Lucinda Guthrie

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Rom Annual  #3
Created By: Bill Mantlo & William Johnson

Biography

Life was already tough for Lucinda, raising ten kids on a small family farm in rural Kentucky, when tragedy struck. Her husband, Thomas (or Ty, or Zeke, depending on the whim of the writers) died from black lung after a lifetime of working in coal mines. In an instant, the Guthries’ hardscrabble life got even harder.

These days, the solution would be obvious—just call TLC and get a reality show about your huge family! I suggest calling it Growing Up Guthrie. But alas, that wasn’t an option at the time.  Faced with the prospect of losing the farm and, even more horrifically, her children, Lucinda made what must have been one of the hardest decisions in her life—she allowed her oldest child, teenaged Sam, to go work in the very mines that had killed his father.

Another tragedy was only narrowly averted. During a cave-in in the mine, Sam’s mutant powers happened to kick in, saving him from death. This came to the attention of Professor Charles Xavier, who offered Sam a place in his school. Lucinda agreed to let him go. Over the years, five of Lucinda’s kids have manifested mutant powers, and there are hints that more will follow in their big siblings’ footsteps.

Having so many mutant kids with ties to the X-Men inevitably brought drama to Lucinda’s door. She had to watch, helpless, as her daughter Paige was abducted by the Phalanx and Melody and Joelle were (apparently) brainwashed by anti-mutant terrorists. It’s no wonder that as soon as she could take initiative against a bad guy harming her kid—Dark Beast, experimenting on Lewis—she straight-up shot his ass. BOOYA.

Things seemed to be looking up when Lucinda got engaged to Ray, a very nice African-American man. Local racists did not take kindly to this, and loooong story short, he ended up dying. She chose to adopt his son, Ray Jr. Not too long later, her third oldest, Jay, who’d recently joined the X-school, was killed as well. Uh, Happy Mother’s Day!

So What’s So Great About Her?

If Lucinda doesn’t get a bouquet of flowers from Professor Xavier every Mother’s Day, I’m calling shenanigans. I mean, not only has she given birth to at least five mutants, three of whom have been involved in various X-teams, she also doesn’t seem have hard feelings about the danger her kids are put through along the way.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not snarking about a lack of concern for her brood’s well being. This is, after all, the woman who personally blasted Dark Beast (a seriously, seriously scary AU version of Regular Colored Beast, if you’re not familiar with him) with a shotgun for hurting one of her babies. But then again, this is also the woman who allowed her teenaged son to work in the coal mines that killed his father.

To be fair, it’s hard to judge her for this choice out of the context of the time period (maybe this was more acceptable in the early ‘80s? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure now it’s totally illegal) and the Guthries’ socio-economic standing. I think it’s reasonable to expect a teen to help provide for the family if it’s necessary, and I guess Marvel’s version of Cumberland County, Kentucky doesn’t have a McDonalds or someplace more appropriate for a kid to work.

But what I think this really demonstrates is that Lucinda can see the big picture, which I think is really key for the parent of a superhero. She’ll allow her oldest son to work in a somewhat dangerous place to help the family as a whole—otherwise, they’d lose the farm and possibly the younger children. She’ll let her kids train to use their mutant powers in battle because she realizes that not only does the world need superheroes, the Guthrie children may need them to protect themselves as well.

You also have to give Lucinda major, major credit for embracing her kids’ status as mutants. While Stan Lee originally created the X-Men as an analogy for the civil rights movement, take this with a grain of salt), these days the more appropriate real-life parallel is gay rights. I mean, mutants figure out something is different about them around puberty (and sometimes younger), are often closeted about their powers, face extreme prejudice, etc. Come on. And the parents of a lot of mutants reject their kids or take a looong time to come to terms with the situation.

But not Lucinda! Her children clearly have no fear of telling her the truth and have been encouraged to accept their powers to the point that almost every kid who followed Sam has been anxious to develop powers. It’s like a tween girl waiting to get her first period after being brainwashed by Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. In a world where it’s easy to be an awful parent, Lucinda Guthrie is there, sewing the mutant equivalent of a rainbow flag for the front porch and letting all of her kids—biological and adopted—that she loves them no matter what.

Notable Appearances

Rom Annual #3
New Mutants #42; 92
X-Force #33; 36
X-Men #36
Uncanny X-Men Annual 1995
X-Force #83-84
Uncanny X-Men #437-441
New X-Men (vol.2) #32; 42
X-Men #203

Thank you to Sigrid and Jennifer from Fantastic Fangirls for their help with some of the images for this post.

Posted in Civilians, Marvel, X-Men | Leave a comment

Maura Rayner

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: Green Lantern v3 #88 (July 1997)
Created By: Ron Marz and Darryl Banks

Biography:

Falling in love with a dark, handsome secret agent isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So Maura learned when, as a young woman in Belfast, she met the dreamy Aaron Rayner, supposedly a gun smuggler for the IRA (as we learned last week, there’s nothing hotter than a guy who deals in illegal weaponry! I guess). Before long, she figured out his secret: he was Gabriel Vasquez, a CIA agent in deep cover.

Gabe/Aaron (Gaaron?) took a desk job for the Agency and they settled in DC, but the higher-ups wanted Gaaron out in the field, since he was so darn good at, you know, killing people. They put pressure on him, then they threatened, and eventually the Rayner family, complete with brand new Baby Boy Kyle, went on the lam.

After a year, though, Maura had had enough. She wanted stability for herself – and for her son. Knowing they would never leave Maura and Kyle alone unless the separation from Gaaron seemed complete, Maura and Gaaron staged a domestic violence incident, and Maura filed for divorce. Gaaron disappeared.

Maura struggled to raise Kyle alone, working as a cleaning lady and slowly gaining greater financial stability. She emphasized the importance of Kyle’s Irish roots, even teaching him some Gaelic, and supported his interest in art. However, Kyle chafed under what he viewed as her overprotectiveness, and moved out at 18. It wasn’t until he became the last of the Green Lanterns that he succeeded in restoring a close relationship with his mother, who had already figured out his secret identity. A mother always knows!

Maura eventually succumbed to a mysterious wasting illness while Kyle was adventuring in space. Temporarily imbued with the godlike powers of the Ion entity, he tried to bring her back to life, but she asked him to let her pass on. Soon after, he discovered that her disease had been planted by Sinestro as part of a complicated (and successful) plot to possess Kyle with the fear-entity, Parallax. (That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes painfully hard.) The sight of a painting painted by Maura eventually helped Kyle break free of Parallax’s grip.

So What’s So Great About Her?

I don’t often see mother-child relationships that remind me of my mom in comics. My mom isn’t a goddess or a terrorist or a mutant or even a pushy stage mom. She’s not perfect; she’s not even an entertaining hippie.

And my dad wasn’t an ex-CIA spook on the run, but it was still pretty much me and my mom my whole childhood. And like Kyle, it’s not until I grew up that I understood how much my mom did for me; until I understood that the overprotectiveness and the pushiness and the (sorry, Mom – let’s face it) nagging came from a place of overwhelming love.

Maybe that’s why what happened to Maura makes me so angry, but I do honestly think it goes to the root of something that’s very wrong in comics. We all know that the phrase “Women in Refrigerators” was coined because of what happened to Kyle’s first girlfriend, Alex, and we’ve all heard the jokes about what happens if you date Kyle. After all, four of the five women he’s slept with in canon have died – and apparently that’s very funny. Major Force, who killed Alex, once convinced Kyle he’d done the same to Maura by putting a mannequin that resembled her in her oven (not to mention the time he literally fridged Guy Gardner’s mother’s neighbor after mistaking her for Mama Gardner). And when Maura died, Parallax taunted Kyle not with all the things about her he’d miss, but with his failure to save Maura, along with the other women in his life.

Because it was never about strong, funny Maura or her relationship with her son. It was about taking Kyle’s property, just like Alex’s death and Jade’s death. It’s only a slightly more emasculating crime than, I don’t know, stealing another man’s goats. Peeing on his hearth.

And make no mistake: that’s not Major Force’s misogyny at work, or Sinestro’s, or Parallax’s. It’s DC’s.

By offing Maura for plot purposes, DC once again reduced an interesting, likable female character to nothing more than a weapon to hurt a male hero with. But what made Maura Rayner a great character and one of my favorite comic book moms was who she was when she was alive: Brave. Smart. Proud of her heritage. Supportive of Kyle. Witty. Overprotective and melodramatic (just like my mom!). A good person who taught her son to be a good person.

And I have to wonder how many Mauras it’s going to take before DC learns that it’s not the deaths of moms like Maura that make their children into heroes – it’s their lives.

Notable Appearances:

Green Lantern v3 #88-90, 113, 150, 153, 180
Green Lantern v3 80-Page Giant
Green Lantern Secret Files #2
Ion #9, 11
Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Parallax

Posted in Civilians, DC, Green Lantern | Leave a comment

Frigga

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Journey Into Mystery #92 (1963)
Created By: Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein, Joe Sinnott, & um, the Norse, I guess.

Biography

One problem when it comes to two Asgardians having a baby—the kid isn’t necessarily powerful on Earth as well as Asgard. That’s why Odin ultimately decided to become the babydaddy of Gaea (aka Mother Earth, so any resulting offspring would be strong in both realms)…and bring infant Thor home to his wife to be raised. Being the goddess of marriage, she evidently decided to keep on keeping on with Odin. To Frigga’s credit, she did not treat Thor any differently than her biological son and absolutely embraced raising him. In fact, he never even found out she wasn’t his birth mother until relatively recently.

Powerful in her own right, Frigga did some pretty cool things all on her lonesome. She participated in the creation of the Young Gods, who were given to the Celestials in order to prevent war. She also cast spells to protect her doomed son Balder, but, well, if you’ve read Norse mythology, you can probably figure out how well that went.

When Ragnarok, the end of the world, loomed near, Odin tried to hold things off by recreating the Asgardians as amnesiac mortals, but it didn’t work for long. Frigga, like most of her fellow gods, was killed. Thor, who didn’t die, helpfully restored everyone to life. I assume he didn’t forget his mama in the process.

So What’s So Great About Her?

Marvel’s version of Thor is such a daddy-issues kind of character. “My dad doesn’t love me anymore, my dad is punishing me, does Dad love Loki better, waaaahhhh.” As a reader, you’d be forgiven for sometimes totally forgetting that Thor even has a mom. Comics writers evidently forget too, considering that Frigga, Queen of the Asgardians, has just shy of 70 appearances total over nearly half a century of existence. Odin, meanwhile, has over 454. (These figures are courtesy of the Marvel Wiki, which you could totally get lost in for hours. I have, anyway.)

This is especially sad considering that while Odin is pretty much a run-of-the-mill—if godly—douchey comics dad, Frigga is arguably the most important adoptive mother in the Marvel Universe. She does have biological children, but none of them are even in the same realm of importance to Marvel’s mythos that Thor and Loki are.

To Frigga’s immense credit, she takes on the role of mother to these boys with perfect ease. Not every woman is cut out to be a mother, let alone the mother of a) a Frost Giant and b) a child her husband had with another woman, while married. In fact, she’s such a good mom, so loving and warm, that Thor never even suspects that Frigga didn’t give birth to him. This isn’t to suggest that the mothers of adopted children are typically mean to them, but hey, I’d suspect my mom of being a cruel, witch-y doppelganger mother if she so much as yelled at me for spilling Spaghetti-O’s. Frigga is apparently an amazingly sweet and patient mom.

She’s also an impressively powerful one. I mean, she is a goddess, after all! Not only does she do thinks like bargain with fire for the protection of her kid (fire is notoriously hard to negotiate with), she also participates in the create of an entire race of beings. I don’t know about your mom, but I don’t think mine does that.

I also appreciate that, early appearances aside, Frigga’s been pretty consistently depicted as an older woman. Her hair is gray, her body isn’t super toned. Artists could have been forgiven for deciding that, as a goddess, she could probably look like a svelte, sexy bikini model with grayless hair. And you know, she probably could, if she wanted. I mean, even elderly, not-goddish Destiny managed to run around with the prettiest gams this side of Ann Miller. But Frigga is the matron of her society and evidently feels comfortable looking like the mother of adult sons. She wants to look this way, and that’s kind of awesome. And I mean, she is thousands of years old. The lady can be forgiven for letting her hair go white. Right?

Don’t answer that, comics bros.

Notable Appearances

Journey Into Mystery #92
Thor #274-277; 289; 295-296; 301-303; 307; 311; 324; 344; 349-361; 364; 371; 376; 479
Thor Annual #10-11
Journey Into Mystery #504-513
Thor (vol.2) #26; 41
Thor: Godstorm #1
Thor, Son of Asgard #7
Thor (vol.3) #7; 10
Loki (vol.2) #1-4

Posted in Heroes, Marvel, Supernatural, Thor | 1 Comment

Sandra “Moonday” Hawke

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: In a picture in Green Arrow v2 #91 (November 1994); first true appearance in Green Arrow v2 #104 (January 1996)
Created By: Chuck Dixon and Rodolfo Damaggio

Biography:

Being different is tough. Especially when it’s 1970 and you’re the only half black, half Korean kid in your small Idaho town. So Sandra Hawke hit the road, rechristening herself “Moonday” along the way.

Somewhere on that road she met Oliver Queen, himself a recent convert to the wonders of sitar music and goofy facial hair. The two of them had an affair, but they were both pretty wanderlusty at the time and eventually parted ways. Soon after, Moonday discovered she was pregnant.

Maybe she couldn’t get in touch with Ollie, maybe she was just tired of helping him wax his mustache into little points every morning. Either way, she wound up raising their son Connor alone. But the responsibility required to be a single mother wasn’t really in her nature, and Connor was a difficult kid, always getting into fights at school. When he found out that his dad had spent time at a Buddhist ashram that taught archery – and that they apparently accepted angry 13-year-olds – Moonday knew it was the best place for him.

Mother and son had very little contact after that, until Connor left the ashram and took up his dead father’s mantle. Then he discovered that Moonday had married Milo Armitage, an abusive arms dealer. Despite the abuse, Armitage’s multiple attempts at offing Connor, and all the, you know, arms dealing, Moonday insisted that he was capable of change deep down and refused to leave him. (Though she did give him grief for selling weapons to racists. Apparently aiding and abetting murder is okay if it’s not race-based? I don’t get you, Moonday.) They were last seen traveling the world while Milo made shady deals with local criminals.

(After Ollie’s return from the dead, his affair with Moonday was retconned into a one night stand that Ollie couldn’t even remember, and his ignorance of Connor was retconned into him offering Moonday money and taking off, because screw babies. It also made Moonday a lot weepier. I tend to ignore this, because I prefer my Ollie lovably flawed and not actively repulsive.)

So What’s So Great About Her?

So, Moonday’s a terrible mother, let’s just get that out of the way right here. I mean, maybe sending Connor to the ashram really was best for him, and maybe she was in and out of his life because of legitimate financial issues, but I’m sorry, when your new husband tries to murderize your only child, you divorce your husband.

And yet I can’t help but find her…well, sort of charming. Her hippie naïveté still clings to her, even if she’s grown to embrace consumerism and, um, arms dealers (literally), and I have a very easy time seeing her and Ollie – who’s pretty naïve himself in a lot of ways – falling madly in love for a few days or weeks or months and then parting with no regrets. (Again, I insist that Ollie didn’t know about Connor, damn it! Also I find Ollie and Moonday’s hippie romance to be much more charming in the 70s than the 80s, though that’s more the fault of the rolling timeline than the retcon.) It’s Connor’s bad luck that he has to deal with the fallout of having two wildly irresponsible parents. (Although it made him possibly the dreamiest…ever? So there’s that.)

And that, too, makes me like her as a character, because there’s something very believable about this flighty, idealistic woman who keeps getting herself into situations where she should know better, the child who feels like he needs to parent her, and the resentment that engenders in both of them. I’ve talked about this before, but in comics, where parent train their children as silent assassins and drop them off cliffs, it’s always interesting to see a realistically dysfunctional parent-child relationship.

I also tend to suspect that Moonday is a bit more self-aware than the comics – or Connor – give her credit for. I have a hard time believing that she doesn’t know what Armitage is – but when you haven’t had anything stable in your life since you were 18, it’s easy to settle for a steady partner who is (way, way) less than perfect. And we’re shown that she let Connor go to the ashram not because she didn’t want him around, but because she knew it would be the best place for him – and that it was the hardest thing she’s ever done. At the end of the day, she does love her son.

Connor – and thus Moonday – has vanished from the DCnU, but until they reappear, we will remember: She raised the dreamiest. Son. Ever. Never forget!

Notable Appearances:

Green Arrow v2 #91, 104, 105, 114-116, 123-127, 131
Green Arrow/Black Canary #5
Green Arrow v4 #30

Posted in Civilians, DC, Green Arrow | 1 Comment

Irene Adler (Destiny)

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Mackenzie

Mom Month at Dimestore Dames continues! Say hi to your mother for me.

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: X-Men #141 (1981)
Created By: Chris Claremont & John Byrne

Biography

Irene Adler’s precognition powers were somewhat of a curse. The more she could “see” vision-wise, the less she could see, well, in a literal sense. After a year spent furiously transcribing her predictions for the next hundred years or so in a series of notebooks, she was totally blind. To make matters worse, the diaries made very little sense, because writing something like, “A gosling named Ryan shall be born, and lo, he will be hot” would be way too easy.  These predictions were like Nostradamus-level murky.

This being decades before Google, Irene went to the next best thing to help her make sense of the diaries: a private detective. This actually turned out to be shapeshifting Mystique in disguise, and while they didn’t really get to the bottom of Irene’s visions, they did totally fall in love. Even though they’d part a few times over the years, long enough to even have kids with other partners, Irene and Raven would undoubtedly prove to be the loves to each other’s lives. They even raised Rogue, their foster daughter, together in a little dysfunctional family unit.

Irene and Raven also served as the backbone for the Brotherhood of Mutants, a terrorist group. Even though Irene was about the age of every other members’ meemaws (except Raven, who doesn’t appear to get older) and couldn’t see, she handled herself well in battle with a badass crossbow and wasn’t afraid to show off her shapely gams. Unfortunately, it was during one of the team’s battles that she ended up getting killed by Legion.

These days, Destiny’s legacy is mostly apparent in her scattered diaries, which hold clues to the future of mutantkind. She also has been resurrected several times in the last few years, which probably freaked Rogue and Raven out a lot.

So What’s So Great About Her?

There are a lot of things I find awkward about Destiny. Like her soul-crushingly creepy alien-head mask, for one. And the fact that X-Men writers have never tried to smooth out her timeline, so she still officially met Mystique as an adult in the late nineteenth century, making her at least over a century old when she died in battle in 1989. Major props for being one of the only elderly women supervillains, though. And then there are the, ahem, “clever” hints that she’s the basis for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler character, who serves as Sherlock Holmes’s primary love interest (other than Watson, of course). Which, you know, shut up, trying-too-hard writers. Shut up forever.

What’s not awkward: that Irene serves as half of one of the longest lasting couples in the Marvel universe. The fact she and Raven are both women makes their deep, emotionally intense romance all the more poignant, considering the lengths it took to establish them as lovers. At the time, the Comic Code Authority didn’t allow overt references to homosexuality, and in response editor-in-chief Jim Shooter became a homophobic Scarlet Witch, whispering, “No more gay people” and making them all disappear from Marvel. Chris Claremont went to a lot of effort to hint at the romance at just the right pitch that readers might tilt their head a little but an editor wouldn’t immediately red-pen the lines. By the time they could be officially deemed a couple, it was considered one of the worst kept secrets in comics.

So yeah, theirs is a love that even the Comics Code and editorial mandates could not kill. And speaking of killing, Raven is a total cold-blooded murderer, and Irene hasn’t been exactly reluctant to roll up her own sleeves and commence terrorist activity (though I guess you could argue that she’s passively following the whims of Raven and, to an extent, her own prophetic visions). A love story isn’t exactly what you expect to crop up in the middle of their supervillainy, so it’s kind of awesome to find it there at all.

The one person Irene loves as much as Raven is Rogue, the daughter they quasi-adopted and raised together. And okay, maybe Irene’s not the best mom ever—she did encourage Rogue to follow their footsteps into the terrorist lifestyle—but their interactions are usually tender, and she also probably had an inkling that Rogue was going to head onto a better path eventually. So she’s a good mom, sort of? Better than Raven, anyway, but it’s not hard to beat the women who through her newborn off a cliff. It’s also interesting to note that, like Raven, she has other children—but daughter they share is the one who appears to get the bulk of her attention and affection.

Her relationships aside, one of the coolest things about Destiny is that she was technically only alive and active in comics for about a decade, but she’s one of the most important mutants to ever live. Long after her death, her predictions are still coming true in current storylines. In fact, the search for her missing diaries was the basis for the entire X-Treme (*siiiigh*) X-Men series. Not many relatively minor characters make that much of an impact on the universe they leave behind.

Notable Appearances

X-Men #141-142 (title switches to Uncanny X-Men with #142)
Avengers Annual #10
Rom #31-32
Dazzler #22-23; 28
Uncanny X-Men #170; 177-178; 185; 199-200
X-Factor #8-10
Avengers Annual #15
Uncanny X-Men #223-226
New Mutants #65; 78
X-Factor #30-31
Marvel Fanfare #40
Uncanny X-Men #254-255; 265
X-Factor Annual #6
X-Factor #108-109
Sabretooth and Mystique #1-3
X-Men Forever #4
X-Treme X-Men #1
Rogue (vol.3) #10
X-Men: Legacy #208; 231-233
X-Force (vol.3) #19
X-Necrosha #1
Chaos War: X-Men #1-2

Posted in Marvel, Villains, X-Men | 7 Comments

Kate Spencer (Manhunter VI)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Jessica

It’s May again, which means we’re celebrating mothers here at Dimestore Dames: the good, the bad, and the retconned!

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: Manhunter v3 #1 (October 2004)
Created By: Marc Andreyko and Jesus Saiz

Biography:

Maybe it was being descended from Z-list Golden Age heroes Iron Munro and Phantom Lady. Maybe it was witnessing her father murder her mother when she was a little girl. Either way, Kate Spencer hated seeing the bad guy get away. It drove her to become Los Angeles’ star prosecutor, even if it meant a failed marriage and a strained relationship with her six-year-old son, Ramsey.

And eventually, it drove her to steal some tech from the evidence room and track down the latest villain she’d been prosecuting, Copperhead, who’d gotten off on a technicality and celebrated by chowing down on some cops. Kate tracked Copperhead down, killed him, and tagged him with her new vigilante name: Manhunter.

(The people of L.A. were, perhaps unsurprisingly, basically cool with this. Hey, it’s Hollywood.)

Flushed with success, Kate embarked upon an only occasionally murderous superhero career. Life wasn’t all roses and executions, though: there was her evil dad showing up to kidnap Ramsey, her superheroic great-grandparents coming out of the woodwork, a government conspiracy to kill anyone calling themselves “Manhunter,” oh, and did I mention little Ramsey started developing some superpowers of his own? Being a single mom is rough, folks.

Meanwhile, in her day job as a legal eagle, Kate switched sides and defended a handful of supervillains to earn their trust, then took on Wonder Woman’s defense when she was charged with murdering Max Lord. She did a brief stint with the Birds of Prey, then moved to Gotham as the new D.A. before joining the Justice Society.

The last two issues of Kate’s solo series showed her still fighting the good fight 16 years in the future, with a closeknit support system and a grown-up Ramsey ready to take up his own superhero mantle. Go Kate!

So What’s So Great About Her?

You know how career-oriented ladies in romantic comedies are always secretly sad inside because their personal lives are such a mess? And then they meet a guy and restructure their lives around him and suddenly find fulfillment and happiness?

Yeah. Kate finds fulfillment and happiness by killing the heck out of some bad guys instead.

Here’s the thing: Kate loves her son more than anything in the world. But she’s not a great mother, especially at the start of the series. She repeatedly puts her job ahead of her kid – not for money or prestige, but because she believes in what she’s doing. Same deal when she starts superheroing.

She’s also a chain-smoker, emotionally closed off, and kind of a bully (see her yanking someone out of the Witness Protection Program to be her new tech guy). And then there’s the whole murdering thing.

But her solo series doesn’t serve to teach her the error of her ways and reorient her towards home and family. It lets her be prickly and emotionally unavailable and not particularly affected by sex. It lets her be flawed, and she comes off all the more human and relatable for it.

And that doesn’t mean she’s only flaws. She’s smart and witty and tough. She’s a brilliant lawyer, and we’re shown as well as told that, when she successfully defends both Wonder Woman (who did kill Max Lord, but to save the world) and Dr. Psycho (who is guilty as sin, and also gross). She plays well with other ladies, like her BFF Cameron Chase and the Birds of Prey. And if she has nothing else, she has the courage of her convictions. Her moral code – that she believes in the U.S. justice system, and only unleashes her murderin’ stick when it fails – may give her supporting characters headaches, but it’s one she never strays from.

There’s plenty of room for Kate in the DCnU, as Gotham’s DA or back with the Birds of Prey or even hanging with her buddy Cameron in Batwoman. Here’s hoping she turns up soon.

Notable Appearances:

Manhunter v3 #1-38
Batman: Streets of Gotham #1-13
Birds of Prey v1 #100-127
Justice Society of America #47-50

Posted in Antiheroes, Birds of Prey, DC, Heroes, Justice Society | 1 Comment

Snowbird (Narya)

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #120 (1979)
Created By: John Byrne

Biography

When an Inuit goddess and a mortal dude love each other very much—or at least like each other enough to do it—sometimes a baby is born. And sometimes that baby is a fast-growing demigoddess destined to battle evil and raised by her First Nations man-midwife.

Yeah, that’s Narya. (I guess her foster dad is a Tolkien fan?) She’s so tied to the land of her birth that for a long time she’d sick if she so much as stepped out of Canada, so it makes sense that she would join the leading Candian superteam, Alpha Flight. In fact, her dad, Shaman, and foster sister, Talisman, also joined up. By day, she’s a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police under the name Anne McKenzie. In short, she really couldn’t be more Canadian if she’d been the lovechild of the entire cast of Kids in the Hall.

Despite her odd history, she managed to marry a pretty normal guy and have a baby with him before they both were killed off. Narya herself died as well, and her body housed the displaced spirit of her (male) teammate Sasquatch. Eventually, though, she came back and rejoined Alpha Flight. She also kicked some butt with Hercules’ so-called “God Squad” during the war with the Skrulls.

So What’s So Great About Her?

Now, this may shock you, so hold onto your socks: John Byrne, the creator of Snowbird? The Mountie by day, Inuit demigoddess by night who can turn into any animal native to Canada and can’t leave the country on pain of owie? Is Canadian. I know, I know, it caught me off guard too.

Byrne’s a pretty controversial figure in comics, but you can’t blame the guy for wanting to hero-up his country. In a way, it’s charming, that the nation stereotypically known for being mild and friendly having a badass superhero team. And they are pretty badass, and some of their members are among the most iconic mutants in the Marvel Universe. (Wolverine, for example, was retconned as a member.)

Snowbird is amongst the most striking, interesting characters. Given that she’s literally bound to the land in an elemental way, she’s also, arguably, the most Canadian of the ultra-Canadians. Now, the fact that she’s a blonde, blue-eyed daughter of an Inuit goddess? Kiiiiinda problematic, to put it lightly. (Does this suggest that god genes are recessive?) I can’t say I understand Byrne’s thought process there.

That said, Snowbird’s design is pretty strikingly gorgeous, heroic and otherworldly all at once. She’s a pleasure to look at and truly a powerhouse on the team, bringing in elemental, animal-style butt-kicking on a godly level. Hell, I mean, she was working with Alpha Flight in its very earliest incarnations, and all indications are that she was fighting evil before even that. I kind of love that a member of a C-list (C for Canada!) mutant team is hardcore enough to rub elbows with gods like Hercules. If only she’d use her divine influence to get Alpha Flight another ongoing series with a decent run.

Notable Appearances

Uncanny X-Men #120-121; 138-140
Alpha Flight #1-55; 66-68; Annuals #1-2
Rom #56-58
X-Men and Alpha Flight #1-2
Marvel Fanfare #28
Alpha Flight Special (vol.2) #1
X-Men and Alpha Flight (vol.2) #1-2
Generation X #58
Wolverine (vol.2) #172
Uncanny X-Men #421-422
X-Men Unlimited #45
Alpha Flight (vol.3) #2-6
Incredible Hercules #117-120
Wolverine: First Class #5
Marvel Heartbreakers #1
Chaos War: Alpha Flight #1
Alpha Flight (vol.4) #0.1; 1-8

Posted in Heroes, Marvel, Supernatural, X-Men | 3 Comments

Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn)

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Jessica

Publisher: DC Comics
First Appearance: “Joker’s Favor,” Batman: The Animated Series (first aired September 11, 1992); in comics, The Batman Adventures #12 (September 1993); in the mainstream DCU, Batman: Harley Quinn (October 1999)
Created By: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Biography:

Bright and ambitious, newly-minted psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel took a job at Arkham Asylum with one goal: to get close enough to the Joker to write a tell-all book, then sit back and enjoy the inevitable fame and fortune. But the Joker had her number and plied her with sob stories about his tragic past until she fell – you’ll excuse the pun – madly in love with him. Outraged at Batman’s cruel treatment of her poor Puddin’, she donned a harlequin costume and busted her beloved out.

For a while, Harley and “Mister J” gleefully Bonnie-and-Clyded their way in and out of Arkham. Harley put up with the Joker’s abuse, both physical and mental, for a long time – until he tried to kill her. Fed up, Harley shot him in the shoulder and struck out on her own – or occasionally with her BFF, Poison Ivy.

Over the years, Harley drifted in and out of Arkham, in and out of rehabilitation, and in and out of love with the Joker. She briefly joined the Secret Six, then resurfaced in an Amazon-run women’s shelter, apparently reformed. Harley and Holly “Catwoman’s friend” Robinson traveled to Themiscyra to receive Amazon training, only to discover that it was all a front by Granny Goodness. With Mary Marvel, they freed the Olympian gods from captivity in Apokolips.

Apparently liberating a pantheon of deities really whets your appetite for crime, because Harley fell back into the criminal life, teaming up with Ivy and Catwoman for protection. A series of double-crosses followed, in which Harley attempted to kill the Joker, then freed him, then was arrested by Catwoman, then was almost killed by Ivy, then was freed by Ivy, then tried to kill Catwoman…yeesh, no wonder she’s crazy.

Harley recently got a grim ‘n’ gritty makeover in the reboot, for all those people who felt that “mentally unstable woman in an abusive relationship with a homicidal clown” wasn’t hardcore enough.

So What’s So Great About Her?

You remember that girl in high school, or maybe early college, who wore a lot of eyeliner and really loved Rocky Horror and Labryinth and kept telling you that you had to read Sandman, it’s amazing? You probably still have her Tori Amos CD? Yeah, her. Chances are if you ever brought up Batman, she gave you a really earnest look and said, “No, you don’t understand, I am Harley Quinn.”

I knew that girl. I knew that girl multiple times, through high school and college; part of me even was that girl. Who is Harley Quinn.

I’ve never heard anyone say they are Wonder Woman or Renee Montoya or Zatanna or Vixen or Supergirl. I know lots of girls who relate to Barbara Gordon or aspire to be Lois Lane, but I’ve never heard anyone identify with a character with the heartfelt intensity of a 17-year-old girl with a dog-eared copy of Mad Love.

In a way, that’s sad. None of the girls I knew were in abusive relationships, thankfully, but they were still relating to a character who is in large part defined by her abuse. (It also sort of erases the survivors of actual abuse, but I tend to give 17-year-olds a bit of leeway in thinking the whole world is about them.) Harley is an unhappy, troubled woman unable to break away from a monster of a man who can’t love her and will probably kill her someday. And this is what teenage girls are relating to?

And yet on the other hand, adolescence isn’t an Archie comic. It’s painful and it’s confusing and you fall in love with people who don’t love you back, and I think, as flawed as Harley is, there’s something tremendously empowering about being able to point to a character on TV (because Harley, of course, famously got her start on Batman: The Animated Series before crossing over to comics, which is a large part of why she’s so recognizable to Generation Y) and say, “There. There I am. There’s everything I’m feeling. I’m not alone.”

It’s also hard not to love Harley, with her infectious giddiness and her Bensonhurst accent (Brooklyn represent!) and her wholehearted devotion to whatever she’s doing. When she loves the Joker, she loves him more than any woman has ever loved an asexual green-haired sociopath. When she wants to reform, she puts her whole heart into it. And when she comes up with a themed costume, she finds herself some oversized novelty mallets and guns that say “Bang!” because she’s going for a look, dammit!

She’s also the only Jewish villain I can think of, not to mention a character who is very open to queer readings (which are only encouraged by her creators). At the very least, she forms strong alliances with other women (Ivy, Catwoman, Holly, Mary, various Batgirls), even if they do tend to be laden with double crosses.

I hope those girls don’t feel like Harley anymore, but I’m glad she was there for every teenage girl who felt like no one had ever loved as painfully as her. As flawed a character as she can be sometimes, everyone deserves to feel like they’re not alone.

Notable Appearances:

I wouldn’t normally focus this much on animated tie-in titles, but…it’s Harley.

Animated Universe:

The Batman Adventures: Mad Love
The Batman Adventures #12, 28
The Batman and Robin Adventures #1, 8, 17, 18
Batman: Gotham Adventures #10, 14, 29, 30, 43, 45, 51, 53, 56
Gotham Girls #1-5
Batman Adventures #1, 3, 9, 16
Harley and Ivy #1-3

Mainstream DCU:

Batman: Harley Quinn
Harley Quinn #1-38
Batman v1 #570, 573, 574, 613, 614, 619, 663, 686
Detective Comics #737, 740, 741, 821, 823, 831, 837, 850, 853
Catwoman v2 #82-84, 89
Wonder Woman v2 #164-167
Joker: Last Laugh #1-6
Birds of Prey v1 #105-108
Countdown to Final Crisis #43-41, 37, 34, 30, 29, 21, 19, 18, 15, 12-6, 1
Gotham City Sirens #1-26

Harley is currently starring in Suicide Squad v4.

Posted in Antiheroes, Batman, DC, Secret Six, Suicide Squad, Villains | 4 Comments

Jane Foster (Thor: The Mighty Avenger version)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Thor: The Mighty Avenger #1 (2010)
Created By: This version of Jane Foster comes courtesy of Roger Langridge & Chris Samnee, based on the original character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby.

Biography

Museum work is a notoriously slow career track. Basically, you have to wait for one of your superiors to die or be driven mad by the wacky hijinks of exhibits that come to life after hours (citation: Night at the Museum, 2006) in order to get a promotion. Luckily for Jane Foster, an employee at the war museum in Bergen, “Wait, Why Is There a Huge Museum Here?” Oklahoma, her boss left Bergen for greener pastures, landing her a sweet new gig as curator of the Nordic Studies department.

On her very first day, she managed to talk down a raving hobo in front of the display, despite the fact that he didn’t seem to understand English. When she encountered the guy again soon after, fighting a really scary, sexually (and unwantedly) aggressive Mr. Hyde, she was surprised to discover two things. 1. The bum now knew English. 2. He could really take a punch.

Jane was so impressed with his valor that she agreed to take him to the museum after hours so he could look at a particular pot in her exhibit. Letting him hold it seemed to be a mistake, since he immediately smashed it on the ground (I was an archaeology major, so believe me, I was clutching my invisible pearls too), but he had a good reason—the vessel held Mjölnir, the legendary hammer of Thor.

Yeah, the bum was totally Thor. He was banished to Earth by his father as a punishment, only he couldn’t remember what he’d done to piss off Papa O in the first place. This made it kind of hard for him to figure out how to right his wrong. Jane invited him to crash at her apartment while he figured out. Cue adventure (and smooches)!

So What’s So Great About Her?

It’s easy to be dazzled by huge, amazing feats of strength (“She beat up the Hulk! THE HULK.”) or acknowledgements of sheer awesomeness (“They all agreed she was so great that they voted her leader of the Avengers, X-Men, AND Fantastic Four.”), but sometimes, it’s really the little things that make up a great female character. The version of Jane Foster from Thor: The Mighty Avenger is comprised of about nine million of those little things.

First off, major credit needs to go to the truly gorgeous art on this series. Every single character is attractively designed and features diverse, expressive facial features. But what made Jane in particular stand out to me was the moment I realized that not only did I want her hairstyle, I could have it. In real life. I know artists need to crank out their pencils sometimes, and maybe giving their women characters hair types and styles other than “long, thick, luxurious” or “sexy pixie crop” isn’t their top priority, but realizing that Jane had fine hair and a sensible-but-cute midlength cut designed to flatter it really impressed me. Samnee has looked at women before and realizes they can be pretty and realistic! Be still my heart! (I also realize that my past gig as a hairstyle magazine editor/writer is totally showing here.)

After that, I basically fainted and had to be revived with smelling salts when I realized that Jane is consistently depicted wearing actual business casual clothes to work. Imagine that—a woman dressing appropriately for what is basically an office job! Maybe I sound like I’m being picky or something, but consider that Stark Industries executive Pepper Potts wears things like form-fitting miniskirts to work, which would be considered pretty inappropriate. And then Dr. Cecilia Reyes tossed on some tighter-than-tight jeans and the ultimate push-up bra to ask her boss for her job back. And I don’t consider these very egregious examples. I wouldn’t use scans where a woman is wearing a tube top or ultra-low hiphuggers to work, but I think everyone who’s read superhero comics for longer than a minute has seen something like that.

And then there’s just Jane’s personality…God. She’s got this great can-do sort of attitude and enthusiasm for all aspects of her life, whether it be a promotion or the promise of a ride on a flying goat chariot, that’s incredibly appealing. But she’s got a good head on her shoulders too, and we get to see her being incredibly adult about ending a recent relationship. She also doesn’t immediately make out with Thor (even though he’s way cute and charming), let alone tumble into bed with him from the get-go (it helps that this is an all-ages title, probably). Jane’s just a smart, helpful, upbeat person with a bit of a romantic streak. Someone I would be happy to see my hypothetical future daughters emulate.

Which, okay, on second thought—maybe that’s not such a little thing.

Notable Appearances

Thor: The Mighty Avenger #1-8

Posted in AU, Civilians, Marvel, Thor | 2 Comments

Alison “Ali” Blaire (Dazzler)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Mackenzie

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #130 (1980)
Created By: Ali was created by Marvel staffers Tom DeFalco, John Romita, Jr., Louise Simonson, & Roger Stern before her initial appearance, which was written and drawn by Chris Claremont & John Byrne respectively

Biography

When aspiring singer/dancer Ali Blaire manifested mutant light powers, she decided to make lemonade from her lemons and entered the music world as a disco performer with really suspiciously awesome special effects. While she was performing as “Dazzler,” the X-Men interrupted with one of her shows by beating up some bad guys. She helped save the day and went on to have a number of adventures, but shied away from becoming a full-time hero, preferring to focus on her singing and a burgeoning acting career. It took years before she finally accepted the team’s offer to join….but only after effectively ruining her career by coming out as a mutant.

During her time on the team, she met the handsome human mullet known as Longshot, a native of another dimension. They totally made heart eyes at each other, and she eventually went off to help him fight the rebellion in his own world. Along the way, they married, became quasi-guardians of the (*siiiiigh*) X-Babies, and suffered the loss of a pregnancy.

Eventually, their marriage broke up—it’s not really clear why, but Longshot’s stint as an amnesiac didn’t help the situation—and Ali came back to Earth to try to make it as a techno star, thus finding the only genre arguably more reviled than disco. She’s also an X-Man again, which is fine by me as long as she’s rollerblading over to punch villains in the face.

So What’s So Great About Her?

There’s a really obvious upside and downside to tying comic book characters with current pop culture trends. Upside: When the character debuts, they feel really fresh and cool and real! Downside: They start sounding cringingly dated about four minutes later.

Don’t believe me? Well, crack open one of the first, say, 30 issues or so of the original run of Gen13 to see what I mean. It’s so intensely threaded with then-current, now frankly bizarre ‘90s slang that I’d be surprised if a present-day teenager would understand half the dialogue. But seriously, at the time Gen13 was widely praised for its “current” flavor, and the fans loved it. “Oh my God, they listen to Soundgarden and wear babydoll dresses! IT’S LIKE THEY ARE ME.” Now it’s just like peering into an MTV-created time capsule.

But Dazzler might actually be the queen of this phenomenon. Because, I mean. Come on. ROLLER-SKATING, DISCO-SINGING, JUMPSUIT-WEARING SUPERHERO. It’s like you’re actively getting hit in the face with late ’70s/very early ‘80s hipness.

Ali actually has a complicated, fascinating history; she was originally created to be a tie-in for a (surprise) disco record, and later there was noise about a Dazzler movie starring Bo Derek. For much more in-depth, informed tellings of those stories, check out the posts here and here. But I have to say, for a character whose existence is largely in thanks to her merchandising potential, Ali is an extremely well-rounded, interesting person. She has a rather sad background, having been abandoned by her mother and raised by a John-Lithgow-in-Footloose-esque father. We got to see her career rise and then fall rather realistically due to a misguided, if well-meaning, publicity move. She had a sweet, long-term romance with a man who could have only been considered hot in the ‘80s (his mullet!) than ended due to apparently mundane reasons. All in all, she’s a compelling, really real sort of character.

The fact that she pulled it off in rhinestone-covered rollerskates makes it all the more impressive. It would have been all too easy to make her a one-note character, doing the hustle over to Juggernaut and telling him to ring this bell before bopping him in the gut with some light powers. In fact, if that were the case, I’d still totally love her, just maybe not as much.

Even still, it’s not difficult to understand why Dazzler faded from the comics scene for most of the ‘90s. As the trends shifted away from glam and toward edgy grunge, Ali was not the type of character any writer really wanted to spotlight. It’s actually kind of remarkable how quickly Ali went from being a character with a 40+ issue solo series to someone who didn’t appear even as a cameo for years. But luckily, in the last decade or so, writers riding the ‘80s nostalgia wave have rediscovered how fun and awesome Ali is, and she’s back on the scene as a member of X-Men. Hopefully she’ll stay there for a long while yet. After all, disco may be dead, but Dazzler never will be.

You know, until she is. Comics!

Notable Appearances

Dazzler is currently appearing in various X-Men comics.

X-Men #130-132
Amazing Spider-Man #203
Fantastic Four #217
Dazzler #1-42
Marvel Team-Up #109
Avengers #221
Marvel Graphic Novel #12
Beauty & the Beast #1-4
New Mutants #29-31
Secret Wars II #1; 4-5
Uncanny X-Men #210; 213-252; 259-260; Annuals 1987-1991
Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men #1-4
X-Men vs. the Avengers #1-4
Marvel Fanfare #38
X-Men #5-7; 10-11; 47
X-Force #60-61
Marvel Fanfare (vol.2) #4-5
Uncanny X-Men #392-393
X-Men #112-113
X-Men Unlimited #32
Deadpool #67
New Excalibur #1-24
X-Men: Die By the Sword #1-5
Uncanny X-Men #502-504; 506; 509; 511; 513-519; 522; 524; 528; 531-534
X-Men and Spider-Man #2
X-Men: Manifest Destiny #5
Wolverine: First Class #16
Hulk Team-Up #1
Marvel Heartbreakers #1
X-Force (vol.3) #25
Dazzler (vol.2) #1
X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: X-Men vs. Vampires
X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4
Iron Age: Omega #1
Iron Age #3
X-Men: Regenesis #1

Posted in Heroes, Marvel, X-Men | 2 Comments