It always amuses me how pregnancy is glossed over in comics when it comes to main characters. Comics are about heroes. Superheroes can’t get pregnant! How can they be heroes! Then why do they try to tackle the issue so often in comics? Most recently Siryn in X-Factor.
In the post House of M Marvel Universe where there are very little Mutants left the possible birth of a new Mutant should be front and center in the X-men’s minds. Instead they fight over a baby that is more than likely Jean (AGAIN). The X-men seem to show little interest in the pregnancy and even move across the country to San Francisco. The current Secret Invasion story has taken up most of the pages of X-Factor recently. In issue 34 Siryn is shown for one page.
The size is actually reasonable here it’s the tongue that’s freaking me out. For the curious, the father is Jamie Maddrox. At least one of him anyway.
DC decided to take a swing at teen pregnancy by throwing a bun into Stephanie Brown aka Spoilers oven. Spoiler was introduced in the Detective Comics series as a friend to Tim Drake’s Robin. They were often shown kissing and flirting but she had a boyfriend on the side that got her pregnant and promptly left. Robin knows who she is but she doesn’t know his real name so he created names to visit her in civilian mode.
As far as I can tell she’s supposed to be pretty far along, after all he is taking her to Lamaze. The story was a lot like Juno (but came before it) in it wasn’t preachy in the biblical sense. No mention of not having sex as a teen was brought up. There is a scene where a stupid girl a her school excitedly cheers her on for being pregnant. Through the whole thing Robin is by her side.
Is that your Maieusiophilia showing Tim? Note the amazing disappearing belly. Robin has to leave but managed to make it back and sneak into the delivery room. In the end she gives up her baby, refusing to see it when it’s born, and returns to a care-free life of crime fighting. (Then dies, then comes back again. What, it’s comics?)
Another thing that always bothers me is the quality of the art in these issues. Usually issues with pregnancy are drawn by people that apparently didn’t bother to look up a pregnant woman. Many of them aren’t all that great at art itself. When I good artist is in charge they seem to make every attempt to hide or underplay the pregnancy. For example, Witchblade: First Born. A miniseries about a pregnancy that had an excellent artist Stjepan Sejic.
For nine months pregnant she sure is tiny don’t ya think? I know women that work out tend to keep their shape better. But come on! Most of this mini series focuses on the father of the baby. He wields “The Darkness” which is the “father” of the Witchblade that Sarah wields. That is some weird Incest right there. Of course the series culminates in the birth.
She’s even beautiful in labor.
Another common thing is to just copy a famous pose. And what’s more famous in pregnant celebrities than Demi Moore on Vanity Faire. From the same series we have a cover by Mike Choi.
To his credit he was asked to do the cover this way and cites the famous photo as a reference.
Finally, most pregnancies in comics just end in a plot baby. A pregnancy that exists solely to create a deus ex machina. Even Power Girl was impregnated by the power of plot. The pregnancy came in time to put her out of action during Zero hour.
The baby was born and rapidly began to grow. His “father” was revealed to actually be his great-grandfather who had impregnated Kara to fulfill some prophecy. The Baby ages to adulthood, kills some demon and disappears into plot heaven soon after. The kid wasn’t even given a name Power Girl just referred to him as baby or son even as an adult.
I guess in the end pregnancies are not made for most comics. Having children ages the character (See Spider-man). Writers don’t know what to do with pregnant women or babies. Many pregnancies are written with refrigerators in mind, the pregnancies only causing angst for the parents when they come to an end.
Images from Marvel’s X-factor 34, DC’s Robin 59-65 and JLI, and Top Cow’s WitchBlade: First born 1-3. This is just a small collection. I wanted to sample from several companies.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Valid point, and another testament to the self-righteous inflexibility of mainstream comic artists. If they can’t see it in the mirror or in other comic books, they’ll either cleverly (or, as you pointed out with Spoiler, not so cleverly) hide it or draw it without reference, yielding laughable results. Seriously, for such action-intensive media, more artists should really be able to at least draw guns that don’t look like cardboard cutouts or massive chrome wangs.
Okay, I’ll quit being nasty and go read some TenNapel in the corner…
October 15th, 2008 at 3:36 am
Hmm, I’d cite the whole Luke Cage/Jessica Jones pregnancy sdtoryline, which splashed over into several comics, was drawn well by some artists (not all, but like I said it splashed into a lot of comics), and doesn’t appear to be a ‘plot’ baby, (in your meaning of the term) but more a creative effort to age the characters and give them a new set of responsibilities. (and therefore give the characters a new lease of life in comics)
But then again, even if I could argue enough to create that as an example of pregnancy in comics done well (which I don’t think I can) even I’d have to conceed that this was the exception rather than the rule.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:32 am
It’s also a skrull.
The only example I can think of where a normal pregnancy ends in a kid that doesn’t age unnaturally (until he ages himself), and isn’t just a d-lister off screen thing, is Franklin Reeds.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
You know I’m glad that Power Girl actually got back her original origin, so the weirdness of that pregnancy can just be forgotten just like the child. But the child’s name was Equinox.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
But she didn’t name it. He was just like” OH HAI MOM! I’m an adult now and since you didn’t name me I will be known as Equinox!!”
Which kinda sounds like a 13 year old goth renaming themselves and demanding the mother not call them Todd but hey are now NOCTURNE!
October 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It’s a skrull?
Fantastic, something ELSE I like about a character taken away. I’m glad I stopped reading Marvel just before the Secret Invasion stuff…
I also can’t believe I didn’t think of Franklin Richards. And I call myself a comics nerd!
October 15th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Yeah well I put the wrong name
at least you know who I meant. But he like made his own sister.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
To further what KB said, I’m also pretty darn sure that Susan Richards was comics first pregnant superheroine, even if after she started to grow we never got to see her in costume, during the first pregnancy at least…
October 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Comics in general have many issues and plot holes. But the reason pregnancy is most likley a plot problem is who comics are marketted too. Most comics are marketted to young boys. And despite knowing boys who prefer bigger women, or meeting those who love pregnant women, the mainstream is still working under the impression that all men want super models. Pregnancy just doesn’t fit into that mindset of early teenagers. They don’t want to hear about it, they don’t find it interesting. They want to see their super hot, mutant women fighting bad guys not preparing for the birthof their child and impending parenthood.
If they do a pregnacy they usually take the angst route because that’s the easiest thing for the hormonally crazed teenager to relate too.
Now for the comics that are marketted to young girls, in honesty I know more female friends that would rather hire a surrogate than bear their own child. (I know, I’ve been asked to a lot since I’m one of the few that actually would love a pregnancy.) So seeing their female heroine going thru the miracle we know as child bearing and birth might not be their cup of tea.
So in the end, my point is that a pregnnacy in comics would be great but what to remember is that comics are a buisness first and foremost. So until pregnant women become a popular source of entertainment, I doubt you’ll see a decent plot of one in comic books.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:37 am
I wouldn’t necessarily attribute it to any particular malice against pregnancy, but rather the fact that playing out a pregnancy, birth, and aftermath to its fullest extent would require a long-term change to the status quo. The same reason that they can’t allow any of Reed Richards’s amazing technology to work properly and reshape the fundamental technological base of the setting, or why Batman villians keep on getting thrown in the notoriously porous Arkham Asylum rather than given the needle, and why they seem to have a revolving-door afterlife.