The Brave and the Beautiful

Wonder Woman's New Costume

2011-03-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

It's nearly been a year since I updated this thing, but I think this is as good a time as any to get back on the bandwagon.

So, the new Wonder Woman costume is out, and there's a lot going through my mind as I look at it.

My first thought is, "Oh god, they recoloured the Jim Lee costume" followed by, ""Oh
god, it's like when they unveiled Halle Berry's Catwoman costume a few years ago!"

My next thought is "Crap, what the hell is with the fabric?"

My fourth thought, "I really like the belt!"

And then, "Fuuuu--- that lipstick mixed with that fabric makes the porn parody of Wonder Woman look more like Wonder Woman should than this one does." Seriously. Justice League Porn Parody Wonder Woman looks more like Wonder Woman than this one does.

Right after that, I flash back to Cathy Lee Crosby's Wonder Woman, who didn't seem AT ALL like Wonder Woman.

And it goes downhill from there.

But I'm going to stay positive. And, going with the positive, here's what I think:

There are elements of the Wonder Woman design that I honestly, truly love. I love the tiara. I love the =W= elements on the boots and the silver bracelets. I like the eagle emblem. I LOVE the belt. I really do love that belt. The stars down the side of the pants are a great touch.

And then there's the bad.

First. The fabric. Wonder Woman is a character who has not been taken all that seriously, for whatever reason. She's never quite been able to get the sort of respect that Batman and Superman have. The fact that Wonder Woman's being put in what, fabrically, is a brightly coloured S&M outfit, doesn't really help to make her seem all that more serious. In fact, it makes her look cheap, and like a joke. Shiny fabric is NEVER a good idea. And this is a warrior. A woman who is supposed to inspire. This doesn't inspire the right thing.

Second. That lipstick. With the fabric of the costume, and what looks like oily hair, she looks more like Wonder Whore than Summer Roberts thought she did in that season one episode of the OC where she's trying to win over Seth Cohen. (And Rachel Bilson actually made a HOT Wonder Woman there, without looking like she was about to star in a porn parody.) It's just....with all that shiny fabric, you need understated make-up so you don't look like you're about to hop on a pole.

Third? The boots? Should really be red. Keep the gold trim, that's cool. White, though a netural, would bring a fourth colour into the whole ensemble, and that would become too much on a costume that is already too much in all the wrong ways. It's too much blue on the lower half, and it upsets the balance of the costume.

Fourth: The blue? It would work better if the colour were a little bit darker. It really would. I'm not saying navy? But three shades darker. Just three. It would do wonders (pun so not intended) for the pants.

Fifth? The top. Now, I love a bustier as much as the next guy. But in the script, you have Diana worrying about how bad her classic costume made her look (which...really? this is the one you choose to follow that up?) Anyway, I digress. There SHOULD be some straps on that top, and I don't mean tiny spaghetti straps. Even make it a halter, if you need to. But if you're going to go to the trouble of adding pants to the costume? Make the top a bit more realistic so it doesn't look like she's about to fall out of that. Otherwise, it just adds to the stripperesque version of it, and that's just...not a good thing.

This, really, is a costume that would have worked better in the comics, I think, and that too? It would be a great new look for Donna Troy, if they ever wanted to give her a new look. But this...this isn't Diana.

A great look for Diana would have been Donna's costume as Wonder Woman in Heinberg's relaunch...or something like what Erica Durance wore in Smallville in that one episode.

I just... I don't know. I think, for the Wonder Woman relaunch...this is far from the way to go.

Review: Sif #1

2010-04-22T08:46:00.001-07:00

Lady Sif is one of those characters I don’t have much experience with at all, being someone who only started reading Thor with the recent relaunch helmed by JMS a couple of years ago. That being said, I found that an encyclopediac knowledge of Sif’s history isn’t needed for this fun little romp, which was certainly nice.

Right off the bat, we’re told everything we need to know about Sif – who she is, where she’s from, what kind of woman she is, bits and pieces of her past history, everything. Even a prior relationship is alluded to enough that one understands the gravity of the situation when she comes across an old lover…who has a new friend.

The plot is a fairly simple plot, but it really works well to showcase who Sif is, and what she’s all about, and frankly, from this tale alone, I am dying to see more. Kelly Sue Deconnick has done a great job showing who Sif is – and who she has the potential to be – and I would love to see her take up writing duties on a Sif mini, ongoing, or even co-feature at the back of Thor, because its clear that this is a character with a lot of potential.

The art by Ryan Stegman is somewhat of a cross between Todd Nauck and David Lopez, but not in a bad way at all. Being someone who is not as much a fan of photorealistic art (I like my comic book art to look like fun, poppy, comic book art), I found the art to my liking quite a bit, and it certainly suited the adventure of the story.

While it’s not the best book I have ever read, out of the stable of the “Women of Marvel” stuff that Marvel has been pushing out, this is certainly one of the better ones.

***1/2 out of five.

Review: Brave and the Bold #33

2010-04-22T08:38:00.001-07:00

Brave and the Bold isn’t one of the books that is regularly on my pull list. Rather, it’s one of those titles I’ll pick up if the characters appearing in it that month are any that I like – which this month, with it’s starring of Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and Classic Flavored Batgirl, it very much was. That JMS was on writing duties and that Cliff Chiang was doing pencils was just icing on what already seemed like a really luscious cake, though it did strike me as odd as first when I saw the three women in the cover. Despite individual dealings with each other, we had never really seen the three of them, hanging out as a trio.

Halfway through the book, a conversation started by Diana starts to explain everything, and it’s at that point that I started to get what this story was about. And man, was it a good story.

It’s a fairly simple plot, but it serves the story well, because the emotion that the latter half of the story brings is…huge, once things start clicking into place. I had to reread the ending twice because, well, I started tearing up the first time around. I’m guy enough to admit it. It was sad – and not at all what I expected the story to be about, but it certainly made a lot of sense, and makes me wish to see some more interaction between Diana, Zatanna, and Barbara, because this could be a friendship as awesome as the one shared between Barbara, Dinah Lance, and Helena Bertinelli.

The art was, of course, beautiful. Cliff Chiang draws a great Diana, and his Zatanna is simply to die for. I would love to see more work from him on that front. His Barbara – both out of costume, and as Batgirl – is great, and I really want to applaud the fact that Chiang has the ability to draw modern, trendy outfits and make them work in a comic book setting, which few artists are able to do.

Though that does bring me to my one, minor gripe, about the story. There are a ton of modern references in a story that, in DC Continuity, took place many years ago – iPhone references, references to songs that have been released in the past three years…all of that pulled me out of the story and made me wonder if we were in some alternate universe for a moment. Granted, once the second half of the story gets moving…all of that flies out the window, and what’s important is this amazing thing that these women are doing out of love, solidarity, and friendship.

**** out of five.

Greg Rucka Leaves DC Comics, Batwoman.

2010-04-03T09:20:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I've last posted, I know. I should be better about this. And I intend to be.

But this is news that I simply can't ignore.

This morning, Comic Book Resources reported that Greg Rucka has turned in his last work for DC Comics and, in effect, has left the company, which has gone through many changes in recent months.

Comics Alliance has Greg Rucka stating that he left to write stories that he wanted to write again rather than "getting complacent at DC" (that is not Rucka’s quote, but a quote from CA writer David Brothers) which certainly means that there was SOMETHING going on behind the scenes that we don't know about.

This is saddening news on a number of fronts, not just because of the fact that this throws the future of Batwoman into limbo, but because of the fact that he was one of the few writers in DC's stable who could write fully realized, fully fleshed out characters who didn't stick to stereotypes of gender or sexual orientation. The only other writers who come even close to his level of creativity and writing, I think, are the indomitable Gail Simone, the amazing writing team that is Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, and the criminally underused Marc Andreyko. If you disagree with me, I urge you to pick up Gail's first run on Birds of Prey (issues 56-108), Gray & Palmiotti on both Hawkman and Power Girl, and Andreyko on Manhunter.

I don't know the particulars of why Rucka left DC Comics, but he certainly isn't the first writer to do so, and that makes me wonder just what is going on behind the scenes at DC. Sure, every company has their issues, but to lose someone who was on as high profile a book as Detective Comics was is just terrible. It really is, in many ways, the equivalent of Marvel having lost JMS, whose Spider-Man and Thor runs were new, original, and so well done.

I honestly wonder if this is due to the fact that Dan Didio and Geoff Johns had different plans for Kate Kane, and if they didn't mesh with what Rucka had planned? Maybe Grant Morrison is involved somehow. I do know that Didio is willing to let Morrison do whatever he wants in DC's playground, which is cause for worry really, because while he has some great concepts, he doesn't quite have a great follow-through. Amazing foreplay, confusing sex - and Morrison did use Batwoman in his Batman and Robin run a couple of months ago. Not very well, in my opinion, but he did. Or perhaps, as most people are pointing out, its because DC is terrified of having a solo book starring a woman who is decidedly and proudly a homosexual woman.

The latter idea, honestly, is sad in this day and age, when Marvel has a book headlined by a character who is of the homosexual persuasion (when it suits him), and celebrities all over the world are either coming out of the closet - or supporting those who are openly and proudly gay. (Granted, then again, not everyone is so open minded these days.)

Part of what kills me the most about this is how well Rucka had realized Kate Kane's world, and how differently he had handled the subject matter of a woman who wore the Bat and who was, coincidentally, a lesbian. Despite coming from money, Kate Kane was not a Bruce Wayne knock-off, and despite being a tough woman in a bat costume, she was not a Huntress knock-off. Batwoman was very much her own person, and she was only just developing. The kicker is that we also just got Bette Kane back into action as Flamebird, and it looked like she was FINALLY going to get the respect that she so deserves. Bette is a character who has existed for years, and yet she's almost always just been played off as a joke of some sort, and here was a writer who would have developed Bette Kane into a hero, into a fully realized character. This is something that the fans of the character will likely never be able to see again, and that's just tragic.

At the end of the day, though, this is just bad news for DC. Greg Rucka has been one of the writers involved with Kate Kane all the way from her being in 52 back in 2006, down to now. That's a long time for a character to have spent with a character, and I'm sure that there were many stories that Rucka had to tell with Kate.

Stories which now may never see the light of day.

If I were DC, I'd be scrambling for a way to get him back - or perhaps try putting another competent writer on the project, like Simone, Gray & Palmiotti, or Andreyko, because right now, DC is at high risk for really messing up an amazing, original take on a character. Not that they didn’t do the same thing with Peter David and Supergirl back in 2003 (and really, look how well that turned out).

Or maybe DC’s decided that everything should be Silver Age again. After all, Barry Allen and Shiera Saunders are both back. Why not retcon Kate Kane into being a straight woman? Or just do away with Kate altogether and turn Barbara Gordon into Batwoman? While I’d rather DC did neither of those things, I can certainly see them doing it, what with their mentality of “everything silver age is new again”. And that just disappoints me, because I was hoping that they’d be more innovative than that.

Then again, it’s not like DC Comics was ever called “the House of Ideas.”

Review: Black Widow: Deadly Origin #3

2010-01-16T16:41:00.001-08:00

I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t exactly know a lot about Black Widow. Well, the Natasha Romanoff version. While I did read a lot of Avengers stuff growing up, it was far more for Wasp and Ms. Marvel than it was for Black Widow or Scarlet Witch. I’ve sampled a few of her series here and there, though I found myself drawn more to the Yelena Belova incarnation of Black Widow than I did Natasha. Maybe it’s because of all of baggage that Natasha comes that I’m as yet unfamiliar with, or maybe it’s because I just preferred Yelena’s character journey. Who knows?

In any case, I’m finding Black Widow: Deadly Origin to be an interesting story. I’m still not pulled into Natasha’s world, nor do I find myself caring all that much for her, but the position she’s in – the predicament that she faces – well, it’s certainly an interesting one, and one that I’m interested to see play out. The writing is definitely solid and the arts good as well – the switching back and forth between the past and now is incredibly well done, which is saying a lot for me because I’m generally not a fan of Tom Raney’s art. He’s done a nice, clean, crisp job here though.

I know that this mini has gotten me interested enough in checking out the Black Widow ongoing that starts this April.

Overall, I’d say that I give this issue a **1/2 out of five.

Review: (Blackest Night) Catwoman #83

2010-01-16T13:03:00.001-08:00

This was probably one of the books that I was really looking forward to this week. I’ve been a huge Catwoman fan since Julie Newmar pranced about in Lurex back in the sixties (though I didn’t discover her until the 80’s, when I was a wee child.) That the Catwoman series was cancelled in favor for Gotham City Sirens is a sad, sad thing because Catwoman was a pretty good title in its own right – though it admittedly was becoming lacklustre – and GCS still needs to prove itself as a decent series, despite being written by Paul Dini, whose issues of Detective Comics were second only to Greg Rucka’s run on the title with Batwoman this past decade.

First off, this wasn’t so much an issue of Catwoman as it was an issue of Blackest Night Gotham City Sirens, but it was an interesting enough issue. I’m not sure why there were four artists assigned to the issue, but there were moments where it was obvious that the artists had changed. Still, it was a definite solid effort.

While it’s interesting to see Catwoman refer to Ivy and Harley as her sisters, no matter how ironically or sarcastically, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to Holly Robinson, who had close ties not only to Selina but to Harley as well, and who was as involved with the surprise character in this.

The plot was fast-paced and fast, a little predictable, but sometimes, in a one-shot like this, the plot has to be. It was well-written and solid, but this is Tony Bedard we’re talking about. He’s far, far from being a bad writer. I’m not such a fan of the twist ending, but I am intrigued enough to actually want to pick up an issue of GCS to see how it plays out.

A definite *** out of five.

Review: Batgirl #6

2010-01-16T12:49:00.001-08:00

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’ve always been a fan of any young woman who’s worn the bat emblem across her chest – or belt, in the case of the original Bat-Girl, Betty Kane. There’s always been something about the frak you attitude about the Batgirl name because, more often than not, it’s been a girl who’s slipped on the costume to fight crime while giving the Gotham boy’s club a huge middle finger.

So far, Stephanie Brown’s been much of the same, finding mentorship in the classic Batgirl, Barbara Gordon. It’s a match made in heaven, and a partnership that, in many ways, feels so much more right than the former one between Cassandra Cain and Babs.

This was another well written issue, and I have to say, I’m completely loving Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett’s take on the Batgirl mythos here. Stephanie has a long way to go and a lot to learn, but so far, every issue, she’s showing growth in that area. She’s just had her second near-death experience, but she still manages to keep her wits about her, slip into costume, and get some nice detective work in.

If there’s one thing I wanted to complain about, it was the inclusion of Robin, but I understand why he’s important to the story, and frankly, under Miller’s able hand, he’s a good bit less annoying and a nice throwback to the Babs-Dick rivalry from way back when. I just hope that this continues on as a surrogate brother-sister relationship, nothing more. Having said that though…while I’ve always championed the Steph-Tim romance, I’d like to see her branch out a little and find someone new in her life. A lot of the times, Tim’s acted as a total douchetard towards Steph, and she doesn’t deserve it at all.

The bits between Barbara and Dick are nice and it makes one want to see them patch things up and eventually get on together. There really isn’t a more perfect couple in Gotham City, I don’t think.

As for the villains…I love Roxy Rocket, and it was a real pleasure seeing her appear in this issue. While I didn’t expect the twist at the end with the surprise villain…well, it was a welcome twist, and it’ll be interesting to see how Babs, Steph, and Damien deal with the odds stacked against them.

Not a great issue, but a really good, solid one.

A definite ***1/2 out of five.

The Brave and the Bold (And in this case; the Beautiful!)

2010-01-16T09:36:00.001-08:00

I’m excited. Why? Well, partially because I now have the time (and the computer, thank you) to devote time to this blog which I have wanted to get back to ever since my computer died a grisly death back in November, but also because there’s been a lot of great things happening in the world of comics – specifically pertaining superheroines. Batwoman is going to be launched into her own book. Black Widow is getting her own on-going. The Birds of Prey have returned! (See, I knew I was sacrificing those lamb chops for something!) It’s really just great stuff all around, and I’m so glad it’s happening at a time where I’m all comics involved.

I think the big happy that I’m feeling right now is mostly thanks to the preview for DC Comics’ 2010 April stuff – most specifically Brave and the Bold #33 - written by JMS (who’s work in Spidey and Thor rocked, I think) and with art by Cliff Chiang (who, along with Aaron Lopresti, I want to see get more work at DC. Can you imagine Lopresti on Dini’s Zatanna book? Wow. If only that would happen.)

Anyway, before I get ahead of myself, herein is the solicit and cover image:

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #33
On sale APRIL 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art by CLIFF CHIANG
Cover by JESUS SAIZ
Oh yes, it’s ladies’ night! Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Zatanna enjoy a nice, peaceful evening on the town that absolutely won’t be interrupted by any kind of superheroic hijinks whatsoever... and if you believe that, there’s a giant bronze globe in Metropolis we’d like to sell you!

Zatanna. Wonder Woman. Batgirl. They are three of my favorite DC heroines, and the fact that JMS is going back in time to tell a Silver Age-y tale of the three of them having an adventure? Classic. Many, many flavours of classic. These are three heroines who we haven’t gotten to see interact with each other all that much, though they were powerful, popular heroines in their own right back in the Silver Age – much as they are now. Wonder Woman is having her own renaissance of sorts under Gail Simone’s amazing hand in her own title, Zatanna will finally have an ongoing written by none other than Paul Dini; and Barbara Gordon’s getting some great treatment at the hands of Bryan Q. Miller and (soon!) Gail Simone in the pages of Batgirl and Birds of Prey respectively.

I know I can’t wait to see how this issue turns out, and April seems impossibly far away for me to wait. While this issue obviously doesn’t fall under the Brightest Day banner that DC will have going on around that time, I know my day’s been brightened considerably only by looking at that cover and solicit.

Review: Marvel Divas #4

2009-10-29T22:49:00.001-07:00

When Marvel first announced Marvel Divas a few months ago, I felt a many number of things. Okay, no, I felt two things. One? I felt excitement. I love Black Cat and Firestar. Hellcat is someone who I’ve recently discovered through the Patsy Walker: Hellcat mini and who I thoroughly adore. After the first few moments of excitement passed, though, I felt terror. Pure, vibrant terror. I mean, for one thing, the series was called Marvel Divas. Marvel. Divas. The title terrified me, and that terror only grew stronger when they announced that it was to be a Sex and the City parody.

Now, “parody” isn’t quite the word I would have used to describe the mini-series. I mean, from the first issue onwards, we were kind of hit over the head with the fact that this was a shallow attempt at remaking the sort of magic that Sex and the City had. The only problem with that is that these things work best when they’re homages, not paper-thin formulas used solely to attract a female audience, which is essentially what happened here.

The series started out with many of the characters – Angelica Jones especially – acting somewhat out of character. The ties of friendship between these women also felt extremely forced. I mean, speed-dating? Really? Why on Earth would women like Felicia Hardy and Patsy Walker need to go speed-dating? Or even want to?

The sad fact of the matter is that Marvel Divas was, from the get-go, ill-conceived and shallowly put together, and that brings us to the final issue of the series, which was unfortunately as fulfilling as a morsel of carrot cake. The slightest hint of a flavour, but not much else.

*SPOILER ALERT*

When we last left our, uh, “Divas”, Patsy had just agreed to go to Hell for one night with Daimon, on the promise that Daimon would save Angelica’s life for good, ridding her of the cancer that was eating away at her.

At the beginning of this issue, we’re treated to what was honestly one of the cuter moments in the miniseries. A little farfetched? Sure, but adorable nonetheless. We open up on a Saturday morning zen yoga class, led by none other than Danny Rand – Iron Fist. The class is filled with a multitude of Marvel’s super-women, from Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four to She-Hulk to Crystal of the Inhumans, amongst a bunch of others. Of course, Felicia “Black Cat” Hardy and Monica “Photon” Rambeau are there was well…without two of their besties – Angelica and Patsy.

Angelica – dressed in her Firestar costume – appears outside the large window and apologizes to Danny to for interrupting class, and then pulls both Monica and Felicia out of class to tell them what we already know – that Patsy’s been kidnapped. Patsy, the smart thinker that she is (and a far, FAR cry from her characterization in Patsy Walker: Hellcat, I might add) has written a note on her ever-present laptop (she’s been writing about Angelica’s ordeal for her, and since she’s the Carrie Bradshaw template of the group, she’s always writing anyway) that Daimon’s taking her to hell.

Segue to a scene where we see Patsy and Daimon cage-fighting, while Daimon tries to convince Patsy to give up. (Really? Cage-fighting? I mean, kudos for not trying to make Daimon some creepy rapist dude, and kudos for him not mind-controlling her…but cage-fighting? That was just…all kinds of bizarre.)

So of course, the girls rush off to rescue her, using the monkey’s paw that Monica helped get for her flame – the newly minted Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Voodoo.

From here on out…the issue just falls flat. The, er, Divas Three are transported to Hell, right outside Daimon’s hell-palace. As they plan to storm in on Daimon and Patsy, we find Patsy (who’s been tied up to a chair at the other end of a long, elegant dining table) having dinner with Daimon, while he taunts her and finally admits that he’s butthurt because Patsy barely mentioned him in her first book, Cat Outta Hell, which is why he’s going through all these extremes to harass her. Yeah…

The women bust in and Monica – former leader of the Avengers – starts spouting out orders, natch. Felicia gets Patsy out of her bondage scenario (the cats gotta stick together, y’know?) and we’re treated to a verbal show-off between the Son of Satan (or is he the Son of Satannish? I was never quite sure on that) and the (ugh) Marvel Divas. Patsy cuts a deal saying that, in the paperback reprint, she’ll add a chapter about how she’s still not over him, which Daimon bargains up to being two chapters. Patsy, desperate to get away from him, agrees. Daimon, trying to play his last hand, tells Patsy that they’re not done yet, and that if he does let them go, then Angelica goes back to playing the odds with her health and the cancer, which Angelica agrees to, preferring to battle the odds with her health instead of letting her friend suffer.

As a wrap-up, we find that Angelica’s tumor hasn’t spread, but she’ll have to hope that her cancer won’t recur for the next five years. Felicia makes a deal with the Kingpin to start Cat’s Eye Investigations and breaks it off for good with Puma. Monica breaks it off with Doctor Voodoo, and Patsy, close to completing her book, calls it “Super Vixens.”

The End.

Thankfully.

This series, I think, had so much potential, but the story spread out through these four issues could easily have fit into two issues. I would have loved to see Felicia deal more with her internal conflict regarding whether or not she should go back to a life of crime. I would also have loved to see how/why she ends up going to Wilson Fisk of all people. Seeing Angelica deal with her illness would have been great, as would have an appearance or two from Vance Astrovik. With Monica…I’m honestly not sure how much of a point there was to having her in the story, other than trying to make her a Miranda Hobbes type. And Patsy…well, that story was just one hot, steaming mess.

On the bright side, the art by Tonci Zonic (and seriously, that might be one of my favourite names in comics) was really, really nice in some aspects. Fresh, a little toony, but nice. I’d like to see him do more – maybe an all-ages Marvel Adventures Dazzler series or something.

** out of five.

Marvel Women

2009-10-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

Marvel announced this morning that, starting in March (which here in the United States is Women’s History Month), they are going to start a year long program celebrating the women of the Marvel Comics universe, starting off with a series of one-shot comics featuring female superheroes who might not have their own series as of yet, and then moving on from there to a Young Guns program that will serve to promote female artists, as well as a program called Write Stuff, in which they will pick four or five female writers and promote them all through the year. Along with this, Marvel will also be doing variant covers (starting with the First Lady of Marvel Comics, the Invisible Woman on Fantastic Four #575) beginning in January, followed by the outrageously sexy Punk Storm in February. All of this will be followed up with omnibus runs of various Marvel titles that have featured superheroines like Night Nurse, Hellcat, and a few others. At some point, during the summer most likely, Marvel is aiming to do an event that takes all of the superheroines of the Marvel U and places them in one story. (The story was originally reported on Newsarama. Click for the full story.)

Now, I have to say, I’m equal parts excited and horrified about this for any number of reasons, but I’m going to start with the good stuff first, because I have to admit, this was great news to wake up to first thing on a cloudy Wednesday morning.

Marvel has such a great cast of strong, powerful female characters, starting with the Blonde Phantom and Venus and coming all the way down to recently created characters like Layla Miller and Pixie, and it seems as though in a lot of these cases, the characters’ true potential has remained greatly untapped. It’s not that surprising, really, when you consider that comics starring female superheroes don’t seem to sell as well as those starring male superheroes. Not surprising, but incredibly sad. Given the right writers, these women can support titles just as well as their male counterparts do, and – as proved by DC’s Birds of Prey when it was in the extremely able hands of Gail Simone – be just as smart, compelling, and fun as any title featuring a Spider-Man or a Wolverine. Personally, I’m hoping for one-shots or minis featuring Dazzler, Blonde Phantom, all of the Spider-Women (from Jessica Drew and Cassandra Web all the way down to Mattie Franklin and Araña), Satana, all the way to characters who seemingly have disappeared off the Marvel Universe map, like Nina Price – Vampire by Night and Southpaw from Dan Slott’s She-Hulk run. Marvel should truly celebrate these characters.

My worry, though, stems from the fact that, lately, Marvel hasn’t fared too well when they’ve tried to market comics towards women, and I think a major part of that is because of how they’re marketing them. Models, Inc and the unfortunately named Marvel Divas are both books that are obviously created with a female audience in mind, the former borrowing a title from the spin off of the Beverly Hills, 90210 universe and the latter an obvious (if incredibly late) homage to Sex and the City. But I look at these books, and the first thing that strikes me is just how utterly wrong these books seem. For the longest time now, comic book superheroines have been around to serve as moist, delicious cheesecake for the majority male readership of comics, and so when trying to appeal to the opposite sex, it feels as though Marvel’s trying to go the stereotypical route with appealing to the female fanbase. What we end up with are books that seemingly mess up these characters that the fans respect, taking them away from the core of who they are and turning them into characters that people will think girls like to read. The problem with this is that women in their teens and early twenties and beyond – women who’ve grown up loving comics, don’t have the boys-have-cooties-pink-is-for-girls kind of mentality. More often than not women are just as drawn to shows like Lost and Castle as they are to shows like Gossip Girl and Melrose Place. What I honestly and truly hopes Marvel does is treat these superheroines as characters and superheroes first and foremost – as people – and then take into consideration that they’re female. The books shouldn’t be made unnecessarily “girly” because they’re aiming for that specific market, nor should they try so hard to make the women sound like stereotypical “girls”. Women in general have come so far beyond that kind of stereotyping, and if Marvel’s truly serious about honoring females and women’s history, it’d be in their best interest to treat their superheroines as humans for this event, and not sexual stereotypes.

Introduction

2009-10-27T13:04:00.001-07:00

It’s only fair to start off by saying that this blog was heavily inspired by Mike Madrid’s The Supergirls: Fashion, feminism, fantasy, and the history of comic book heroines published by Exterminating Angel Press earlier this year. It was the moment that I realized that I wasn’t alone in my deep, long-lasting love affair with the comic book superheroine, and the moment that I realized that there were others out there like me who had perhaps waited for a book that could help them celebrate their joy of characters like Black Canary, She-Hulk, Promethea, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge superheroine fanboy. Growing up, I was first introduced to strong female characters like She-Ra, the Princess of Power; Cheetara, the fastest of all the Thundercats; the plucky and brave Rainbow Brite; the sassy and intelligent Spider-Woman; the sensational Wonder Woman; and the sexy, manipulative Catwoman. I loved this characters in a way that I simply couldn’t explain. Their male counterparts – He-Man, Lion-O, Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman – were interesting enough, sure, and they were very attractive in their spandex and their furs and their bare-chested-ness, but I wasn’t having any of it. For me to be drawn into something, I needed a strong, female force in the middle of the action, leading the way. And that continued into everything I read or watched – comics, movies, television shows. It seeped into my writing as well – everything I wrote in English class always had a strong, spunky female as the protagonist.

I can’t explain why I was so drawn to them, except maybe to explain that a part of me saw something of myself in them, something relatable which I couldn’t find in the male heroes, no matter how hard I looked. But I love them dearly and completely, which is what brings me here, to starting this blog.

What is The Brave and the Beautiful? Simply put, I envision it as being the hub for all things super-heroine, from reviews on comics starring some of the greatest superheroines out there (and there’s a good number of them out there now) to discussing different aspects of superheroines in comics today and yesterday to news about upcoming movies, books, and television shows about these fantastic females.

Simply put? It’s an ode – a love letter – to all of the amazing female superheroes out there.