The acclaimed illustrator and her gender norm challenging cartoons have received plenty of positive reactions from people and news outlets from all over the world. Her work portrays known superheroes like Superman, Batman and Spiderman in every day situations such as baking with their kids, grocery shopping or sitting on the toilet.
Johansson is now producing a new colouring book that will contain ten strong princesses. We will see Cinderella playing video games with her stepmother and stepsisters, Ariel sitting on the toilet and having second thoughts about becoming a human and Belle doing scientific experiments.
The idea was created when Johansson’s three-year-old son came home from kinder garden visibly upset but refusing to cry because he claimed Spiderman does not cry. The cartoonist then decided to take action and started drawing an alternative side of well known superheroes – a more human, emotional and complex side. “Children need to relate to real and emotional role models,” Johansson explains in an interview with The Huffington Post.
As a cartoonist and a big comic book-fan myself I know that superheroes are emotional and complex characters, the problem is that in the kids editions they show only aggression and violence.
“Boys learn from their role models to act tough and aggressive and that showing vulnerability or emotion is equivalent to being weak or ”being a girl” (which is considered an insult in today’s society). […] Girls on the other hand learn early on that their greatest asset is to be beautiful,” Johansson writes on her website Limpan.org. With her cartoons, Johansson is not only challenging gender norms, but also encourages diversity in terms of untraditional family constellations.
The Super Soft Heroes colouring book is free to download, since Johansson expresses that she will get in trouble with Marvel or DC Comics because of copy rights. She also hopes that by distributing them for free, her cartoons and the message they carry will reach as many kids as possible.