Posted in: Comics | Tagged: avengers, Comics, entertainment, hasbro, marvel, transformers

Transforming Male Genre Franchises, From Transformers To Avengers

Published Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:00:10 -0500

On Friday, Hasbro announced in USA Today new female-based Transformers characters and a comic book from IDW.

Considering they are all robots, gender may be an intellectual rather than a physical concern. They have been referred to in masculine terms through their history, however, with male actors playing them on screen – with very few exceptions. Indeed, female Transformers were portrayed as an anomaly, a believed-to-be-extinct subgroup. Yeah. But of late folk have tried to do something about that.

So we have had Transformers such as Windblade (above) and Strongarm brought to prominence. Victorion, a new "Combiner" Transformer made from six different female Transformers. And it's those who will be introduced by the IDW comic book Transformers: Combiner Hunters.

There is the nagging doubt that no Transformer is male or female, but that's clearly not how they are treated by each other or the audience. Indeed, gender is mental identity for the characters, which is closer to lot of current thinking.

And being Transformers, as they change their shape and function, could they change the way their physical nature reflects they orientation? Are there any female-identified Transformers who have been acting male to fit it? Those who appear one way but were born another? No transformative surgery is necessary – they should be able to choose it themselves. If they have the confidence that is. So, yes, questions. Not that they'll necessarily get any answers.

But putting all that aside, it is another example of the increasing female presence in traditionally male-oriented genre franchises as the fanbase grows, diversifies and becomes more vocal, especially online. The idea of the gender-targeted action adventure franchise is falling down as the audience has shown itself, time after time, to have a greater female audience and who actually wouldn't mind seeing their gender represented a little more on the screen, in the comics, in the toys as more than an.. accessory. There are plenty up in arms at such actions, citing people kow-towing to political correctness. In truth, political correctness doesn't pay the bills, but women with credit cards, of girls who know how to nag their parents it seems, but just help do that. Because while the boys might appreciate keeping something all to themselves, the beancounters like it when their sisters also want to buy in.

Of course, how you portray the female Transformers may also be an issue. They seem to have moves away from the pink motifs, but is it all about tin waists and big boob-shelves? There are some logical gaps here with how a female identity is portrayed physically in robot form but – in the end overthinking this leads to some very strange places. As long as they can steer away from the second Transformers movie's portrayal of Skids and Mudflap, we should be okay…

Another example of that is the upcoming female Ghostbusters movie, which no doubt IDW will have an adaptation of, and Marvel's upcoming A-Force, described at C2E2 as a major title for the Marvel Universe following Secret Wars... let's take a peek courtesy of Marvel.