Shaenon Garrity on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay:
It’s fun. It’s just kind of like reading a novel about a Victorian inventor who comes up with the microchip, the integrated-circuit computer, the Internet, Google, and furry porn, yet is only considered on par with the guy who made those bikes with the one big wheel.
She also makes another really interesting point:
Also, just to put on my irritable-feminist hat for the day, I’ve noticed a tendency in fiction where these superhuman feats of intellect and inspiration are only considered plausible in male characters. While Joe and Sammy come up with every brilliant innovation in the history of American comic books, their lady Rosa Saks gets to be… the second-best artist of romance comics. Sure, in real life there weren’t many women during that period drawing great comic books, but neither were there any men who simultaneously combined all the best qualities of Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Will Eisner in their prime. Why must our ridiculous wish-fulfillment fantasy characters be confined to fanfiction.net?
Via Bookslut