SINCE THE BEGINNING of the comic boom in the late 1930's, the majority of readers have been male. During World War II, comics outsold popular magazines on army bases, with 41% male and 28% female categorized as regular readers. By the 1990's, the estimated statistics of comic shop patrons show a severe decrease in female fans to a paltry 7%. The majority of buyers of DC Comics are boys age 8-12, with a small but vocal niche of lifetime fans purchasing the mature graphic novels and content rated material like Legends of the Dark Knight (Parsons 68-81). The other media forms like Batman movies, television shows, and constant references are inescapable in the space of the public sphere. Batman is the stuff of pop culture(Enzensberger 2).

The actual public of female readers is subaltern and still learning to speak. Fragmented within the stratified framework of society, their participatory power depends on alliance with like-minded male fans. What drives fans to seek connectiveness with others has been the topic of many theorists. "Cultural studies says we bring unique interpretations to texts and argues for the acknowledgment of marginalized voices....developing understandings of multiple, situated grand narratives is feasible, and is the postmodern foundation of this recipe" (Aden 76). Media theorist Roger C. Aden believes fans read popular stories as experienced journeys. Though imaginary, romantic and modern fan encounters with consuming popular culture are a means of making sense of the world by arriving at a promised land. By sharing these symbolic pilgrimages with like-minded travelers, we experience "a spiritual sense of communion with others and offer a transcendent perspective of the cultural terrain" (79). As "miners of meaning" (80), comic readers respond to our consumer-oriented culture by becoming agents of their own mythology.

The new medium of comics share many similarities to the oral traditions of our past, with the addition of stunning visuals. Like the intricate skill it takes to read a movie, readers must learn to read the complicated panels of a comic book. Once initiated, the medium becomes an amalgam of the fast cuts of movies, the comic strip, and the text of literature. The small public who already possess these reading skills have an extraordinary frame of reference for understanding the Internet. This mobilizes them for active use of the web as a tool against the comic book industry.

Henry Jenkins' essay "Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching," analyzes fans who steal corporate owned images and use them in their own fan fiction. Similar to the lesbian and gay groups who actively read subtext into mainstream media, these marginalized fans of strong female protagonists appropriate mainstream media figures to fulfill needs not met through current storytelling. "Fans must confront media representations on an unequal terrain" (Jenkins, Get a Life, 33). Like the Robin Hood style figure of Catwoman, these fans rob ideas from the rich corporations and redistribute them for use among the disenfranchised masses. Poachers argue that copyright owners can not legally enforce audiences' mental play, and that their private communications about said material is likewise none of corporations' business (Jenkins, Get a Life, 32).

Fans wield power by banding together. Union creates a vocal and viable public to DC comics. As corporate owners, DC must court and placate the fans with the most buying dollars to stay in business. If fans clamor for more female representation and buy more books with heroines, DC will meet the demand. The company has already added the superheroine title Birds of Prey (featuring Black Canary and Oracle, the former Batgirl). More significantly, in the Fall of 2000 is the premiere of the monthly series of another villainess from Batman: The Animated Series Harleyquin. Meanwhile, the Catwoman fan club, numerous web sites, chat rooms, and newsletters like "Cat Claw" keep fans in contact and encourage the creation of their own media.

Media critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger extols the power of common citizens producing their own media as a counter strike to the hegemony of corporate-owned images. "The new media are egalitarian in structure. Anyone can take part in them" (Enzensberger 8). Through the publishing of web pages filled with original drawings and stories starring Catwoman/Selina Kyle, her audience claims ownership of a folk hero and remakes her in their own image. Enzensberger would celebrate these fans' use of new media as the mobilizing force that will cripple "the cultural monopoly of the bourgeois intelligentsia" and level the class playing field (Enzensberger 8). When the masses become agents of media, we will be liberated from the elite ruler's propaganda.

Unfortunately, corporations are already well aware that new media is the battleground of the future. As web publishing becomes cheaper and more accessible to the masses, corporations have stepped up their legal battle against such activities. In April 1999, DC Comics issued a cease and desist letter to dozens of prominent DC based web sites including unauthorized Batman and Catwoman pages. The letters have been circulated by the irate comic book community through postings, e-mail, and newsletters on the net like "Heroes: The Fanfic Groups' Fan Mag." The threatened legal action has been met with much outrage, as fans feel they have the right to think about these characters and share their imaginings with like-minded people.

The DC crackdown is also seen as a betrayal of fan trust, as many sites have operated for years under the "very generous fair use conditions which DC has shown in the past, particularly in allowing the existence of fan fiction" (Fanzing). Most fan sites are mindful of their copyright infringement, and give proper credit to owner DC Comics. A typical disclaimer is "Fanzing is strictly non-profit and is not intended to commercially challeng DC Comics in any way" (Fanzing). With this intermediary solution suddenly rejected by DC, fans are besides themselves at the prospect of losing their voice in the public sphere of the net.

MEDIA CROSSOVERS ARE now ubiquitous, with comic characters featured in movies, web sites, television shows, books, etc. Though women may not posses buying power in the industry, their lives are certainly affected by these widespread comic memes. In Douglas Roushkoff's Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture, the author posits that many anarchists use children's television to carry secret media messages to the masses. There are hidden themes that underly the Batman franchise. Dozens of stories feature big business monoliths as the enemy, with greed and hubris as the driving force behind their evil deeds. Since their earliest publications, many Batman stories warned of the dangers of science. While Batman uses technology as the caped crusader, a Luddite sensibility permeates as a vital meme. Many of the criminals Batman battles have turned to crime because of tragedies caused by science (Man-Bat, Clay-Face, Two-Face, Killer Croc, The Joker, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, etc.).

Another existing virus is the belief in Freudian and Jungian psychology that informs all the characters. The villains as well as our hero all dress in costumes that embody their various psychosis. Selina Kyle, whose independence and aloofness are her hallmark, chose the cat as her totem animal. Planning her alter ego, costume, accesorized technology (cat o' nine tails, the cat mobile), and capers around this theme cements her association with the traits of a feline. Creator Bob Kane purposefully chose the cat as her symbol to embody the antithesis of Bruce's bat totem and establish her as his female counterpart (Kane 108). Kane chose wisely, as the Herder Symbol Dictionary lists both the bat and the cat as ambivalent symbolic nocturnals with fluctuating meaning and morality in cultures. They are both despised and loved, both feared as bad luck and sought after as harbors of good fortune (18, 32). In a world where black and white heroes no longer represent our struggles in the modern world, only the realistic duality of these antiheroes will satisfy.

Copyright © 1999-2001 by Elisabeth Fies
Written, designed, and animated by Elisabeth Fies. Last updated 06/03/01

All comic characters and their likeness are the intellectual property of DC Comics.