Strong Female Protagonist Research Paper

Strong Female Protagonist vs. Violence

Superheroes fight crime the whole purpose of superheroes is to stand against some kind of evil. In the standard American superhero narrative, superheroes all battle against villains and villains are almost always portrayed as being physically beaten by the hero. The appeal to superheroes is that they fight crime and beat evil, in any standard American superhero story it is seen that superheroes normally do resort to violence to fight villains. What normally is not shown is superheroes who defeat evil or villains without using any type of violence. It is a rarity in itself that there would be American superhero narratives that do not deploy the use of violence. Strong Female Protagonist is a comic that

“Violence. Our superhero stock-in-trade” (Warren 185). Superheroes are normally associated with violence or action, the standard phrase to describe superheroes is “fighting” crime. The creation of superheroes meant that there had to be a villain, and the portrayal of superheroes having to “face villains with weapons or comparable superpowers, and not apprehending the villains will result in harm to others” (Martin 240). In the comic Strong Female Protagonist, it even shows how the protagonist Alison Green started her career as a superhero using violence in her everyday job as a hero. It is a norm that is depicted in her recollections of being a hero, for example, in one of her missions Alison, aka Mega Girl smashes her way through a wall when she could have just opened the door (Mulligan 3.5). This one scene shows how superheroes do use violence even for everyday things such as opening a door. Alison instantly defaults to using violence to get her way without even thinking whether or not the door was unlocked. This scene indicates how it is a standard for superheroes to instinctively rely on using force rather than considering alternative options. Though there are instances of Alison using violence what Strong Female Protagonist does is challenge this norm by having readers see how the protagonists examines the use of violence in her career and question if there are alternatives to this. A scene in Strong

Superhero narratives rarely deviate from having violence as an effective means because “instrumental justification of violence is characteristic of superheroes in general” (Warren 180). This general belief is called into question by Strong Female Protagonists when the comic shows another superhero named Feral realizing that violence will not change any of the issues in society. Feral explains to Alison that she traveled the world and realized there using violence was not the solution, she says “I had lied myself into thinkin’ that killin’ bad guys was the best way to help. It wasn’t the best way, it wasn’t even a god way, it was just the easy way, the way I was good at” (Mulligan 3.31). This is important because Feral points out that there are alternatives to violence. This is a critical moment in the comic because it confronts the idea of violence being a good solution to solving issues when in fact it is considered the “easy way.” This is a pivotal moment in the comic because it directly calls out how violence is always a go to move for heroes in solving their problems. This moment makes readers realize that even though killing bad guys could minorly fix the problem, there are bigger issues that need to be solved that even violence can