Art Show: Walking Dynamite!

Adventure



By Franklin Booth [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Mermaid



By Abrams [Never Sea Land]

Tales of Three Planets



By Rog G Krenkel [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

The Human Bomb



By Dan and Sy Barry. There's a whole story that goes with it at Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine.

The Spectacular Super-Girls



Artist unknown. Peter Parker's classmates from the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon dressed as DC heroes though? Love it. [Brother Calvin]

Zatanna



By Danielle Corsetto. [Comic Art Fans]

Black Canary and Huntress



By Steve Bryant again.

Iron Man and Friends



By Mike Maihack.

Alternate Jabba



By Richard Whitters.

Warrior Women Wednesday!

Today's Warrior Woman is Big Barda -- or, more accurately, "Lil' Big Barda" -- from Darryl Young's blog, which is chock full of good stuff.

But speaking of Barda, I'm sorry that Big Barda & Scott Free Week at Scans Daily never really took off.

"I want to have the kind of run I had on Birds of Prey"

The Dallas Morning News has a small, fluffy interview with Gail Simone in which she says she hopes to remain on Wonder Woman for at least five years. She wants to "have the room and time to really tell a megastory, made up of satisfying smaller chunks." Sounds good to me.

Who it doesn't sound good to: people who don't really seem to care about Wonder Woman in the first place.

JLA movie on hold

From a Hollywood Reporter article on how the WGA strike is affecting movie production: "At Warner Bros., Justice League of America finds itself without a shooting script and has options expiring on potential actors who recently were screen tested. As a result, it might have to postpone production." Sucks for me, but I'm still with the writers.

"I would frigging love to be Wonder Woman!"

So, with no chance of seeing an actual, big screen Wonder Woman any time soon, let's go back to fantasizing about who we'd like to see. I'll second the Lorelai Gilmore nomination. Not because she's the first person I'd think of for the role, but because she rules in general.

^_^

I haven't been into DC Direct's anime-inspired statues so far, but I actually kinda like the Wonder Woman one. The face is goofy in it's cutesy grimaciness, but I really like the costume design.

Added to my Wish List

DC's Power Girl collection.

Feminist Icon vs. Sex Object: Where's the line?

Former (I think) DC editor Steve Bunche has an interesting review of the '70s grindhouse sexploitation flick 'Gator Bait. It's interesting because while Bunche isn't necessarily a feminist, he's clearly hip to feminist concerns when he writes stuff like, "Lemme tell ya, buddy, the makers of this film simply set out make a movie about a scantily clad hottie who kicks ass on the people who fucked with her and her family, but I strongly doubt that capital F feminism was intentionally involved in the creative process.

"Think about it: you have fine-ass Claudia Jennings, a woman for whom the wearing of clothing should have been a capital offense, traipsing about the fen in gear that shows off her priapism-inducing assets for all they’re worth, despite the fact that such gear is in no way conducive to the rigors of marshland hunting and trapping. Desiree is not so much a feminist role model as she is a fantasy wild woman/jungle girl updated and transplanted to a sweltering southern bayou, and as a lifelong fan of such characters I have no problem with that. But don’t hand me that feminist overanalysis horseshit; Desiree’s a forest spirit fantasy made flesh — hell, she even looks like an anthropomorphic fox — and to say otherwise is a tad disingenuous."

Which makes me wonder: is it possible for a character to be a feminist role model and an object of lust at the same time? Certainly there are scantily clad superheroines who have plenty of female fans, but who are also ogled by male fans. Does the fact that some fanboys drool over these characters diminish them as role models for the fangirls? Does it depend entirely on the number of gratuitous butt, boob, and crotch shots the artist indulges in? What decides if an image is gratuitous or not? I'm asking. Where's the line?

Justice League of Amazons Revisited

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Justice League of Amazons comic from that Justice Leagues event DC ran several years ago. The plot for the event was lame, but I liked the concept that the individual members of the JLA each formed their own version of the team reflecting their personalities and ideologies. So Superman and the Martian Manhunter formed the Justice League of Aliens, Batman formed the Justice League of Arkham, Wonder Woman formed the Justice League of Amazons, etc. It was a cool idea and I especially loved the idea of a team of DC's female powerhouses.

The JLAmazons was made up of Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Big Barda, Zatanna, Huntress, the Supergirl of the time, and Black Orchid. It's a good line-up, but I think it would need some tweaking if DC were to revisit the concept today.

Wonder Woman's a natural. She's the most iconic superheroine in existence, plus she's a badass and a bona fide Amazon.

Zatanna's another easy choice. I think teams are much more interesting with magic-users on them and Zatanna's magic is especially powerful.

I also think that Huntress is criminally underused as a female counterpart for Batman. I hated it when they took the new Batgirl identity from her and gave it to Cassandra Cain. Batwoman is interesting, but she doesn't have the history that Huntress does, so Huntress best fills the role on this team that Batman fills in the JLAmerica.

I don't know much about Power Girl and Big Barda, but I like that they're beautiful bruisers. It's an archetype I can't get enough of. Supergirl's cool too, especially since she doesn't look like trouble, but she is. But since she and Power Girl are both related to Superman, I think it would be a lot more interesting to replace Supergirl (who's over-exposed in the DCU anyway) with Mary Marvel, assuming Mary emerges from Countdown a good guy.

I don't know much about Black Orchid either. I know that her JLAmazons design is bad though and that she's completely out of place with the rest of the team. Maybe she'd be cooler if she was the Vertigo version. I don't really care though; I'd much rather just swap her out for Black Canary, who's far more interesting and deserving to be in this lineup.

I'd also like to up the number of members to eight in order to fit in Starfire. She'd make a nice trio with Barda and Power Girl.



Thinking about this made we wonder what a Marvel version would be like, too. What if there were an all-female team of Avengers? Sticking to an eight-woman team, I'm thinking:

Ms. Marvel
Invisible Woman
She-Hulk
Rogue
Black Widow
Talisman (from Omega Flight)
Molly Hayes (Bruiser from Runaways)
and...

Gah. I had an eighth earlier and now I've lost her. I'll remember later and update. Update: Oh, yeah. It's Namora.

But what do you think? Who should be on DC and Marvel's female powerhouse teams? I didn't go into detail on how I picked the Marvel team, but my criteria were sort of all over the place, so use whatever selection method you like.