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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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.
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
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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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