to Panther. The weather goddess and the panther god, a black couple protecting everyone in their sphere of influence—what a concept! Yet it was a disappointment to see no development in Storm’s use of her powers as a married woman. After the wedding, the title’s narratives regularly featured T’Challa using new forms of Wakandan technology (i.e., full-body light armor) and Matrix-like fighting skills.[30] But Storm was featured doing nothing more than summoning lightning bolts and gusts of wind. The few narratives in which she used her powers creatively (i.e., creating a weather vortex that could slingshot an aircraft from one side of the world to another)[31] were in various X-titles.

While

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.