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KATE

mattfractionblog:

So I was driving home and something occurred to me that I want to write about real fast, because i am apparently incapable of experiencing moments of learning and NOT sharing it here. 

I have been, over time, fond of making jokes about Kieron Gillen killing off Kate Bishop. To me, it’s a joke about cavalierly spoiling another writer’s work and filling that writer’s inbox up with concerned emails and asks. I do this because I love Kieron. He’s one of my dearest friends in comics and out and I am on any given day at any given time in awe of something he’s said or written somewhere. And because Actually Feeling Stuff is hard this is how I show affection. Or at least it was. 
For whatever reason I was chewing it over in my head and I started to feel like Lucy with the football. I dunno about you or who you are or what you like but I don’t like feeling like Lucy with the football. 
It doesn’t matter what I thought the joke was, it occurs to me that because Kate is Kate and not, say, Karl, it occurs to me that there’s another angle from which to view that joke from that makes it seem… well, mean-spirited.  Because this is a thing that comics does to Kates.  Frequently.  
Which, uh, which is bullshit.  And I’m sorry for not sensing that sooner. 
So I’m not going to make that joke any more.  And I promise nobody’s gonna off Kate so Clint can feel bad about it and do what needs to be done
Not right now, I mean.  Not while she’s carrying that baby.
KIDDING! KIDDING!
Okay, that was the last joke like that. I promise.  

For those who don’t know, Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye (not to be confused with Clint Barton aka Hawkeye aka Hawkguy) has been featured pretty prominently in two popular marvel titles. One of them is Hawkeye which Matt Fraction (the OP) writes, which is about Kate and Clint being Hawkeye and what that title and role means (and also about pizza dogs and adorable things) and the other is Young Avengers, written by Kieron Gillen, which is about a group of young super heroes (and gay love).

What Mr. Fraction is saying here that is so awesome and so wonderfully insightful into the medium he is writing in, is that the jokes he makes about Kate being killed off in the other series she is in are far too reminiscent of a real problem in comics - the killing off of women for the pain and motivation of men - as he puts it, “so Clint can feel bad about it and do what needs to be done.”

The next line is a lovely jab at both plot twists and conservative politics, because Mr. Fraction is a wonderful man.

Even if  death in Marvel comics doesn’t mean much, the idea that female characters, and the violence enacted on them are tools to further the plot of male characters is a problem, and it is one that Mr. Fraction clearly understands.

It just makes me really happy when people show awareness of the problematic tropes of their medium, and vow to work against them. Also of course that Kate will be around for a while longer.

 
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