Sons of Lilith: The Portrayal and Characterization of Women in the Apocryphal Comics of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison

Abstract

This paper examines the treatment and characterization of women, sex, identity, and gender in the lesser known or studied comics of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison in order to discern what such an analysis tells us about each author's engagement with the issues and debates surrounding these sociopolitical and cultural phenomena. The purpose of this study is to discern how three of the most influential writers of contemporary comics books engage with themes of gender, identity, sexuality, and trauma and, in this way, set precedents that have come to be debated and critiqued in contemporary comics scholarship and fandom. It reveals that all three writers ostensibly engage with progressive imaginings of the self, sexuality, identity, and gender as mercurial, de-centred, and subject to play and change in each of the chosen case study characters. It finds that while ostensibly progressive, all three writers simultaneously recirculate certain conceptualizations of the relationships between identity, trauma, and sexuality by taking the histories in which they emerged as assumed.