Funny -- the comments about the two Hulk moves, I had totally the opposite response. I didn't like what I saw of the Eric Bana version; I thought the Ed Norton "Hulk" was maybe a B-. Which is disappointing because I really love Jennifer Connelly as an actress, even when she does secondary roles like in Dark City.
I think what saves Miller from being considered "sexist" is that he empowers his women characters far more than his men characters, honestly. For some reason, despite the high degree of sexualization in Sin City (as an example), I get a completely different feel for those heroines vs "bad girls" in the mainstream comics who basically are just doing cheesecake shots and centerfold poses. Instead of being exploited or operating primarily through their sexuality, I feel like Miller's women are tough, powerful women who just happen to also be sexual and can use that to their advantage... but even if that was taken away from them, they'd be terrifyingly powerful just in their presence. (He's always done this too... whether he was dealing with Karen Page and Elektra out of Daredevil or Casey from Ronin or his Sin City posse or Carrie Kelly from TDNR. They were tough, yes; but they still read as "women" rather than "sex object," and they had real needs and wants, desires for connection or aching over its absence.)
I did see Ghost World and liked that... and I thought Tank Girl was pleasantly quirky although not ultimately resonant with me.
Typical "female" comics are far more apt to look like Terry Moore's "Strangers in Paradise" -- something where the interpersonal relationships dominate. (Terry writes like a girl. Sorry, Terry, but you do... and you're awesome! Sweet guy too, just sweet. He published a letter from me once in his Letters pages, woo hoo (!), because I appreciated the non-cookie-cutter approach to Christianity he invested in the character of David in that series.)
But I've sort of been out of the industry for a few years at least now, so I can't claim to really have a handle on women in comics at the moment. I'm not even sure what is popular in general right now.
I never saw Spawn. But I remember reading the comics when they first came out -- Spawn and Savage Dragon.
SD was fun because Larson spun all the conventions on their head and made fun of them. I still laugh when remembering the full page splash of God talking smack (with pretty heavy four-letter vocab) at Satan and then telling him where to go.
Tomb Raider is an interesting topic because it started as a game, rather than a comic OR a movie, but eventually translated into both. Aside from the matter of Lara's bosom, there was something magical when that first Tomb Raider came out, especially with the evocative musical theme; here was a powerful, beautiful, but no-nonsense woman who could do whatever she set her mind to, and her gender didn't seem to matter. (ISTP type, likely.) A few of the games in the franchinse suffered, and the boob jokes continued to abound, but overall the games were the best expression of Lara; the movies were watered down and sensationalistic, even if Angelina was well-cast; and I didn't read the comic.
I don't want to say that women aren't into directing comic book adaptations, but frankly I think women overall get bored with the conventional spandex-suited action plot. There has to be something else going on, among or inside the characters... which I think would make their inclusion in the writing and directing process even more crucial if one is to avoid the typical comic-book eye candy that is watched once (if that) and then never comes off the shelf again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_comics_creators