Barb Lien-Cooper
Secret Origin of a Fangirl
Just One of the Lads, I Guess
Barb Lien-Cooper
August 2002
The short version —
I was a girl that was more or less raised like a boy. I had a cousin who treated me like a little brother. I hung out with my cousin's male friends around the neighborhood, ran with them, fought with them, got teased by them, got yelled at and conned by them, just like any "little brother" does. I didn't see much difference between them and me except they could pee standing up, which I admit, I always found sort of cool. Then, I discovered by accident in a fight that you really shouldn't kick a guy in the groin. Any view that it made anyone superior to have that piece of equipment as opposed to what I had quickly went out the window after that incident. It was a tragedy for me when guys started treating me differently because I grew breasts. I felt like I was demoted from where the action was to cheerleader status. Being typed by my gender has never suited me, fit me, or applied to me all that much. Not that I felt like I was a boy or wanted to be one — I just thought that the difference everyone made between being male and being female was a tempest in a tea pot.
Be that as it may. We (meaning the boys and me) all watched syndicated re-runs of the 1960's Batman show. I saw Barbara Gordon and found a role model in Batgirl. She too was the tomboy amongst the guys — their equal, their compadre, but not really their teammate. Her feminist identity made her an independent spirit, you see. She was an intelligent, accomplished, perky young professional woman during the day, a consummate crimefighter by night. In the Batman comics, she eventually became a senator. No other female heroine was like that— not Sue Storm with her Jackie Kennedy backflip hair and "Boo hoo! My husband never pays any attention to me" persona, not Wonder Woman with her "tie me up, tie me down" bondage fetish (why did the Gods GIVE her that damned lasso if all she could end up doing is getting tied up with it), not Supergirl with her unresolved Electra complex towards Superman. I read all my cousin's old DC comics as a kid, plus the ones he ended up getting on rummage sales (in the days before comics were collector's items, you could get boxes of comics for like 10 cents apiece at rummage sales). You know those comic book collections men complain their mother's threw away? I think my family ended up buying most of them. I wish I'd known that comics would be valuable someday, as I could have retired off the money I could have gotten from selling some of those comics.
My favorite comics, though, were the horror comics that we'd find on garage sales. I especially liked House of Mystery and The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves. I swear that horror comics influenced a lot of my taste in literature later on, insomuch as I like to read and write disturbing stuff. But, again, a lot of this taste pop entertainment came from hanging out with boys, who'd tell me all about the goriest movies and would all read horror magazines. They had a lot of Starlogs and Fangorias, so I read them, too.
I never liked Marvel comics, believe it or not. I didn't like them because the reprints had weird art (I later learned that this was Jack Kirby's work) that kind of freaked me out. I didn't like them because their storylines went on forever and unless you got all the issues, you'd get lost. I didn't like the slangy talk, which sounded about as dated as Snapper Carr's lame attempts to be hip. I didn't like this huckster named Stan Lee trying to make me buy more and more of his product. I didn't like how the characters talked the plot — "Must hit Hulk with this beam — but — don't — have — the — strength." I found the very things fanboys love about Marvel to be confusing and boring. I've never really gotten into Marvel in later years. Fanboys try to explain the appeal, but it all seems so "boy's club", with secret handshakes, decoder rings, etc. I read Marvel more now, as writers I like work there, but part of me still sees Marvel comics as a big con of some sort.
I stopped reading comics after I started reading books in the adult section of the library. I got into movies, music, literature, and art. I wanted to be very hip and intellectual. I didn't see how reading comics could fit into my view of myself.
I came back to comics in 1992/1993 because musician friends of mine read DC Mature (which later became Vertigo) and told me that comics were now for the over 18 crowd. I read Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol and became convinced that comics were again worth my attention. Comics were hip, clever, knowledgeable, pop culture oriented, funny, and challenging! I read all of DC's mature line comics. I especially liked Hellblazer, Shade: The Changing Man, and Sandman. I scouted cheapie boxes for all the good 1980's comics I'd missed during my absence. I especially fell for Mike Grell's version of Green Arrow. I thought all comics must be as good as the classics that I picked up in cheapie boxes. While being a completist thoroughly educated me in comics, it also made me angry when comics weren't as good or as ambitious as, say, early Alan Moore. So, I got bored and depressed by comics that were just mindless entertainment, lacking in good plots or characterization.
I lost interest in superhero comics or anything in the mainstream. Then, I got into indie comics. That helped for awhile, but I found that a lot of indie comics had good ideas, but a lack of craftsmanship that made a lot of them amateurish. And, comics I liked, like Strangehaven and Sleaze Castle only came out every year or so. I did my time in the cheapie boxes, becoming an indie comics completist, too. But, I got bored.
Then, I got into manga and anime. That got boring after awhile, until companies like ADV, The Right Stuf, and ToykoPop made a real effort to bring in cutting edge animes and mangas to US borders. That's where my head's currently at. The best comic I read this year was Eagle. And, somewhere along the line, I started writing my own scripts. In fact, I'm finding that I'd rather write my own stories than to read other people's at the moment, unless it's manga. I'm sort of burnt out on other people's visions and would kind of like to pursue my own instead. At least manga's visions come from a different tradition than the American comic book.
Still, comics and the comic book community are a part of my life and no matter how angry and frustrated I get at the half-assed writing and lack of ambition in American comics, I am stuck here, as I have seen how damned good sequential art can be. And, I only hope that my stories will contribute positively to the art form.
All these years later, I guess I still want to be Barbara Gordon — accomplished, the equal to the men in her world, a feminist role model, brilliant, capable, etc. The only question will be how readily the Batman and Robins of my community accept me. Will they let me fight along side them or will they think that just because of the gender I was born into, I couldn't possibly be a hero?
