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Full Description
Killer Bodies offers a history of the single most critically-derided subgenre in American superhero comics: the 'bad girl' comics of the 1990s, which chronicled the blood-soaked adventures of barely-dressed and improbably-proportioned action heroines for an audience of adolescent boys. While not in any way attempting to rehabilitate the genre, which for the most part amply deserved its reputation as sexist and borderline pornographic, this book situates it within its original cultural context, as the result of a matrix of influences that included third-wave feminism, neopaganism, 'girl power', the rise of the internet, the growing popularity of manga, supermodel beauty ideals, and the mainstreaming of pornography. It explores why and how the figure of the anti-heroic, physically aggressive, sexually objectified heroine arose within American comics culture, and the commercial and ideological factors that led to the genre's rapid rise and equally rapid decline amidst the crisis-racked comics industry of the mid-1990s.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Secret Origins: The Birth of the 'Bad Girl' Genre
Chapter 2 Killer Bodies: 'Bad Girls' and the American Comics Industry
Chapter 3 Revolution Girl Style: 'Bad Girl' Comics and Third-Wave Feminism
Chapter 4 Girl Power: Postfeminist 'Bad Girl' Comics
Chapter 5 After the Fall: 'Bad Girl' Comics Since 1997
Conclusion: How Bad Were the 'Bad Girls'?
Works Cited
Index
