I'll be happy for a second

During my regular nerdly surfing of the comics blogosphere, I noticed something intriguing and exciting from one of my favorite non-explicitly-feminist comic bloggers, Jim Roeg. Well, not from him directly, but it's a thing I noticed on his site that I'd like to point more people to. During his wonderful essay on Steve Gerber's Marvel Two-in-One run he posts the following panels:

I would like to draw everyone's attention to the topmost panel. Do you see what I'm seeing? Well, first of all, out of four characters, two of them, a full 50 percent, are women. But the thing about that that I really noticed, and that got me really excited, is that the two women are completely different from one another (well okay, they're both thin and pretty...)!

Now, I don't know who they are, so y'know, not really any lasting iconic appeal or anything, but look, two different outfits, two different hairstyles and, what's this? Two different types of body language? Yes!!! And the one in the traditional "heroic stance" that is usually reserved for men only (let me say that again: a woman in the traditional heroic stance. Well, except for the whole hand-on-the-thigh thing...) is also wearing long pants. What is this? Is all of Gerber's stuff this awesome?

So yeah, for one brief, shining moment, there are just as many pathways into the text for those wishing to identify with the women as there are for those wishing to identify with the men. So not mind-blowingly spectacular or anything, but nice.