Catherine “Cat” Grant

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: Adventures of Superman #424 (January 1987)
Created By: Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway

Biography:

Cat Grant knows sordid secrets. Not only was she a successful gossip columnist in LA, she was living with an abusive, alcoholic husband and battling alcoholism herself. When she left him, he managed to get full custody of their son, Adam. Heartbroken and forbidden to see her child, Cat moved to Metropolis.

As the new gossip columnist for the Daily Planet, Cat briefly dated Clark Kent, but their romance ended when she went back to California to fight (and eventually win) custody of Adam. By the time she returned, Clark and Lois had gotten serious, but Clark and Cat remained friends, despite occasional hostility towards Cat from both Perry and Lois for her too-sexy ways. Determined to prove her journalistic chops to her Planet colleagues, she quit the paper and went undercover at Galaxy Broadcasting to expose owner Morgan Edge’s connection to Intergang. There she faced relentless sexual harassment from Edge’s father Vinnie.

Tragedy struck when the Toyman kidnapped several Metropolis kids, including Adam. While attempting to lead the kids to freedom, Adam was killed. After Vinnie hit on Cat at her son’s funeral, she decided enough was enough and got him fired for harassment, replacing him as the CEO of WGBS. She then did some time as Lex Luthor’s press secretary, because apparently Lex felt the need to staff his administration with all of Clark’s besties. That’s weird, Lex.

Shortly before the reboot, a now extra-sexy Cat returned to the Planet as editor of the arts and entertainment section, because Perry White’s staffing decisions are nothing if not charmingly random. For some reason Cat took that as a chance to write scathing front-page editorials about how reckless and immature Supergirl was, but they buried the hatchet after Supergirl saved Cat from Toyman’s son, who was stalking her.

Post-reboot, Cat is still at the Planet.

So What’s So Great About Her?

So recently Cat has tended to come off as some kind of weird narrative exercise in slut-shaming. She existed initially to be a sexier, less ball-busting rival for Lois, but she was still a nice person with a genuine thing for Clark, and hell, who could blame her?

But then she returned to the Planet, all sexed-up – with breast implants, no less – and nasty, stuck in this weird comic relief/minor antagonist role. The part that leaves the grossest taste in my mouth is Clark’s mournful explanation that this is how she’s processing the loss of her son. (You know, the one that happened years earlier, with a stint as a network CEO and as White House press secretary in between? Which is not to say that anyone ever gets over the loss of a child, but acting like it’s a reaction borne out of immediate grief is, excuse the pun, super-patronizing.) It’s like “Oh, well, she was a mother so she was behaving okay for a woman, but after she lost him there was nothing to stop her from waving her boobs around again. So sad/threatening, tsk tsk.” Plus there’s the whole “Let me script multiple panels that are closeups of her breasts while judging her for them” aspect. Ugh. Work your issues out elsewhere, writers.

It doesn’t help that her relationships with other women are invariably contentious: there’s Lois, of course, but more notable is her smear campaign against Supergirl, which it’s heavily implied is motivated more by jealousy over Kara’s taut young beauty than anything else. (Though she did eventually make peace with both of them, which I like.) Women are always in competition and hate anyone younger/prettier than them, duh!

And yet. Despite all of that, I like Cat.

Much of that is out of sheer spite/sympathy (“Don’t you tell me not to like this woman, DC, SHE IS NOW MY FAVORITE”), and it also owes something to Tracy Scoggins’ cheesy-but-lovable portrayal on the cheesy-but-lovable show of my heart, Lois and Clark. But Cat is also, when you get right down to it, a smart, tough lady, and I wouldn’t be a Superman fan if I didn’t like smart, tough ladies. I mean, lady was Press Secretary of the United States of America. (Under a lunatic who got impeached after attacking Superman in a robosuit, yeah, but that part wasn’t her fault.) And Allison Janney taught me that being Press Secretary is basically being the coolest.

She’s also a fundamentally good person, a talented reporter, and a devoted mother. It takes a lot of strength to leave an abuser, and it takes a lot of chutzpah to make a name for yourself in one of the biggest cities in the world. And she’s fun. There’s not actually anything wrong with going to parties, dressing in a way that expresses your sexuality, or getting plastic surgery if you want it (though the clumsiness of that writing makes me roll my eyes). Cat may not be perfect, but she knows all the cool people and isn’t afraid to let her hair down. On the list of DC Folks I Want to Party With, Cat is at the very top.

Notable Appearances:

Adventures of Superman #424, 428-431, 434, 435, 438, 439, 441, 445-448, 450, 452, 454-458, 462, 463, 465-467, 473, 480, 482, 483, 487, 491, 497-501, 503, 505, 507, 508, 510, 524, 526, 527, 529, 532, 535, 538, 543, 549, 550, 555, 597, 610
Superman v2 #0, 5, 10, 11, 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 28, 33, 36, 40, 42-44, 50, 51, 53, 60, 63, 75, 83-85, 87, 98, 104, 105, 11, 120, 130, 142, 162, 166, 681, 682, 706
Action Comics v1 #598, 599, 643, 653, 654, 658, 667, 668, 676, 677, 688, 692-695, 700, 713, 714, 723, 726, 737, 865, 866, 868-870, 881
Superman: The Man of Steel #28, 49, 54, 61, 67, 70, 71, 108
Supergirl v5 #34-36, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 50, 54, 55, 57-59
Superman v3 #2, 6, 13, 18

Posted in Civilians, DC, Superman | 2 Comments

Mantis

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Avengers #112 (1973)
Created By: Steve Englehart & Don Heck

Biography

Mantis (her full real name is unknown) had a typically rocky comic book start. The child of a German father who went on to become a fairly minor supervillain and a Vietnamese mother, she lost her family at a young age when her mom was killed and her dad abandoned to be raised by a sect of aliens, the Kree, who believed her to be the Celestial Madonna.

Even though they figured she’d eventually be giving birth to the Messiah of the entire universe, the Kree erased her memory once she reached adulthood and pushed her out the door to experience the world. Unfortunately, that experience ended with her becoming a prostitute in Vietnam, but things got somewhat better when she met up with the Swordsman, a D-list former Avenger, and used her awesome martial arts skills to help him out of a scrape. That led to her hanging out with the Avengers as well. Yay!

Only yay cannot last long in comics. After a spell on the team, she witnessed the Swordsman’s death and only then realized she was totally in love with him. But luckily (?), his body ended up inhabited by a basically tree-shaped alien warrior, so she could sort of make him the baby daddy of the Celestial Messiah.

She gave birth to a son, Sequoia, and raised him for one year before handing him off to his father’s alien people. But giving him up wasn’t what she wanted, and after some space adventures with Silver Surfer, she slowly started to break down, her mind splitting into fragments of her personality. Mantis pulled it together in time to save her half-tree son from getting murdered (apparently his alien half made him grow to adolescence at a speedy rate). Oh, and she turned green along the way, for some reason.

From there, she became one of the new Guardians of the Galaxy, though she ruined her chance at being voted Guardian of the Month when it was revealed she’d helped mentally manipulate some of her colleagues.

So What’s So Great About Her?

Mantis has one of the weirdest, most convoluted histories in comics—and I mean her real-world history, not her backstory, though that’s admittedly pretty weird too. Essentially, she’s one of those characters whose writer fell in love with her—like Shard—only this time, he just couldn’t say goodbye. According to Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed, when Steve Englehart started writing for DC, he took Mantis along for the ride, calling her Willow and continuing the storyline he’d left behind in Avengers. From there, Mantis and Englehart continued their working relationship at Eclipse (Mantis went by Lorelei there) before making their grand return to Marvel.

What makes this story particularly hilarious is that no reader in the history of the world could possibly care as much about Mantis’ storyline as much as Englehart did. When you set up a character as being basically the Virgin Mary (except for the being-a-virgin part), only even bigger in scope because she was going to give birth to the Celestial Messiah, not just your run-of-the-mill Earth Messiah, it’s just so mind-boggling and hard to pull off that readers are a lot more likely to check out than get invested.

Considering that Mantis’ son, the Jesus-with-branches known as Quoi, has made less than a dozen appearances over the years, other creators have largely chosen to ignore Englehart’s grand plans as well. And yet Mantis remains, becoming a more important and visible character than she’s been since her Avengers days.

I actually think Mantis works a lot better when you ignore the Madonna stuff. For one, you get to ignore the awkward theological implications. Second, her character ceases to be entirely defined by her motherhood. (I accidentally typed “motherwood.” MOST APPROPRIATE TYPO EVER.) Yes, Quoi remains an essential part of her history, and her interactions with her son, few as they may be, are very poignant and moving. But she’s also a martial arts master, a fierce warrior, and a superhuman with vast telepathic and precognitive capabilities. To reduce her to some kid’s mom is incredibly unfair.

Establishing her as a largely space-based hero has also done Mantis a ton of good, I think. She’s always been an otherworldly character, and with her being raised by aliens and marrying an alien and being the Holy Mother of the Universe and all, confining her to Earth just doesn’t make sense. She just feels more natural in the space-set comics, and I can only imagine the human world leaves her with a lot of dark memories anyway.

With the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie on the horizon, it’d be amazing to see Mantis on the big screen—even just a cameo!—and have that lead to her having a bigger comics presence. I just don’t see enough of this one.

Notable Appearances

Avengers #112-135
Defenders #9
Captain Marvel #33
Giant-Size #2-4
Silver Surfer (vol.3) #3-9; 19-21
West Coast Avengers Annual #3
Avengers: Forever #6-9
Galactus the Devourer #4
Avengers: Celestial Quest #1-8
Annihilation: Conquest—Starlord #1-4
Annihilation: Conquest #2-6
Guardians of the Galaxy (vol.2) #1-25
She-Hulk: Cosmic Collision #1
The Thanos Imperative: Ignition #1
The Thanos Imperative #1-6

Posted in Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Heroes, Marvel | Leave a comment

Rose Canton (Thorn)

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: Flash Comics #89 (November 1947)
Created By: John Broome and Carmine Infantino

Biography:

Rose Canton had an imaginary friend, “Thorn,” who she blamed for all the bad stuff she did. This fairly creepy childhood habit manifested in a worse way when she was studying biology on Tashmi Island as an adult. Exposure to the sap of a strange plant made the Thorn personality take over entirely – and also gave Thorn the ability to grow and manipulate plant life. She killed her professor, then reverted back to Rose and discovered, to her horror, what she’d done.

Back on the mainland, Thorn became one of the Flash’s rogues, Jay Garrick-style. She avoided jail – and, unfortunately, psychiatric help – by claiming, as Rose, that Thorn was her sister. Jay fell for this for a really embarrassingly long time before catching the snap. When he did, he had his good buddy Alan Scott fly poor Rose to Paradise Island, where the Amazons helped her suppress the Thorn persona. After a long, healing vacation, Alan flew Rose back home.

During those two flights, Rose fell in love with Alan, so she adopted yet another persona, dyeing her hair black and calling herself Alyx Florin. As Alyx, she wooed and eventually wed Alan – but Thorn reemerged on their honeymoon. Rose took over before Thorn could kill Alan, but fled, letting Alan think she’d died in a fire. When she turned out to be pregnant with twins, she gave them up for adoption, fearing Thorn would hurt them.

Eighteen years later, one of those twins, Jennie, found Rose back on Tashmi Island. By then, Rose had suppressed Thorn so well she seemed to be genuinely confused over whether Thorn existed or not. Jennie took pity on Rose, who she felt a deep connection with, and brought her back to Infinity, Inc. headquarters. Eventually, Thorn attacked Alan, Jennie, and her brother Todd, and the whole sordid story came out. Rose managed to wrest control back long enough to stab herself, saving her children’s lives.

Post-Crisis, it was revealed that Rose is also the mother of Mayflower, a plant-controlling member of the U.S. government-backed Force of July; Mayflower’s father is unknown. In the New 52, Rose is a teenager with a split personality seeking vengeance for her father’s death, a sort of combo of Rose Canton and Earth-1’s Rose Forrest.

So What’s So Great About Her?

On the face of it, Thorn has a lot of the appeal Poison Ivy does – a gorgeous, powerful woman in a bathing suit made of leaves, using vines to choke the crap out of jerks. While a lot of Ivy’s complexity comes from her righteousness and the fact that on a certain level, she does, in fact, have a point, Thorn’s villainy isn’t muddied with such gray areas – she’s really just a gleeful sociopath. And while I never want to meet any gleeful sociopaths, plant powers or no, they’re a lot of fun to read about.

There’s also something deliciously creepy about her origin. I mean, let’s be real: this portrayal of dissociative identity disorder only has a nodding acquaintance with anything in the DSM-IV, and comics in general have a lot to answer for when it comes to their portrayal of mental illness. Still, Rose’s habit of blaming her misdeeds on the unseen Thorn, and the way that excuse eventually takes over her adult life, has a thrill of Shining-esque terror to it, and I think the question of how culpable she is for her crimes, when she covers for her behavior with the “sister” excuse, is fascinating.

Mostly, though, I feel sorry for her. It’s clear that even when Thorn isn’t a factor, she’s got a lot of problems relating to the world in a healthy way; it wasn’t Thorn who decided to create an entirely new identity in order to be with Alan, after all. Her final breakdown, her desperate longing to believe that she isn’t Thorn, is done with genuine pathos along with the horror.

And in the end, Rose does turn out to be stronger than Thorn, and her love for her children and for Alan is stronger than her illness. I’d rather she’d gotten proper help for her problems and managed to put Thorn to rest for good, of course – but this is comics, and going out in a blaze of glory isn’t a bad alternative.

Notable Appearances:

Flash Comics #89, 96
All-Star Comics #72-73
Infinity, Inc. v1 #13, 14, 16-18
Infinity, Inc. v1 Annual #1

Posted in DC, Flash, Green Lantern, Infinity Inc., Villains | 2 Comments

Anna Marie Lehnsherr (Rogue—Age of Apocalypse)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: X-Men: Alpha #1 (1995)
Created By: Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Roger Cruz & Steven Epting, based on the original character created by Chris Claremont & Michael Golden

Biography

In a universe where Apocalypse enslaved humanity, Magneto led the X-Men in honor of his dead friend Charles Xavier, opposing Apocalypse’s regime. His team consisted of a number of familiar faces from the mainstream Marvel Universe (616), including Rogue.

She’d actually been found with no knowledge of her past, having recently absorbed Polaris’ memories, trumping her own, as well as her magnetic powers. She was taken in by the X-Men and quickly became friends with Magneto’s daughter, Scarlet Witch. When Wanda was mortally wounded in battle, she made Rogue promise to watch out for her dad.

As the years went on, Rogue did just that, only gradually her feelings for Magneto took on a romantic edge. She was already torn between her leader and her quasi-boyfriend, Gambit, when she and Magneto discovered that their magnetic powers negated each other’s. Cue SMOOCHES. Needless to say, Gambit was left in the dust, and before long Rogue was married to Magneto and mother to his son, Charles.

Rogue helped defeat Apocalypse in the inevitable final battle, even leading the team when her husband was being held prisoner. (She also took a moment to righteously kill a traitor who’d kidnapped her son.) After the dust settled and the world tried to restore peace and culture, she took some time out to concentrate on raising Charles, though the good times couldn’t last for long. Eventually, Weapon X (Wolverine) became the new Apocalypse and killed both husband and wife. Oh, and their son had already been eaten by a demon. Hooray?

So What’s So Great About Her?

While there are plenty of people who love Rogue and Gambit as a couple, in my experience, fans who cite Rogue or Gambit as one of their favorite characters often tend to hate the other one. Gambit fans are all, “She left him in Antarctica! And she’s a whiner!” while the Rogue fans chime in with, “He’s a sleazeball, and he had a hand in the Morlock massacre” and blah blah blah forever.

While they aren’t one of my favorite couples—the ongoing melodramatic angstfest of it all was quickly too much for me—I never hated either of them. I just hated them together. I couldn’t see the appeal of a relationship that made both partners miserable most of the time, and I spent a lot of time fantasizing about Rogue being with someone who made her feel fulfilled and Gambit being a free agent, since he seemed happiest seducing a bevy of ladies.

Age of Apocalypse, a months-long ‘90s storyline that replaced the regular old X-Men with a post-Apocalypse-ic (sic) world where a seriously ancient, evil mutant had taken over much of the world, took a lot of risks. It made the worst villains heroes, killed off major characters and highlighted minor ones, played with seriously dark themes, and took Marvel’s then-hottest commodity and separated it from the rest of the herd. Most importantly for preteen me, there was a lot of Rogue and she was married to NOT GAMBIT and had a baby and cool hair!(!!!!)

AoA Rogue is a great play on an already great character. In her regular incarnation, she was still very young, impulsive, and temperamental. In AoA, she’s clearly the same woman at her core, but matured into a strong leader and maternal figure. Probably some of this had to do with being married to a much-older man—her marriage to Magneto is a delicious allusion to her short-lived relationship with him, brimming with sexual tension, in the late ‘80s mainstream Marvel Universe—but the stakes were also much higher in this universe. I imagine that everyone had to grow up much more quickly and survive however they could. For Rogue, that meant getting her act together as quickly as possible and taking the reins whenever necessary. She was also a caring mother, though she couldn’t concentrate on her son as much as she’d like, and it’s not surprising that she opted to become a more full-time mom as soon as she could.

Comics have gotten a lot darker overall in the past fifteen years or so. I wasn’t shocked when AoA came back temporarily, only to gruesomely kill off a bunch of characters. Rogue and her whole family ended up on the casualty list, and it’s a shame—superhero teams are always improved by a strong matriarch.

Notable Appearances

X-Men: Alpha #1
Astonishing X-Men #1-4
X-Men Chronicles #1-2
Factor X #2
Amazing X-Men #4
X-Men: Omega #1
Tales From the Age of Apocalypse #1
Blink #1; 4
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #1-6
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse One Shot #1
Exiles #84
Uncanny X-Force #12-13; 19.1

Posted in AU, Heroes, Marvel, X-Men | Leave a comment

Mary West Varni

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance:
Created By:

Biography:

Mary and Rudolph West’s life in the small town of Blue Valley, Nebraska seemed pretty ordinary to outsiders. However, Mary and Rudy actually had a pretty acrimonious marriage, and a strained relationship with their son Wally. Plus, unbeknownst to Mary, the men in her life had two big secrets:

1. Wally was actually Kid Flash, and;

2. the alien robots called the Manhunters had approached Rudy soon after Wally got his powers and invited him to become one of their sleeper agents, keeping an eye on his son in preparation for their eventual takeover of Earth. He accepted. Ah, paternal love!

Things came to a head soon after Wally took over as the Flash, when Rudy sent Mary on a cruise to the Caribbean – and then blew up the boat. Mary survived, cut ties with her attempted-murdering, Earth-betraying husband, and moved in with Wally, where she spent her time managing his household and finances (he’d just won the lottery) and hating his various girlfriends. When Wally lost all of his money, Mary took it on herself to keep them afloat by taking a job as secretary to Wally’s friend Chunk. She even hired Manhunter (not the robots or this lady, another guy) as Wally’s bodyguard, much to Wally’s annoyance.

When Wally joined the JLE, Mary reprogrammed the matter transporter they gave him to transport her as well, and used it to take day trips to Europe, because why not? On one of those jaunts, she encountered Ernesto Varni (real name: Rodolpho Valentino, because a) comics love stupid name jokes and b) Mary is apparently really into guys named Rudy), a dashing Interpol agent who was impressed by her charm and chutzpah. She began a secret life as an amateur detective, as well as a romance with Ernesto, both of which flabbergasted Wally. Still, he cheerfully attended their wedding – as did Rudy, who both Wally and Mary believed to be dead. Mary considered her options – con-artist traitor versus sexy secret agent – and went with Ernesto. Good call, girlfriend.

So What’s So Great About Her?

So here’s the interesting thing about Mary: we get to see her from the perspective of a fairly selfish, immature young man slowly realizing that his mother is a person.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love Wally. But kids in general tend to be fairly self-involved, and Wally in particular spent most of the 80s being fairly intolerable. So Mary, when first seen, is nothing more than a generic mother figure. And when she first becomes a major supporting character, it’s when Wally is trying desperately to be seen as an adult – “I’m the real Flash, you guys, I live in my own house with a grown-up lady and everything!” Mary is an omnipresent nag, judging Wally’s choices and all up in his business.

Except, hmm, it kinds of seems like maybe Wally blames her for things he should have been taking care of? And it kind of seems like she does all the cooking and cleaning for him without thanks or even acknowledgement? And when they wind up broke, Mary quietly assumes that it’s on her to find a paying job, because she is the adult, and Wally pretty much rolls with it. It takes a moment for even the reader to go, wait, hang on, Wally is 20 and maybe she doesn’t need to be wiping his butt for him anymore. Maybe Mary has been wiping his butt for 20 years and would like to stop now.

We get to see Mary’s spy adventures before Wally does, but we still have the same sort of realization he does: this woman has dreams that don’t involve Blue Valley, Nebraska, and looking after her adult son. She has desires, and she is desirable. She is exceptional for reasons that have nothing to do with her child. It takes a bit longer for Wally to get there – he even says “She’s no use to anyone but me,” despite Mary’s close relationships with Chunk and Tina, to say nothing of their extended family – but he does eventually realize that wow, hey, my mom’s a person who wants things! That’s crazy!

And yeah, Mary is genuinely kind of annoying and judgy and a nag and a hypocrite. She’s not a perfect person – because again, she’s not a cipher of a generic mom. She’s allowed to be three-dimensional and flawed – hilariously so at times – because she’s human. I love that she hates Tina irrationally when Tina is dating Wally, but becomes a compassionate sounding board for Tina’s concerns about her marriage after they break up. Humans! Containing multitudes!

For all her cartoonishness, Mary is a really sympathetic, realistic portrayal of motherhood, and that moment when we realize, “Hey, my mom’s not perfect and she’s not here to ruin my life, she’s just here to live hers.” And that’s pretty great.

Notable Appearances:

Flash v1 #133, 135, 138, 149, 165, 266
The New Teen Titans #6
Flash v2 #0, 8, 9, 11-18, 20-24, 27, 29-31, 48-50, 61, 65, 142
Flash v2 Annual #2, 3
Flash 80-Page Giant
Manhunter v1 #8, 9

Posted in Civilians, DC, Flash | Leave a comment

Sister Margaret Grace “Maggie” Murdock

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Mackenzie

Welcome to our Third Annual Mom Month here at Dimestore Dames! Each May, we celebrate some of comics’ most fascinating mothers—the good, the bad and everything in between.

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Daredevil (vol.1) #229 (1986)
Created By: Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli

Biography

Like so many superheroes, Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, grew up under the specter of a dead parent. Raised by his father, professional boxer and alcoholic “Battlin’ Jack” Murdock, he idolized his father, but Jack was having nothing of that. He pushed Matt toward more scholarly pursuits, claiming he’d promised Matt’s mom, Maggie, on her deathbed that Matt wouldn’t end up like him.

As an older child, Matt was hit by a truck carrying toxic waste, which blinded him and heightened his other senses. While he was in the hospital, a nun would come visit him. Since Matt was Catholic, this wasn’t very weird, except he didn’t know who this one was. She was perceptive enough to pick up on the fact that he now had superpowers, though, and urged him to keep them secret.

Many years later, while Matt was on a downward spiral, he ended up stabbed and nearly died. A nun—the same one who’d visited him as a child—found him and nursed him back to health in the mission she ran. He came to realize that her scent was strangely similar to his own, and when he asked her point-blank if she was his mother, he could hear her heart skip—she was lying.

Yes, Maggie Murdock had never died. She’d married Jack (I assume, since her last name is Murdock) but apparently was never really comfortable as the wife of a drunk boxer, nor with the concept of being married at all. She was pregnant when she left Jack and began the process of becoming a nun before her son was even born, returning him to his father as a newborn. As Matt grew up, she kept an eye on him while pursuing her calling.

Since she’s hip to the fact that Matt’s Daredevil, he still goes to her from time to time for philosophical advice and first aid. It took years for Maggie to finally admit to being Matt’s mother, though she’s never really offered him any explanation for why she left him.

So What’s So Great About Her?

In fiction, mothers often have a way of being impossibly saintly—especially if they’re dead—or wretchedly evil, to be the flipside to that saintliness. Or, in comics especially, they’re just entirely absent, and there’s not much use speculating how they may have impacted their children. Very rarely do you come across a mother who encapsulates this simple truth: not every mother was meant to be one.

I’m not Catholic, nor am I a particularly religious person in general, so I can only begin to imagine the conflict someone like Maggie could go through, torn between her deep spiritual convictions and romantic attraction. (I can also only imagine what a headtrip Matt went through as a Catholic, finding out that his angelic mother was an actual nun.) The details of how an aspiring nun and an alcoholic, second-rate boxer got together are fuzzy to say the least, but God, would I love to know that story, though it’s sure to be a heartbreaker. But one can assume she ended the relationship not too long after it started, since she was gone before Matt was born.

There’s a moment in Kevin Smith’s Daredevil run where Maggie wistfully compares Matt to Jack (see below), and the tone just seems so bittersweet that I can’t believe Maggie didn’t love her husband. Nor do I think she left her son because she didn’t love him enough—she quietly kept her eye on him his entire life. Even if she seems happy in her life, useful in purpose, I don’t think she’s entirely at peace or ever will be.

Sometimes, our lives end up at a fork in a road, and you have to choose which way to go. Maggie chose one direction, changed her mind, went back and took the other. It seems to be the right one for her—she’d probably have been a lot more miserable as Jack’s wife—but there was no good way to right her misstep. I can see how one would think that telling Matt his mother was dead was the kindest option, though he was inevitably going to be damaged by her absence, no matter the excuse. I’m sure Maggie knows this as well as anyone else.

Her relationship with him has obviously gotten a lot better, but it’s still not exactly maternal. They often have more of a mentor-student vibe to me sometimes. But God, Maggie is such a compelling character, not to mention intelligent, hard-working, and damn if she can’t keep a secret. In her rare appearances, she’s practically brimming with conflict and backstory that’s dying to be told. She’s not a good mother, but she’s what Matt has, and she’s so interesting that I can’t help but want more of her. I’m sure Matt feels the same way.

Notable Appearances

Daredevil #229-230; 233; 267; 295; 325; 348-349; 375; 380
Amazing Spider-Man #277
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1
Marvel Holiday Special #2
Punisher (vol.3) #18
Daredevil (vol.2) #4-8
Daredevil: Battlin’ Jack Murdock #1; 3
Shadowland #5

Posted in Civilians, Daredevil, Marvel | 1 Comment

Mary Mitchell (Sun Girl)

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Sun Girl #1 (1948)
Created By: Unknown for certain, but Ken Bald did the art for her solo comic

Biography

Sun Girl had a crime-fighting career that went way back, predating (in comics continuity, not in terms of her character’s real-time creation) that of Captain America, Miss America and other Golden Age A-listers. She actually made her hero debut in the 1920s, leaving me with an amazing mental image of flapper-style bad-guy-punching, and kept at it until the United States entered World War II. At this point, she decided to help the war effort as a WAAC and retired from the game.

After D-Day, seemingly not having aged a day since the ‘20s, Mary needed to find a job and ended up at the secretary to two male superheroes, the Original Human Torch (who was ironically an android) and his sidekick, Toro. She didn’t really mind the downgrade from solo hero to paid help, but when Toro had to take a temporary leave of absence, she was still eager to come out of retirement. Armed with her trusty Sun Beam Ray, worn on her wrist like a watch, Sun Girl helped Torch on a number of cases, which was pretty convenient since she also had a huge crush on him. She also worked independently, fighting villains ranging from aliens to a giant gorilla to her very own arch nemesis, Dr. Drearr.

When Toro came back, Mary settled into her secretarial role once again. Soon after, though, Torch ended up in stasis for a number of years, and when he returned, Mary had disappeared. She hasn’t been seen since, but considering her lack of aging over the years, she just might be around somewhere in the Marvel Universe.

So What’s So Great About Her?

The tagline on all three issues of Sun Girl is “The Mysterious Beauty.” Boy, ain’t that the truth. Every time I think about her, I’m left with agonizing questions. Why doesn’t she age? Why did she think joining the WAAC was better for the war effort than teaming up with the other heroes of her day to fight the Axis powers more directly? Why was she cool with just lending Torch a hand? What ultimately happened to her? How did she get her waves to look so pretty?

As I’ve touched upon in the profiles for Miss America, Blonde Phantom, and Venus, post-WW II America was not particularly interested in super heroes anymore, and that showed in the comics industry’s profits. In desperation, editors turned to their girl readership and tried to get their attention with a deluge of super hero comics with female leads. For the most part, the effort ultimately failed, not because girls weren’t buying comics—they were generally more into the romance and funny teen comics that were flooding the market—but because super heroes were simply passé.

Sun Girl was actually one of the more glaring failures. Whereas Venus headlined her Golden Age comic for a vaguely respectable nineteen issues and she, Miss America, and Blonde Phantom would appear as nostalgic, important figures in the backstory of the Marvel Universe for years to come, Sun Girl’s comic had a three-issue run, and outside of some stray reprints and a feature in a 1990 Torch miniseries, she’s pretty much vanished from comics.

Part of this, I think, is because she had the misfortune of teaming up with one of the lesser utilized Golden Age Marvel A-listers. Look, I love Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch. I would be friends with Jim Hammond. If Jim Hammond had one too many drinks down at the bar and needed a lift home, even though that makes no sense because he is an android, I would go pick him up. But there’s no debating that he’s been eclipsed by a certain other guy who happens to have the same hero name as him. And even in his heyday, he was outshone by the likes of Namor and Captain America in terms of personality and panache.

So then there’s this girl sidekick, and her name is sort of tied to his in a the-sun-is-also-hot kind of way, and she has this bizarre backstory that goes back for decades and a wristwatch thing that knocks people out somehow, but she’s got a gorgeous design and a really kicky costume, so is that enough to reel in the lady readers? Not really. It also doesn’t help that her crush on Jim seems like a pitifully one-sided affair, lacking the aching tension of Namor/Betty Dean or the good humor of Blonde Phantom/Mark Mason. (Though, to be honest, I have a lot of trouble not seeing the Torch-Namor banter in their shared adventures as totally homoerotic and Jim as Just Not Into Ladies, so I might be prejudiced.)

Does that, however, mark Sun Girl as a bad character? No—more like an underutilized one. Put in the hands of the right writer, her lack of aging (which was likely just a huge continuity error) and mysterious past could really be put to good use. Over the last few years, Marvel’s really embraced their Golden Age heroes, and they’ve also spotlighted Namor’s role as Marvel’s first mutant character. Sun Girl could easily be pegged as one of those early mutants. Or, hell, maybe post-WWII Sun Girl was Mystique (who doesn’t age at a normal rate) all along, spying for some bad guys, while the original hero was an elderly lady long since retired. There are a ton of possibilities—the bones of a great character are there, and it’d be amazing to see Sun Girl unexpectedly rise again.

Notable Appearances

Sun Girl #1-3
Human Torch Comics #32-35
Marvel Mystery Comics #88-91
Captain America Comics #69
Sub-Mariner Comics #29
Saga of the Original Human Torch #3

Posted in Heroes, Invaders, Marvel | 3 Comments

Shayera Hol (Hawkgirl – DCAU)

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Entertainment/DC Comics
First Appearance: “Secret Origins”
Created By: It’s harder to ID “creators” for an animated character than it is for a comics character, but showrunners Bruce Timm and Paul Dini presumably get a lot of credit, as does voice actress Maria Canals Barrera. In the comics, Shayera Hol was created by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert.

Biography:

Earth was a strategic point in the interplanetary war between the Thanagarians and Gordanians, so the Thanagarians sent one of their best soldiers, Shayera Hol, to Earth as an advance scout. Claiming that she had been sent there by an errant zeta beam and couldn’t find her way home, Shayera won the hearts and minds of Earthlings – and a spot on the Justice League – as Hawkgirl. Despite her secret mission, she was a dedicated member of the League and became close with the other members, especially John Stewart.

Then the Thanagarians showed up, led by her jerkass fiance Hro Talak, and used the intel Shayera had fed them to imprison the League and take over the Earth. It turned out that “strategic point” was Thanagarese for “we are going to blow it up to make room for a hyperspace bypass because the writers really love Douglas Adams.” Horrified, Shayera freed the League and helped them kick the Thanagarians off the planet. The League then voted on whether or not Shayera should be allowed to stay a member, but she decided to resign without hearing the verdict.

She spent some time recuperating from the invasion with Dr. Fate, but was called back into League business when Solomon Grundy went on a rampage and only Shayera’s mace could stop him. Apparently mercy-killing her friend whetted her appetite for League-y good times, because she rejoined. Oodles of fun adventures ensued, like teaming up with John’s new girlfriend Vixen, being attacked by stray Thanagarians for her betrayal, pulling the Flash out of the Speed Force before he disappeared forever, and meeting an archaeologist named Carter Hall who claimed they were reincarnated lovers. When the show ended, she and John were still officially “just friends,” but an episode set in the future showed their son, Warhawk.

So What’s So Great About Her?

The original lineup of the animated Justice League was brilliantly thought out. On one end, you had the trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman: infallible icons, made engaging and likable by the brilliant DCAU writers but still set at a certain remove from the viewer. In the middle you had the literally alien J’onn J’onnz, isolated and unknowable. And on the other end, you had the lesser trinity of B-listers: stodgy Green Lantern, smartmouthed Flash, and hot-tempered Hawkgirl. Flawed and petty and prone to wisecracks, these three wind up being the most human characters on the team, despite the fact that Shayera is not human at all.

The Hawkpeople are infamous for having the most convoluted continuity in the DCU, and the cartoon wisely sidestepped all of that, Hro Talak (an anagram of Katar Hol, Shayera’s comics lover-man) and Carter Hall aside. I’m not terribly familiar with the Hawkladies, but animated Shayera seems mostly created out of whole cloth – and brilliantly. As the most warlike and trigger-happy on the team, she brings that visceral, vicarious joy in a big way. Don’t we all wish we could smash evil robots and sexist pigs alike with a magical space-mace? There’s something gleefully free, about her in the way she flies and fights with utter abandon. She is, quite simply, a joy to watch, beyond contributing a very vital component to the team’s alchemy.

And yet, as we find out, she’s not free at all, but trapped by duty and patriotism, by conflicting loyalties, and, eventually, by her own hard choices and misdeeds. But none of that makes Shayera any less compelling. Rather, it’s because we’ve come to love her on the team that we feel for her when she has to leave it, and it makes the fact that she eventually makes peace with herself and with her friends that much more satisfying.

Plus, despite the hit-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude and the fact that she carries probably the heaviest narrative load in the original series despite being the least well known character, Shayera’s still…well, she’s fun! She’s quick with a sassy comeback (and you have to be, when trading barbs with Wally West) and she is legitimately friends with her teammates. She’s the kind of gal you want to go drinking with and then watch her get into a bar fight.

The DCAU is often lauded as the best interpretation of DC’s characters, um, ever. While I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as all that, they did take a character (well, three characters, really) who’d spent 60 years mired in continuity and stuck playing second fiddle to a hairy Republican who doesn’t understand how shirts work, and gave her a chance to really shine. Thanks, DCAU!

Notable Appearances:

Shayera was a regular in both seasons of Justice League and had significant roles in the following Justice League Unlimited episodes:

“The Return”
“Wake the Dead”
“The Balance”
“Hunter’s Moon”
“Divided We Fall”
“Epilogue”
“I Am Legion”
“Shadow of the Hawk”
“Grudge Match”
“Ancient History”
“Destroyer”

Posted in Animated, DC, Heroes, Justice League | 1 Comment

Kwannon (Revanche)

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: X-Men (vol.2) #17 (1993)
Created By: Fabian Nicieza & Andy Kubert

Biography

Things are bound to go badly when you’re an assassin and your boyfriend’s a ninja, and both of you are from rival groups. Long story short, Kwannon ended up having to battle her lover; the fight ended with her toppling over a cliff. Though she wasn’t outright killed, she was comatose and suffered brain damage so severe that it was obvious she’d never wake up on her own.

As luck (?) would have it, Psylocke (Betsy Braddock) of the X-Men just happened to wash ashore nearby. With the help of Spiral, a sorceress from another dimension, the women’s bodies and minds were swapped and semi-merged; the idea was that Psylocke’s telepathy would heal Kwannon’s mind, and for funzies Spiral went ahead and combined the rest of the DNA as well. And thus was borne two very similar-looking purple-haired super-women who would confuse at least one little girl reader for quite a while.

Psylocke escaped back to the X-Men, now looking much more Japanese, while Kwannon got used to her new body (which suddenly looked rather like a white English model) and psychic powers, particularly favoring a “psionic knife” that made punches a little more intense. There was a long period of confusion over which one was the real Psylocke, since they now shared many of the same memories and skills, and they both periodically called each other out for being the fake Betsy. The confusion only deepened when Kwannon started hanging out with the X-Men too.

Contracting the deadly Legacy Virus helped put things into focus for Kwannon. When the disease caused an amplification of her mental powers, she finally figured out exactly how the body swap went down and came to terms with not actually being Betsy Braddock. Soon after, she asked her old flame to kill her, which she preferred to dying of Legacy. He complied, and with her death all of the psychic powers split between them went to Betsy.

Man, I wish I could bequeath my mental faculties they were like Great-Aunt Winifred’s antique chest of drawers.

So What’s So Great About Her?

When I was doing research for this article, I was shocked by just how brief Kwannon’s time in the Marvel Universe was. To my vague recollection, it seemed like this storyline had went on for ages and ages, hence why the Double Betsy Saga made an unusually big impression on me, considering almost none of my favorite characters were involved in it at all.

But then I realized, huh. This all was going down right when I started reading comics—Kwannon stormed in and declared herself the real Betsy in literally the first issue of X-Men I ever read. This was when I was about nine and it felt like the month between fresh issues of X-Men seemed to last for a hundred years, so I guess it makes sense that these doppelganger shenanigans felt like they lingered on for much longer than they did.

(Unimportant side note: While I also read Uncanny X-Men at the time, it was more like a tolerated expenditure next to X-Men, the love of my young life. At the time, Uncanny followed the Gold Team, whereas X-Men featured the Blue Team. The lineups were incredibly lopsided, with Blue taking all the most popular characters of the early ‘90s, including Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit and Rogue. Gold’s headliner was Storm, who wasn’t exactly known for her personality at this point. It wasn’t a fair fight at all.)

Let’s face it, Kwannon mostly existed to breathe some new life into an existing character. When you lay everything on the table, a ninja with a psychic fist knife is cooler than a former model with puff sleeves one-hundred percent of the time. But she was given a nobility and depth of character that’s surprising considering she seems pretty much destined to die. The tension of her doomed romance is palpable, and the confidence she carries herself with pretty much all the time is awesome. Even though she’s ultimately wrong about being the “real” Betsy, she trusts herself and knows her own strengths and limitations better than Psylocke does, occasionally coming across as a quasi-mentor to the person who’d soon end up with her body and all her powers to boot.

Kwannon ultimately contracts the Legacy Virus, the super-subtle (read: not subtle at all) AIDS analog that the X-writers were obsessed with in the early- to mid-90s. It was clearly a convenient way to get rid of a character who had run her course, but I’m heartened that she was allowed to go out with dignity, on her own terms, with the person she loved most. There are a lot of characters who have lasted much longer and with much more popularity whose deaths weren’t treated so respectfully.

Notable Appearances

X-Men (vol.2) #17-28; 31
X-Men Annual #2
Uncanny X-Men #307-308

Posted in Antiheroes, Marvel, Villains, X-Men | Leave a comment

Dr. Tina McGee

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: Flash v2 #3 (August 1987)
Created By: Mike Baron and Jackson Guice

Biography:

Tina McGee and her husband Jerry were both brilliant scientists, but Jerry grew increasingly obsessed with his research on speed – as in “going fast,” not the drug – and the two of them semi-officially separated. When Harvard issued Tina a grant to study Wally West’s metabolism, Wally was ready and willing to let her study a lot more of him. Though she initially resisted his advances, both because of Jerry and because Wally was 12 years younger than her, Tina had a hard time denying her attraction to him, especially when they were attacked by the Kilg%re. (Evil space computer thing. Don’t think about it too hard.)

Romance blossomed between Tina and Wally, and she asked Jerry for a divorce. Jerry flipped out. Already somewhat addled by the experiments he’d been performing on himself, he injected himself with so much Velocity-9, the speed-enhancing drug, that he became the monstrous Speed Demon. He beat up Tina and attacked Wally, who eventually defeated him and arranged for his physical and mental rehabilitation.

Scared and hurting, Tina fell into an intense relationship with Wally, but before long they discovered that they had absolutely nothing in common. (Sharing a house with Wally’s mother, who hated Tina, didn’t help.) Plus, Tina still had feelings for Jerry. Eventually, she left Wally, and, after a lot of soul-searching, reconciled with Jerry. The McGees remained some of Wally’s staunchest allies, however, helping him boost his faltering super speed and searching for him when he went missing.

Eventually the McGees settled in at Central City’s STAR Labs division, where they were Wally’s go-tos for scientific emergencies. Even after his disappearance and Bart Allen’s brief ascension to Flashhood, they remained firmly Team Flash, with Tina, now head of the facility, helping Bart study the Speed Force from which he got his powers.

So What’s So Great About Her?

So, okay, yes, Tina’s a brilliant scientist in that ludicrous field-spanning way every scientist in comics is. (She’s technically a nutritionist. Who dabbles in groundbreaking computer science, physics, and, um, speedology.) She’s a courageous ally to the Flash, standing firm in the face of danger and never losing her head and making his job harder than it is. She’s got a sense of humor and of duty. But, you know, all of that is kind of par for the course with a lot of Science Ladies in comics – showing up when a hero’s powers go wonky to X-ray them and look concerned while cracking wise and maybe flirting a little. And while I always enjoy that, what interests me about Tina lies a little bit deeper.

See, Tina’s been through a lot, and during the time that she was a major player in Wally’s life, none of her choices were easy ones. She was already living separated from a man she’d been with since college – at least ten years – when Wally came along. It’s clear from the get-go that she’s conflicted, and it’s not hard to see why – Wally is young and energetic and sexually eager (not in a gross way, just, you know, super into her) and not the least bit concerned with science, which had to look awfully good after losing Jerry’s attention to his experiments.

And then Jerry assaults her – and this wasn’t a simple backhand across the face, he really did a number on her – and it makes so much sense to me that she would throw herself into a relationship with Wally. What’s safer than being with a superhero, right? But once the passion and the fear cooled, there wasn’t much there, and I love that while Wally dithered and whined about his unhappy relationship, Tina maturely broke it off when she realized it wasn’t working. There’s a world of difference between 20 and 32!

And then she goes back to Jerry. Let me make it clear: I am not for a minute suggesting that real-life abuse victims should go back to their abusers. There’s a lot of Hank Pym/Janet van Dyne in the McGees’ situation: Jerry was experimenting on himself and not in his right mind, and it was only once. Of course, it’s still a metaphor for real-world substance abuse, so “It’s a comic book!” isn’t an excuse. I’m just saying that sometimes there are mitigating circumstances. And in the real world, women often stay with the men who hit them, and I don’t want to erase the women who make that choice.

What I like, though, is that we get to see Tina making those tough decisions. She doesn’t just go “Oh, it was all a big misunderstanding!” and fall back into Jerry’s arms. She agonizes over the fact that she’s still in love with someone who hurt her. (I love that she goes to Wally’s mom about this, despite their differences, as Papa West is way more of a sleazebag than Jerry.) Once she and Jerry are tentatively together again, it’s a struggle for her to learn to trust him once more, despite her very deep love for and attraction to him. Her emotional process is given the weight it deserves, and I appreciate that. Though I wouldn’t necessarily make the choices she does, I love that we get to see why she makes them. For a relatively minor character during a not-particularly-notable era of Wally’s life, she gets to be very real.

Notable Appearances:

Flash v2#3-6, 8-9, 11-16, 22-28, 35-38, 40-43, 50, 61, 84, 117, 118, 177, 180, 181, 185, 187, 188, 193, 195
Flash Annual v2 #3, 11
The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #1-6

Posted in Civilians, DC, Flash | 1 Comment