Marvel Team-Up #8: Marvel’s Feminism in the Early 1970s

This issue has been published in the first volume of Marvel’s Essential Marvel Team-Up. What struck me about this issue, and what led me to write about it is the interesting vision of feminism portrayed in this issue. The issue was published around 1972 or 73. It features Spiderman teaming up with a character called the Cat, who is essentially a Catwoman analog.

They team up to fight a villain called the Mankiller. The Mankiller was a female athlete who was horribly scarred during a skiing accident. I didn’t know falling down a cliff while you are skiing can cause scars similar to a burn victim, but evidently here it can. She gains a superpowers from an exoskeleton looking thing, and she turns her hatred towards men. Really she is a negative stereotype of the feminist movement, while the Cat is a positive stereotype. Well, turns out that Mankiller’s little group of feminist warriors (I hesitate to use the term Femi-nazi’s, but the characters are presented that way) is actually being funded by the terrorist group called AIM. What really strikes me is the naive concept of feminism. The comic seems to be making some kind of social commentary about man hating feminists, how their motives are hollow.

In the end of the issue Spiderman and the Cat don’t win by beating the Mankiller in physical combat, but by telling her that she is actually working for men. After she finds this out she is defeated and looks very plain and homely. This is not in some imagined way, but very visible in the art. Her hair becomes straight and stringy. She looses any pride in her posture and appearance. In defeat she loses her femininity as well as her masculinity in terms of gendered posture. The thing is, this change really shows some stereotyped concept about what a woman should be. I am trying to figure out if it is sexist and I don’t have a clear answer. Everybody who worked on the issue, except for the letterist, is male. That last page with the dejection and crushed Mankiller just turning out to be an “ugly homebody” strikes me as a criticism of the feminist movement, though the Cat’s character demonstrates positive feminism as well. If you can accuse it of being sexist it is because it features a naive and unsophisticated take on feminism.