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Well DUH! This belabored article comes down to the same kernel of obvious that inspired my joke that the best prank of '08 would have been switching the trailers of Iron Man and Sex and the City, SatC audience gets The Spirit, and Iron Man audience gets Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
And see how I made that point in a sentence without making anybody scratch their head wondering what a Rope of Silicon Thera Pitt might be?

Skipper said it better. If we substitute a broader label like "Action movies" for "Superhero movies" maybe it won't clank so much: there are more men in the audience for that kind of film. Doesn't mean some women don't like them, but I think most are aware they're not in the majority. So for every Kill Bill with a female lead, there are 20 Die Hards.

And yes, it was a male audience driving Wonder Woman. For those not old enough to remember, the term was "Jiggle TV". It started with Three's Company and Charlie's Angels, and all of a sudden every network was pushing them up, I mean, er, out everywhere. (FWIW, I think the era officially ended with a collective agreement that the apex of absurdity had been reached when Raquel Welch was torturing Mork from Orc in a hot tub, seeing that his species had such a low tolerance for pleasure.

No, I didn't make that up. Really.

I know I veered way off the point, actually forgot what it was. Chalk it up to Monday.

Good point, Joanna. Comic books have always done a fair amount of serving (or at least tickling) fetishy itches, and now that we're all agreed they are an adult's medium as much as a children's one, there isn't anything really wrong with that. As long as the proper titles are directed at the proper audience, it's fine.

I think they get into the most trouble when the hypocrisy kicks in: when they start pretending there ISN'T a bondage fetish, or that men DON'T like looking at big bouncy breasts, or that degrading a woman's icon actually empowers them. That's where their credibility goes down the toilet with all but the terminally gullible.

The fact is, comic books have not evolved past "Quiet or Papa spank" while the rest of the world HAS, and their attempts to appear enlightened about women come off like the 70s sitcoms making a production of the black guy who was a lawyer and not a janitor. It's your father showing up at the prom, dancing "like all you kids do today". It is embarrassing. And it may well kill the medium eventually.

The conflict comes when this awkwardly locked in the past medium meets a mainstream one like the movies. Hollywood may have its flaws, but it has to be living in the present with the rest of us, not in an arrested adolescent mindset circa 1952. There it is pretty simple: more men see action movies than women. Can you have women starring solo in an action film? Yep: Kill Bill. Are here 10 Die Hards and Terminators for every Kill Bill? Yep. Is there anything wrong with that? Nope. That's the end of the hollywood conversation. All of the superhero-specific and quasi-feminist pontificating is completely off-point in terms of making movies. There, it is very simple: is this likely to make money? Based on what has succeeded and failed in the past, is it likely to MAKE MONEY? Will enough people want to pay to see it that we get our $100,000,000 back?

Come on, everyone, a little honesty. Check all the knee-jerk talk show responses, and just think about that honestly: if you were going to put $100 million of YOUR MONEY into a project, wouldn't your principle concern be whether or not you would ever see it again?