I sat on the my last "WW meta" post for a few days. I wrote it for myself, decided not to post it, then did anyway. And got into an argument
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Yes the flagship female character needs to be American, or indistinguishable from it. Her moral code -- including, inevitably, her sexuality -- needs to evolve from that singular standpoint.
Because as she stands now, Wonder Woman is far too much the Other: she's at best a resident alien, not an (assimilated) immigrant or a native daughter. She's a warrior, not a fighting American. She's on an evangelical mission from a pagan pantheon, not a Christian. She's from an island of women with its implication of deviant sexuality, not the aspirational egalitarian society of America with its adoration of the red blooded male. Character and meta-wise, she's of the gods rather than the mortal coil, something which apparantly turns off a certain chunk of the audience who are after the same sort of American Maid you are. And her powers are explicity sourced from others: she's a very special superpowered princess, unlike the studious Batman (trained to peak human physical and mental perfection) or the everyman Superman (any given kryptonian has his powers, which effectively makes them intrinsic to him rather than an external agency).
Power Girl would be a good place to start, but frankly her ridiculous boobage in a world of ridiculous boobage and her being effectively a distaff Superman rules her out of that top spot.
None of the Bat women qualify either. Discounting all the distaff Batmans you're left with Oracle, and you'd never ever be able to sell a cripple as your flagship female outside of a niche audience because honestly she needs to be able to physically keep up with and literally lick arse alongside her male counterparts. Which is a shame, because she's one of the very few female characters shown to work on a similar intellectual level to Batman and Superman
Mary Marvel is another possibility, but she suffers from drawing her powers from outside of America/herself and by being a distaff version of Captain Marvel, and there's no way on Earth she'd ever be allowed to eclipse her big brother. It's also far too tempting to portray her as too innocent for her own good, which is especially a problem when you compare that to the worldliness of Batman and Superman.
Zatanna is out. First and foremost because she looks like a Playboy Bunny. Secondly because her powers are just too kooky and unlimited, and too easily taken away; gag Batman or Superman and they'll still kick your arse tens ways to Sunday. Her look would be absolutely ruined if she wore flats, something Diana at least has been able to get away with.
In fact, easily taken away powers is something of a hallmark of DC heroines: pre-Crisis, all you had to do was bind Diana's wrists. Similarly, Black Canary -- only the third so far original female character -- is screwed by a simple gag or silence spell. Unlike Zatanna she at least has martial arts abilities to fall back on (I can never recall whether pre-Crisis Diana also forgot her warrior training when bound), and Birds of Prey demonstrated viabale non-fetish-chick looks for her, but she's no match mentally to Batman, and maybe not even Superman. She's also a bit dubious as a flagship character: do you really want the person front a center of your female characters be the one whose power is effectively just screaming (or, effectively, nagging) folks out of action?
Looking at the criteria perhaps one of the most eligable candidates DC has is Star Girl. She's a native daughter, patriotically themed in costume and name, comes with a sidekick (S.T.R.I.P.E.S), her powers are appealing secular and egalitarian (anyone could use that staff). The only problem is that she's effectively a legacy character following in the footsteps of men.
You're being sarcastic, but some of these are real concerns. There are fairy princesses (Ororo, Nightshade, Mantis, Wondy) on the one hand & distaff junior heroes (Power/Super/Hawk/Bat Girl) on the other. Now some of those "junior heroes" are workable as characters in their own right. But there is a bias that a woman is either "junior" or "exotic."
Really, it's a matter of making up new heroines. That work. Off the top of my head, Claremont's X-Men is full of examples. Kitty Pryde is a damn good start. Jean Grey would have been decent if not for the over-the-top Phoenix stuff. Dazzler is a promising concept, but not typically handled well.
At DC, they have access to: Phantom Lady (whom they treat as a joke) Vixen (unfortunate name, & the success of Animal Man invites accusations of imitation--as if there wasn't imitation all over the field) Nightshade (who is ridiculously unfamiliar to most people in the biz, but salvageable if someone cares) various mystic heroines (who tend to be weirdly over-powered [Zatanna] when not treated as non-combat [Madame Xanadu]) Pantha Anima (killed off awfully casually) Some other characters who are locked into "teams" in most editorial minds....
The trick isn't finding a given character, it's thinking the right way. And I like Courtney (SSK/Stargirl), but she's not necessarily a better character than Arrowette or Aquagirl or Bombshell or Canary.... (And I don't think Geoff would let me write Court considering I make no secret that I loathe a lot of his work.)
No, I'm actually being entirely serious in my appraisal of why those characters aren't going to work. Wondy gets away with her deeply impractical and inappropriate music hall girl costume -- and I think it's telling that the Amazonia elseworlds makes her a vaudeville girl -- because of its outrageously patriotic design. Zatanna's and Dinah's fishnets (and top hat/choker respectively) are fetishwear linked to the minds of many with something unsavoury. And that's the thing: the character needs to ride that razor edge between virgin and whore.
Really, it's a matter of making up new heroines. That work. The horse has already bolted on that one I'm afraid. No newbie would ever be able to eclipse the cultural mass and power of long established heroines.
Off the top of my head, Claremont's X-Men is full of examples. Kitty Pryde is a damn good start. Jean Grey would have been decent if not for the over-the-top Phoenix stuff. Dazzler is a promising concept, but not typically handled well.
Marvel have considerably less iconic legacy characters. Spider Girl has been effectively wiped out of existence and was never part of the main continuity in any event. Rachel has been repeatedly robbed of her inheritence by her mother to the extent that she's started legacying another of her mother's identities. No one's ever believed Bucky would permanently take the shield (especially with movies in the works AND Steve still being alive). Warpath I and Black Widow II may as well never have existed for all the general public know or care about them.
The thing is that Jean would have made the perfect flagship female character / third member of the Trinity. Bruce is the one forever shaped and dominated by the tragedy of his past. Clark is the one who strives to make today a better place and inspire everyone else to do better. Jean as a homo superior would have been the child of tomorrow, her psychic abilities pointing the way forward to humanity's next step.
Vixen and Nightshade are both eminenly unsuitable for the position of standard bearer: neither of them are native born Americans or immigrants made good.
Phantom Lady may have had potential, but she's not only a legacy character but also basically unusable without retconning the character's entire history (which looks like it'd be doing her a favour).
And I think the trick is finding the right character, one with the shoulders cpable of bearing the weight of being a standard barer
"No newbie would ever be able to eclipse the cultural mass and power of long established heroines." A. What established heroines? Wonder Woman, Supergirl--oh, we're done. B. Each generation is born ignorant. New fans don't know what an established character is, they know what they're being sold right now. C. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while it was on TV, was pretty much bigger, as a pop culture phenom, than every comic-book superheroine in US publishing--if not than all of them put together. You're deeply wrong here.
A: Mary Marvel, Batgirl, Raven, Black Canary, Hawk Girl, Huntress, Power Girl, Big Barda...
Actually, Barda could be a good flag ship character, if she weren't dead/off Gods knows where thanks to Final Crisis (Morrrrrisssson!)
B: You say that like there aren't any number of previous generations contributing to the overall popularity or not of a character -- and most importantly, the presence of those people behind the scenes. I mean, I love Batwoman to bits but for all that she's a new character to this generation (and likely the one before), she is a reinvention of a previously existing character. Meanwhile new characters all too often get sidelined or offed.
There have been new characters within the last generation (~15 years) of stories -- Charlie, Bombshell, Aquagirl, Cyclone, Montoya, Steph. Of them, one's been stuck in limbo, the next three are essentially invisible outside their singular books, while the last two have only hit the B list by assuming a legacy identity (albeit doing so because of their fanbase).
C. You're comparing apples & oranges. TV =/= comics (the former is generally free to access, requires less long-term investment in storylines, is easier to get involved with on a casual basis, has a rocking soundtrack, vastly more advertising less narrowly targeted, and is delivered to the consumer 4 times mopre often than a monthly comic). More importantly Buffy was created whole cloth as the center of her own universe by tapping into the supernatural romance & girlpower zeitgeists of the mid 90s.
If you want a new flagship character, you can't just create one and say "she is your new flagship character". She has to put in the long long hours of building a fanbase of readers AND creators, getting the right sort of attention and the right sort of stories. She has to earn the title, and it's going to take at least a generation to do it. And that's just inside the comics fandom. Because there's going to have to be something about her that endears her to the broader public, something iconic and memorable.
Because as she stands now, Wonder Woman is far too much the Other: she's at best a resident alien, not an (assimilated) immigrant or a native daughter. She's a warrior, not a fighting American. She's on an evangelical mission from a pagan pantheon, not a Christian. She's from an island of women with its implication of deviant sexuality, not the aspirational egalitarian society of America with its adoration of the red blooded male. Character and meta-wise, she's of the gods rather than the mortal coil, something which apparantly turns off a certain chunk of the audience who are after the same sort of American Maid you are. And her powers are explicity sourced from others: she's a very special superpowered princess, unlike the studious Batman (trained to peak human physical and mental perfection) or the everyman Superman (any given kryptonian has his powers, which effectively makes them intrinsic to him rather than an external agency).
Power Girl would be a good place to start, but frankly her ridiculous boobage in a world of ridiculous boobage and her being effectively a distaff Superman rules her out of that top spot.
None of the Bat women qualify either. Discounting all the distaff Batmans you're left with Oracle, and you'd never ever be able to sell a cripple as your flagship female outside of a niche audience because honestly she needs to be able to physically keep up with and literally lick arse alongside her male counterparts. Which is a shame, because she's one of the very few female characters shown to work on a similar intellectual level to Batman and Superman
Mary Marvel is another possibility, but she suffers from drawing her powers from outside of America/herself and by being a distaff version of Captain Marvel, and there's no way on Earth she'd ever be allowed to eclipse her big brother. It's also far too tempting to portray her as too innocent for her own good, which is especially a problem when you compare that to the worldliness of Batman and Superman.
Zatanna is out. First and foremost because she looks like a Playboy Bunny. Secondly because her powers are just too kooky and unlimited, and too easily taken away; gag Batman or Superman and they'll still kick your arse tens ways to Sunday. Her look would be absolutely ruined if she wore flats, something Diana at least has been able to get away with.
In fact, easily taken away powers is something of a hallmark of DC heroines: pre-Crisis, all you had to do was bind Diana's wrists. Similarly, Black Canary -- only the third so far original female character -- is screwed by a simple gag or silence spell. Unlike Zatanna she at least has martial arts abilities to fall back on (I can never recall whether pre-Crisis Diana also forgot her warrior training when bound), and Birds of Prey demonstrated viabale non-fetish-chick looks for her, but she's no match mentally to Batman, and maybe not even Superman. She's also a bit dubious as a flagship character: do you really want the person front a center of your female characters be the one whose power is effectively just screaming (or, effectively, nagging) folks out of action?
Looking at the criteria perhaps one of the most eligable candidates DC has is Star Girl. She's a native daughter, patriotically themed in costume and name, comes with a sidekick (S.T.R.I.P.E.S), her powers are appealing secular and egalitarian (anyone could use that staff). The only problem is that she's effectively a legacy character following in the footsteps of men.
Reply
Really, it's a matter of making up new heroines. That work. Off the top of my head, Claremont's X-Men is full of examples. Kitty Pryde is a damn good start. Jean Grey would have been decent if not for the over-the-top Phoenix stuff. Dazzler is a promising concept, but not typically handled well.
At DC, they have access to:
Phantom Lady (whom they treat as a joke)
Vixen (unfortunate name, & the success of Animal Man invites accusations of imitation--as if there wasn't imitation all over the field)
Nightshade (who is ridiculously unfamiliar to most people in the biz, but salvageable if someone cares)
various mystic heroines (who tend to be weirdly over-powered [Zatanna] when not treated as non-combat [Madame Xanadu])
Pantha Anima (killed off awfully casually)
Some other characters who are locked into "teams" in most editorial minds....
The trick isn't finding a given character, it's thinking the right way. And I like Courtney (SSK/Stargirl), but she's not necessarily a better character than Arrowette or Aquagirl or Bombshell or Canary.... (And I don't think Geoff would let me write Court considering I make no secret that I loathe a lot of his work.)
Reply
Really, it's a matter of making up new heroines. That work.
The horse has already bolted on that one I'm afraid. No newbie would ever be able to eclipse the cultural mass and power of long established heroines.
Off the top of my head, Claremont's X-Men is full of examples. Kitty Pryde is a damn good start. Jean Grey would have been decent if not for the over-the-top Phoenix stuff. Dazzler is a promising concept, but not typically handled well.
Marvel have considerably less iconic legacy characters. Spider Girl has been effectively wiped out of existence and was never part of the main continuity in any event. Rachel has been repeatedly robbed of her inheritence by her mother to the extent that she's started legacying another of her mother's identities. No one's ever believed Bucky would permanently take the shield (especially with movies in the works AND Steve still being alive). Warpath I and Black Widow II may as well never have existed for all the general public know or care about them.
The thing is that Jean would have made the perfect flagship female character / third member of the Trinity. Bruce is the one forever shaped and dominated by the tragedy of his past. Clark is the one who strives to make today a better place and inspire everyone else to do better. Jean as a homo superior would have been the child of tomorrow, her psychic abilities pointing the way forward to humanity's next step.
Vixen and Nightshade are both eminenly unsuitable for the position of standard bearer: neither of them are native born Americans or immigrants made good.
Phantom Lady may have had potential, but she's not only a legacy character but also basically unusable without retconning the character's entire history (which looks like it'd be doing her a favour).
And I think the trick is finding the right character, one with the shoulders cpable of bearing the weight of being a standard barer
Reply
A. What established heroines? Wonder Woman, Supergirl--oh, we're done.
B. Each generation is born ignorant. New fans don't know what an established character is, they know what they're being sold right now.
C. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while it was on TV, was pretty much bigger, as a pop culture phenom, than every comic-book superheroine in US publishing--if not than all of them put together.
You're deeply wrong here.
Reply
Actually, Barda could be a good flag ship character, if she weren't dead/off Gods knows where thanks to Final Crisis (Morrrrrisssson!)
B: You say that like there aren't any number of previous generations contributing to the overall popularity or not of a character -- and most importantly, the presence of those people behind the scenes. I mean, I love Batwoman to bits but for all that she's a new character to this generation (and likely the one before), she is a reinvention of a previously existing character. Meanwhile new characters all too often get sidelined or offed.
There have been new characters within the last generation (~15 years) of stories -- Charlie, Bombshell, Aquagirl, Cyclone, Montoya, Steph. Of them, one's been stuck in limbo, the next three are essentially invisible outside their singular books, while the last two have only hit the B list by assuming a legacy identity (albeit doing so because of their fanbase).
C. You're comparing apples & oranges. TV =/= comics (the former is generally free to access, requires less long-term investment in storylines, is easier to get involved with on a casual basis, has a rocking soundtrack, vastly more advertising less narrowly targeted, and is delivered to the consumer 4 times mopre often than a monthly comic). More importantly Buffy was created whole cloth as the center of her own universe by tapping into the supernatural romance & girlpower zeitgeists of the mid 90s.
If you want a new flagship character, you can't just create one and say "she is your new flagship character". She has to put in the long long hours of building a fanbase of readers AND creators, getting the right sort of attention and the right sort of stories. She has to earn the title, and it's going to take at least a generation to do it. And that's just inside the comics fandom. Because there's going to have to be something about her that endears her to the broader public, something iconic and memorable.
Reply
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