So far in my short comic-reading career, I'd avoided anything overtly sexist. And I absolutely loved the first collected edition of Mark Waid and Paolo Rivera's Daredevil. But then I got to Daredevil's two-part crossover with Amazing Spider-Man.The crossover revolves around Daredevil and Spider-Man teaming up to deal with the Black Cat. It's the first appearance of a female costumed character in the series, and Black Cat's depiction is utterly shameful for the twenty-first century.
Neither Spider-Man nor Daredevil have a great track record with respect for women--but that's okay with me, since it's generally presented as a character flaw for both of them. Peter Parker is a hormonal teenage boy, and we all know plenty of those in real life. I may or may not have been one myself at some point. Rich guy Matt Murdock is presented in Waid's Daredevil as a womanizer in the Mad Men vein, fitting of Paolo Rivera's retro art during his tenure working on the series. Maybe it's telling that as soon as Rivera stopped doing all the artwork for Daredevil, we got this sexist crossover.
