Carol Wolf learned how to hold a quarterstaff from Willie Garvin
You could sort the comics by color when I was a kid. The dark menacing covers, with the heroes attacking or being beset by awful enemies, and the pretty, silly bright ones, where cheerful characters got in to unmemorable difficulties, and out again without much trouble, but with some lesson learned. Flip the pages on the menacing ones, they’re full of threat gestures, and oversized shoulders. It was not a world that I cared to spent my time in. And the pretty ones are boring if you’re not ten.
The bigger-than-life-sized heroes translate brilliantly to the big screen, and comic book stories make great action films. I am enjoying them very much in this new guise, distilled for the essence of story and character problems. And, bowing to modern sensibilities, some women who don’t exist solely in relation to the hero. Is there a single comic that passes the Bechdel test?
My favorite comic is Modesty Blaise. I discovered her late, so of course I found the books first, but I track down the comics whenever I can. Modesty Blaise doesn’t wear tights. Survivor of a displaced persons camp after World War II, as a child she becomes the protector of an old Eastern-European
professor, and together they wandered the Middle East for several years. He teaches her, and names her. She fights, first for her own life, and then for his as well. When he dies she buries him and goes on alone. At seventeen she is spinning the roulette wheel at a casino in Tangiers, owned by one of the local mob bosses. When he is killed by a rival gang, she organizes his splintered forces, fights off the takeover, exacts revenge, and becomes the new leader. Thus “The Network” is born.
Modesty Blaise is an international crime boss, but she doesn’t touch vice or drugs. In fact, she uses her own forces to root out evil gangs that come her way, thus earning her the respect of various international police forces. At twenty-five, having made a fortune, she retires to live in a penthouse suite overlooking Hyde Park in London. And becomes bored.
Her right-hand man, Willie Garvin, who retired at the same time to take up his life-long dream of running a pub on the Thames, is also bored. The head of British intelligence uses that as a lever to get them to adventure for him to do things he cannot do. And thus the books begin.
Modesty Blaise has no angst. She is a martial arts expert, continuously training to hone her skills. Willie Garvin, raised in an English orphanage, one-time member of the foreign legion, a miserable thug remade by her trust and in her image when she buys him out of a Thai jail on a whim, has an eidetic
memory and endlessly adaptable combat expertise. And a string of girlfriends all over the world, loving and uncomplicated. Modesty and Willie are clever. They think their way out of problems and then fight. They enjoy life; they play. They may also be the first example in literature of a man and a woman who are really good friends, go adventuring together, but are not in a sexual relationship.
Modesty and Willie have nice friends. They have lovers, hobbies, enthusiasms. They are life-long learners, continuously trying new things. And they play horrible jokes on each other.
The villains in the stories are larger-than-life, over-the-top Evil, folks you really love to hate. The stories are fast-paced, jam packed with fun and adventure. The comic books are fun, because it’s a pleasure to see what Peter O’Donnell thought Modesty and Willie look like. But the books are better. Stories have more impact when they take awhile to unfold, especially when the stakes are high and the character goes through hell and back to win. Modesty Blaise: no angst, and without tights. Good comics, and an even better bunch of books.
wj on June 22, 2012
Is there a single comic that passes the Bechdel test?
Well yes, actually. A quick forray with Google turns up this paper:
http://www.comicbookgrrrl.com/2012/05/30/women-in-comics-dc-vs-marvel-the-bechdel-test/
It concludes that a surprising number of Marvel and DC comics actually do pass the test. (Surprised me, too.)
But it is perhaps a commentary on the Bechdel Test that Modesty Balise manages to be a far better comic (in my opinion, anyway) than any of them, while probably not passing the test. (And also not bothering with tights.) There are occasional women in the stories. (I don’t recall Modesty talking to them about Willie much. Mostly, she talks to them about things related to the story line.)
With comics, as with any writing, having a good story line is far more important than what the characters look like or who they talk to. OK, unless you are making a movie strictly as eye-candy — but then, those mostly don’t bother with a plot anyway. And although you don’t mention Angst after the headline, I suspect that that isn’t a focus that is particularly interesting as a story. No doubt such a story (or movie) could get great reviews — but would any real person actually want to read/see it? Especially more than once? But great stories can be revisited again and again.
Carol Wolf on June 22, 2012
Thanks for the reference. Comics passing the Bechdel test! Who’da thunk it!
Carol Wolf on June 22, 2012
Isn’t the Bechdel test two women talking with each other about something other than a guy? The Blaise books will pass, if you remember to include the evil female badguys, who often have conversations with Modesty, or with another woman, about something other than a guy (usually something really evil).
I did bring up angst, only to mention that Modesty Blaise doesn’t have any. But as for story, we are completely in accord.
wj on June 23, 2012
I, perhaps incorrectly, took the Bechdel test to refer to major characters. As in, a female detective character speaking to a female store clerk about a crime that she witnessed would not really qualify — unless the store clerk has more than a cameo appearance. But talking to a recurring female character of the Medical Examiner about the crime would qualify.** I suppose what I am saying is that, to meet the test, the characters have to be around long enough to be more than 1 dimensional.
On that score, an evil female badguy would count, and there are a few of those. But with rare exceptions, Modesty’s brief conversations with one of Willie’s girlfriends would not, even if they are not talking about him. They are merely making a cameo appearance.
** I’m thinking of something like, in the TV series world, Rizzoli and Isles. While the two women do talk about their social lives, the bulk of the conversations are about what is happening in their cases. Even if they are talking about a guy, if he’s a corpse that they never met alive, that isn’t really what Bechdel was talking about.
Carol Wolf on June 23, 2012
I’m pretty sure the bar is lower than that. Two women, any women, at some point in the film, talking about something other than men. You know, if the guy’s a corpse, I think that would pass. I’d certainly pass it.