The Wonder Woman Blog

Fashion Victims

2009-05-05T18:40:00.027-04:00

Anyone who has ever seen me or the way I dress can probably figure out that I don't have a very keen sense of fashion. I don't know what's "in" right now. I don't know if I'm a "winter" or a "baseball season." I am not clear on when you're supposed to stop wearing white or why. The best I can do is distinguish between "attractive" and "screamingly hideous." So when someone makes a fashion mistake and I can tell it's a mistake, then that means it is a glaringly obvious mistake.

When I stumbled upon an article on The Ten Best and Worst Dressed Comic Book Characters, I was intrigued to see who was picked because even with my myopic eye for fashion I could think of at least a dozen superheroes who look absolutely terrible. For instance, remember when they changed Superman's costume? I do. However, when I read the article, I found that it was full of errors that I, as someone familiar with these characters who can also dress himself, felt the need to correct.

First off, I was a bit surprised by Wolverine making the best-dressed list. It's mostly because I'm not a huge fan of yellow spandex, but I am willing to concede that's really a judgement call. What I'm really offended by is something deeper than the fashion - the arithmetic. Check at the beginning of the blurb how old our fashion critic says Wolverine is. Now check when he says Wolverine was born. As those of you who weren't in the same math class as Grant Morrison (see below) probably already know, the late 19th century was less than 200 years ago. Honestly, if your expertise with numbers is that bad, you really should avoid using them altogether.

Quick! Count how many eyes Jamie Madrox has. Now count how many limbs he has. If the number of limbs you came up with is four times the number of eyes, then congratulations! You are as smart as one of the most popular writers in comics!

I also object to the Incredible Hulk being on the worst dressed list. It's not that I think Hulk is a particularly snappy dresser, but considering that it's all Bruce Banner can do to wear pants with enough elasticity in the waist and seat that Hulk's genitals are covered, I don't think fashion is the real issue here. This is like putting a child on the worst dressed list and making fun of his helmet and rubber pants.

Aside from those minor criticisms, I don't have much more to say about the men on the lists. Honestly, I'm not sure what makes a man more or less attractive. I don't know whether Luke Cage actually does look better than Iron Fist as this article claims. Frankly, if either one of them tried to pick me up in a bar, I would probably run away screaming. I also don't know through what sublety of fashion The Question (Rorschach) can be on the list and yet John Constantine, Dr. Occult, or any of the dozens of detective characters who dress exactly the same way missed out. However, as someone who is attracted to women, I can tell when women look good, so I take great umbrage to the women on this list. The fact that Zatanna is listed as one of the worst dressed and Emma Frost as one of the best is an insult to anyone who has ever worn clothes. For those of you who are blind enough not to know this, first of all, how are you reading this blog? Second of all, you should know that Zatanna wrote the book on what it means to be sexy and Emma Frost took off her pants and took a huge shit on that book. Allow me to elaborate:

(Click for a larger image)
This is Zatanna. She wears fishnets and a top hat. For those of you whose brains just blacked out from an overload of awesome, I will reiterate: She wears fishnets and a top hat. This is the Michaelangelo's David of superhero costumes, but hot! Clearly, this is the greatest thing that any person can possibly wear. I'm not sure why the day that Zatanna was created, the entire fashion industry didn't just throw up their hands and quit, because there is obviously nothing more they can possibly do.

Then there's Emma Frost on the other hand. When we first met her, she was the headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy and wore the smart and chic suit shown on the left. What's interesting about this in retrospect is that at this time in her life, having other people take her seriously was a priority for her. As you will see, this would later play a much less important role in her fashion choices. In addition to being an academic, she was also a member of the famously decadent and amoral Hellfire Club. In her capacity as a fetishistic supervillainess, she dressed like this:

This was the first superhero costume I truly understood. I couldn't honestly tell you why Superman wears a cape, but thigh-high high-heeled boots and a corset? That I get!

In the mid-nineties, after emerging from a coma, Emma gave up supervillainy and quit the Hellfire Club in order to teach at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (home of the X-Men). No longer having that outlet for her sadomasochistic impulses, she decided to seemlessly blend her dominatrix and schoolteacher looks with this outfit:

It's both tasteful and kinky! I assure you for every one reader who questioned why she needed a riding crop to teach high school, there were at least five who wished they had a teacher like Ms. Frost. This was the apex of Emma's fashion. Only a few years later, tragedy struck. As near as I can tell, Emma's wardrobe got caught in a thresher and rather than buy new clothes, decided to wear what remained of her mangled outfits. This is the result:

AAAAAAAGH!!! Take it away! It's horrible! HORRIBLE! I really hope this wasn't an attempt to be "sexy," because if so, it is the saddest thing in the world. Also, I don't know if one of the moronic new powers she was given (in addition to diamond skin - no, seriously, they gave her diamond skin) was to turn Asian, or if she's squinting to read something because she's not wearing the glasses that she apparently needed in her first appearance but everyone since seems to have forgotten about. Maybe her deteriorating vision helps to explain how she could look at this outfit and then decide to wear it. There's a reason that women in real life don't dress like this. In fact, there are at least twenty.

In summation, I have been told that Coco Chanel once said, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory." I would like to amend that. If you look in the mirror and see this:

then you should definitely put on more - enough to cover that awful thing you're wearing - or maybe just take it all off and start over, because you have fucked up egregiously.

AIDS makes us equal

2008-11-28T16:09:00.001-05:00

This ad is deeply disturbing, but certainly that was the point.

You know what's kind of wrong is that somewhere, there's a makeup artist whose assignment was "Hollow cheekbones, please -- but make it fabulous."

Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman

2008-11-01T18:58:00.004-04:00

From PopBytes:

Another Reason Why I Love Kristen Schaal

2008-06-09T10:26:00.006-04:00

On The Daily Show last Thursday, Kristen Schaal expressed some of my exact opinions regarding the coverage of the Democratic primaries. But, as with every great pundit, it wasn't so much what she said as the way she said it. The part at the end where she wears the Wonder Woman outfit was particularly poignant.

After Jen Dziura and Kristen Schaal, I'm going to start demanding
all comedians strip down to Wonder Woman underwear during their act. This means you, Patton Oswalt!

next up, back to the hot girls...

2008-05-02T12:26:00.002-04:00

From astute reader Mark Seddon:

Hi,

I thought you might be interested in this pic that I took. A brave chap dressed up as Wonder Woman.

It was for the annual Superhero Challenge fun run last weekend at Brighton in the UK. The run raises money for the charity Passing It On.

It was also featured over on the Forbidden Planet blog.

Cheers,
Mark

where cheerleaders go when they graduate

2008-02-21T15:25:00.001-05:00

Here is a very muscular lady performing a Wonder Woman fitness routine:

Super-Steam-Power!

2008-01-22T18:08:00.001-05:00

My girlfriend is deeply into "Steampunk." For those of you who are not "in the know," Steampunk is what you get when you take regular punk and cook it in a pot of boiling water. This causes the punk in question to dress like a nineteenth century coal miner. Or something like that. I generally encourage this hobby, since, like my own Wonder Woman fandom, it is at its heart an excuse to look at pictures of very pretty people in ridiculous outfits. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the two worlds collided.

I give you: Gaslight Justice League! "Sillof's Workshop" has created these titans of the 1800's. Normally, I would make some snide comment about him having WAY too much free time on his hands, but these are kickass enough that I can't bring myself to do it. You may notice that in a display of bipartisanship between the Silver Age Justice League and cartoon Justice League, Sillof has included both Aquaman and Hawkgirl. However, as with any rendition of the Justice League, the highlight is the Wonder Woman.

Holy crap! She is totally about to kick contemporary author Friedrich Nietzsche's ass! You may wonder why certain liberties were taken with the colour scheme of her outfit. The simple explanation is that in the 1880's, Wonder Woman didn't give a shit about America.

I'm getting into this Steampunk stuff now. Of course, making Wonder Woman look good is like shooting fish in a barrel. I think I'll create a Steampunk version of someone like Starman (Left, fighting bear). Oh shit! Someone beat me to it!

I am in a literary humor journal with Wonder Woman on the cover

2008-01-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

Monkeybicycle Issue Five, guest-edited by Eric Spitznagel

$12.00
Click here to preorder

Looking for something to read after you put the kids to bed? Then Issue Five of Monkeybicycle is for you. It's bursting at the seams with humor that is not for innocent minds or faint hearts.

Our fifth issue is filled with the kind of humor that would make any good man blush, and it's delivered from some of the best in the business. Just take a look at this killer line-up:

Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Myfanwy Collins, Johnny Ryan, Davy Rothbart, Wendy Molyneux, Aaron Burch, Bret Scott, Elizabeth Ellen, Matt Craig, Timothy Bennet, Pete Grosz, Liliana V. Blum, Katie Schwartz, Tyler Smith, Michael Frissore, Antonius Wiriadjaja, Amy Guth, J. Marcus Weekley, Matt Summers-Sparks, C. J. Kershner, Ben Tanzer, Jennifer Dziura, Peter Bognanni, Charlie Anders, David Hart, Noria Jablonski, Bob Fingerman, Vince LiCata, Jack Pendarvis, Christopher Monks, and an introduction by David Cross.

p.s. - The cover does, in fact, depict a creepy old dude smelling a Wonder Woman doll's underwear, which he appears to have removed with tweezers.

Julianne Moore's kid as Wonder Woman

2007-11-14T21:22:00.000-05:00

The leggings look very practical for October!

Amy Winehouse as Wonder Woman

2007-09-20T01:23:00.000-04:00

PrettyOnTheOutside comments:

Call me crazy, but ever since I caught a glimpse of Amy's beehive hairdo, I've seen her as Wonder Woman. I don't know why but I've always had that association. Both are strong gals you wouldn't mess with. I hope my sweet Amy gets it together. She's a wonder Wonder Wino!

Vintage photo post: WW (and her stunt double)

2007-06-25T20:45:00.001-04:00

previously unreleased Wonder Woman photos

2007-02-18T11:23:00.000-05:00

I hear some of you like damsels in distress.

Others, not so much.

By Ryan Brenizer, God of the Lens.

WW on iTunes

2007-02-12T14:55:00.000-05:00

Reader Randy in San Francisco sent us a tip: Season 1 of Wonder Woman is now available for download on iTunes (link will open iTunes application).

I have sometimes thought that it might be cool to obtain one of these newfangled video iPods and download TV shows to it and then watch them on the subway or the Stairmaster. And then I just feel a kind of First World guilt that I could have access to that much technology and use it to watch more television more places. So I don't do those things.

I do, however, fight crime.

SuperSexyHeroines.com

2007-02-07T15:44:00.000-05:00

Running low on superheroine porn? This website and its large-breasted models are here to save the day.*

Likely due to trademark issues, the site features the "live comic book" adventures of "Stargirl" and "Superior Girl" and "Nocturnal Winged Lady Dressed in Black Whose Parents Were Tragically Killed That One Time." Okay, made the last one up.

*I haven't yet found a "coming to the rescue" pun, but I imagine it's in there.

Suffer A Jet

2007-02-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

When I was in elementary school, a friend of mine told me the following story:

Superman was on patrol when, using his telescopic vision, he saw that Wonder Woman had left her window open and was lying naked on her bed. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Superman flew in at super-speed, shot his wad, and flew away before Wonder Woman could even say anything.

"What was that?" gasped Wonder Woman.

"I don't know," said the invisible man, "but all of a sudden, my ass is sore."

I'm not sure I got all of the details of that story right, since I have been unable to find the comic book in which it happened, but my point remains the same: Everyone lay off Wonder Woman's invisible plane!

Yes, I know - it's invisible, but it doesn't make her invisible, meaning that when she's flying in it, you can still see her. Maybe you expect more from a magical aircraft. It's still better than anything your plane can do. What? You don't have your own plane? You don't even have a pilot's license? What a loser!

As you can see, when an aeroplane is in the sky, it can reach heights that are very far away, making it look very small and hard to see. This is caused by science. However, don't be fooled! Aeroplanes are in reality quite large.

Here we see George Bush, Jr. standing and waving outside of Air Force One (a non-invisible aeroplane). Bush is indicated in red. Reliable sources report that President Bush, Jr. is not a midget, and yet we can see very clearly in this undoctored photograph that the aeroplane is at least ten times his size!

In this photograph, I have used advanced special effects technology to digitally render Air Force One invisible. While President Bush, Jr. remains visible, you can hardly see his obnoxious, smug, self-satisfied grin. So you see, even a visible person in an invisible plane would be very difficult to see.

Many people say that she couldn't operate an aeroplane if she couldn't see the controls. You know, there are other senses you could use to tell where the controls are. Next, you'll be saying that blind people shouldn't be piloting aeroplanes. You probably think that blind people should stay on the ground and be locked in dank, smelly caves and fed the lint that sighted people find in their belly buttons. Jerk. Fascist. Jerk.

If it were up to you, I bet Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Louis Braille would never have made their historic transatlantic flight.

Wonder Woman must spend hours every day cleaning that plane so that it remains completely transparent and she doesn't need assholes like you making fun of her.

Some of you may be of the opinion that Wonder Woman doesn't need any aircraft at all, considering that she has magical sandals that allow her to fly without a plane. You may think it's silly that she ever choose to wear her non-flying go-go boots. Sure, the boots are kinky and sexy and provide superior arch support, you would think, but you have to weigh that against the gift of flight. You would think she should never go into action without her sandals.

That just goes to show how little you know. Very few people know this, but her red fuck-me boots have magical powers, too.

They make her look taller.

This blog post is brought to you by Google Image Search and by Ow! My Eye! - celebrating five years of this comic.

YOUR COSTUME HAS NO POCKETS

2007-01-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

Cindy Wondercrawford

2006-12-15T15:49:00.000-05:00

Oh, heavens! It's Cindy Crawford as WW -- classic!

I don't even have anything snarky to say.

she flies through the air with the greatest of ease

2006-12-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

Friends, countrymen: I write to tell you that there is such a thing as...

The Fat Wonder Woman Blog

The blog is run by one Jamar Nicholas, who enjoys BBWWs (a play on the term "BBW," meaning Big Beautiful Woman). This particular BBWW is by Mike Wieringo:

Plenty more to love at The Fat Wonder Woman Blog.

Tinseltown Ticker Tape

2006-12-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

The holiday season is upon us, when Christians pretend that if they invoke the name of their messiah enough, He will forgive them for their co-opted pagan solstice rituals and mindless commercial excess. It is a magical time, when families and friends gather in the spirit of love and generosity and other bullshit that nobody really believes in.

Last month, we had the annual celebration of Samhain (or "Halloween," as the kids are calling it these days), which is a magical time in a more literal sense, when it is believed that the barrier between the physical world and the spirit world is at its weakest, making it the ideal time to commune with the dead or summon spirits to our world. It is especially magical at Heidi Klum's Halloween Party, where any woman can be Wonder Woman, even one who has never once caused me to wonder, such as model/"actress" Rhona Mitra:

I can forgive the stockings, because as a Zatanna fan and a former Eddie for Edison, New Jersey's cast of The Rocky Horror Show, I have a soft spot in my heart for fishnets and top hats, but come on...

A Wonder Woman with straps?! I think we can do better than that.

On the other hand, kudos to Heidi Klum herself for her traditionally religious costume of the serpent coiled around the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

I like the Biblically accurate touch of her visible (and delectable) legs, because, as you religious hobbyists may know, snakes had legs in the Garden of Eden and lost them as punishment for their involvement in the scandal that antediluvian journalists would have mistakenly felt very clever for calling "Applegate."

As for our dear Diana, I think the best Wonder Woman of the season was Brazilian knockout Gisele Bündchen. She is oddly appropriate, too, due to how much she resembles the Amazons of myth, despite coming from half a world southwest of their homeland in the Russian steppes.

I think that now, when Hollywood is abuzz with the recent Britney-Spears'-hideous-vagina-gate, it's important to remember one of the moral lesson we learned from comic books: Wearing underwear is still quite sexy.

Then again, I also think that pubic hair is a tasteful and attractive garnish for a female reproductive organ, but that hardly has anything to do with Wonder Woman.

video of Rachel Bilson as Wonder Woman

2006-09-17T10:40:00.000-04:00

From The O.C.:

Click for video

miscegenation (cross-posted from Jenisfamous.com)

2006-07-28T14:08:00.000-04:00

My BFF Megan showed up at Monday's Williamsburg Spelling Bee bearing a three-foot-high gift bag containing a two-foot high stuffed Wonder Woman.

We then proceeded to sit at the corner of Lorimer and Conselyea and chat, with Wonder Woman on my lap, causing cars to slow down (well, indirectly, anyway) and their occupants to grin at us, sometimes staring and grinning continuously for such a length of time as to seem aggressive, as though these drivers and passengers sought a personal acknowledgement that, truly, their love of Wonder Woman is as great as mine, and I should grin back at them in Wonder-recognition.

I brought Wonder Woman home, and the next morning I woke up to see this on the couch:

baby Wonder Woman

2006-07-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

This is the cutest Wonder Woman ever. A photo by Michael Czeiszperger of his daughter.

He writes "This is my daughter as Wonder Woman, a costume she picked out herself from a catalog. She'd never seen Wonder Woman before, and when I showed her the TV character she didn't think the costume would fit her, but she's gotten lots of compliments on it, as it came complete with boot covers, magic lasso, headband, and bracelets."

Aww.... if only I could give birth to one of those, without taking off my Wonder Woman underroos.

Wonder stamps

2006-07-09T16:35:00.000-04:00

Dear Jen
These stamps are being released on July 20th, [my birthday]. Two of them are WonderWoman!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love Mom

latter-day Lynda Carter

2006-06-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

Poor Lynda. She's been fugged.

On a more positive note, it looks like she's barely aging at all. Wonder-powers, or wonder-Botox?

She's Back!

2006-06-09T19:02:00.000-04:00

Wonder Woman #1 hit the stores yesterday. The first big surprise? It looks like Stephen Colbert is designing comic book covers.

The first story is called, "Who Is Wonder Woman?" and features action, drama, surprise guest appearances and way more exposition than a comic book with a "#1" on the cover has a right to have.

As always, I wish Diana luck in whatever she's doing, however, I just want to say I have very little confidence in this creative team. Oh sure, the writing and the drawing are quite competent so far, but two things worry me - for one thing, they lost track of what issue number they were up to and had to start over. For another, judging by the title of the story, they don't even know who Wonder Woman is!

I fear for the future.

Wonder Woman karaoke

2006-06-08T16:19:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of Susie Felber, it's...

Wonder Woman Karaoke!
Note the line about "in satin tights, fighting for your riiiights!"

Since when does WW wear satin tights?

a dog dressed as Wonder Woman

2006-06-07T02:25:00.000-04:00

This was on cuteoverload.com, where I was looking for pictures of myself (none -- a travesty!), but instead found lots of baby animals.

Who Is Linda Danvers?

2006-05-04T21:21:00.000-04:00

While D.C. isn't printing Wonder Woman, I thought I would instead take this moment to talk about Supergirl (and, of course, to prompt women to send us pictures of themselves dressed as Supergirl). The problem with this is that different people mean different things at different times when they refer to "Supergirl." Most people don't even seem to be aware that there was more than one Supergirl, let alone the endless stream of Supergirls and the magnificent, limitless wellspring of insanity that is their origin stories. So I have prepared this handy reference guide to the Supergirls.

Supergirl (1944)
A.K.A. NotAppearingInAnyComicsGirl

D.C. copyrighted the name "Supergirl" in 1944, knowing that her appearance would be inevitable. I mean, it's such a brilliant, innovative idea - someone who's like Superman, but a girl!

You mean like Wonder Woman?

No, even more like a girl Superman!

They didn't take any chances with this. It took them almost 15 years to create a character worthy of wearing the Superman costume with a little skirt over it. Actually, after seeing what they came up with, maybe they should have worked on it a little longer...

Super-Girl (1958)
A.K.A. The Girl Of Steel
A.K.A. Who?

Super-Girl's first and only appearance was in Superman No. 123, in a story called, "The Girl of Steel." It was written by
Otto Binder, creator of Captain Marvel (right) and, more importantly, Mary Marvel (right), so there was nobody more qualified than Otto to create a female character who was just like an existing superhero.

The story goes that Superman was saving flood victims while reporters [Superman's Girfriend] Lois Lane and [Superman's Pal] Jimmy Olson watched from a helicopter. Lois, being the daring woman that she is, decided to get a first-hand look at the flood by jumping out of the helicopter. One could only imagine the kind of insight and perspective on the flood she could gain by jumping into it. I can see the headline now: "It's really wet. And cold." Naturally, her parachute didn't open, but, at this point, it's a wonder she even bothered to pack a parachute. She knew Superman was going to catch her. She used this opportunity to talk to Superman about when they would get married, but Superman told her that it would take some sort of Super-Girl to keep up with him, which is funny, because that's exactly what I usually say whenever my girlfriend brings up the subject of marriage.

One of the flood victims was an archaeologist who, in his gratitude, gave Superman a totem that, according to legend, could grant wishes. Superman gave the totem to Jimmy, who wished that there really was a Super-Girl, and almost as if it were some sort of lazy writer's convenient plot device, a Super-Girl appeared. Super-Girl tried to help Superman in his crime-fighting, but she just ended up getting in the way or messing things up, the way one would assume women always do when they try to do a man's job. She even gave away Superman's secret identity as Clark Kent to Lois, because she didn't know it was supposed to be a secret.

After a few pages of misadventures and self-pity, Super-Girl's career came to a tragic end. Superman was saving a train by holding the track over his head, when some criminals who just happened to be passing by in their plane and who just happened to have a large chunk of kryptonite (Superman's weakness) handy, dropped the kryptonite on him. Super-Girl flew in and grabbed the kryptonite, telling Superman that, since she wasn't from Krypton, she wasn't affected by its radiation. Once she was far enough away from Superman, she revealed to Jimmy that she was lying about the kryptonite not affecting her, and that she was actually dying. Jimmy could have revealed to her that once she had grabbed the kryptonite, she didn't have to keep holding onto it - she could have thrown it away or given it to a human to dispose of it - but he decided that she had suffered enough and merely wished her out of existence.

The best part of the story, though, came after Super-Girl's death. Clark Kent proposed to Lois Lane. Lois rejected his proposal, because she knew that if he were really Superman, he wouldn't propose to her, because he knew that she knew that he was Superman, and so he would know that she would accept the proposal. So Clark Kent couldn't possibly be Superman. Get it?

Supergirl (1959)
A.K.A. Linda Lee
A.K.A. Kara Zor-El
A.K.A. The Supergirl From Krypton
A.K.A. Superman's Secret Weapon

A year after the rousing success of Super-Girl, Otto Binder decided that the public was ready for a female counterpart to Superman who would live longer than 8 pages. This was the best known and best liked Supergirl (by everyone except me). Miss Linda Lee had all of the powers that Superman had, plus the power to love Lou Reed by the hour.

Kara Zor-El was from Krypton, the same planet that Superman originally came from. At the time Superman (then known on Krypton as Kal-El) was born, Krypton was on the brink of destruction. His father, a scientist named Jor-El (star of A Streetcar Named Desi-Ar), foresaw the planet's end and tried to warn the other Kryptonians, but they did not believe him. So, in his spare time, he built a small rocket capable of transporting the baby Kal-El off of the doomed planet to the planet Earth where he would be able to live.

Earth had lower gravity than Krypton, so Kal-El found that he was capable of incredible feats that the Kryptonians could not do on Krypton. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound, the way humans can jump really high in low gravity conditions. He could lift great weights, because things weigh less in lower gravity. He could run at super speeds, the way astronauts moved superfast on the moon. He had X-ray vision, because it's a damn comic book and maybe you shouldn't be thinking too much about this.

Some chunks of Krypton that had been irradiated by the explosion that destroyed Krypton landed on Earth. These radioactive rocks were called "kryptonite." Although humans felt no ill effects from exposure to kryptonite, chunks of his home planet were deadly to Superman, the way humans might die if they eat rocks and dirt, and, judging from all the times that Superman had been exposed to Kryptonite, it worked about as quickly.

Superman was taken aback when Kara's spaceship crashed to Earth. Of course, this wasn't the first time Superman had seen a flying girl (see left and right), but the sight was still shocking enough to make him shout out something embarrassingly stupid like, "Great guns!" I should explain that when surprised, sometimes people swear by what they hold sacred - "Jesus fucking Christ!" for instance. Wonder Woman would often swear by her heathen gods - "Great Hera!" or "Merciful Minerva!" Superman was not such a religious man. The only thing he truly believed in was his NRA membership.

It turns out that Superman wasn't the only survivor of Krypton. When Krypton exploded, a whole city remained intact. The residents of Argo City created an artificial atmosphere somehow and a food machine so that they would have been able to continue living there, except that the ground below the city had been irradiated by the explosion that destroyed Krypton. Jor-El's brother Zor-El, who was also a scientist, had the idea to cover the whole planetoid in lead to protect them from the radiation, because, as we all know, covering things in lead makes them perfectly safe.

On this precarious rock in space, Zor-El's daughter Kara was born. Everything was fine until a meteor shower punched holes through Argo's leaden surface, exposing the people to the kryptonite radiation. You might think that they would set to work repairing the lead shield, but Zor-El had a better idea. He would send his daughter away to live on another planet, leaving everyone else to die horribly. Zor-El was a bit of a dick. Looking through the Super Space Telescope, Kara found the planet Earth, where her cousin was already living. While Kara's mother made her a costume like the one Superman wore, Kara used the Space radio to pick up Earth broadcasts and learn their language. By the time she had to leave, she spoke English remarkably well, considering she had only been studying it for a month.

A year later, in Action Comics No. 262, Supergirl asked why the people on Argo didn't have super-powers, considering Argo had lower gravity than Earth. Superman explained that their super-powers came from the radiation given off by our solar system's yellow sun. The red sun that shone on Krypton didn't have the right radiation to give Kryptonians super-powers. Superman was blatantly changing his story here. He probably had no idea how his powers worked, but figured Kara would believe anything. However, at this point it was 1960, and in the sixties, all superhero origins had to involve radiation in some way. Thus, Supergirl was a pioneer among heroes whose origins can be explained as, "You can't prove that radiation can't do that."

Superman knew that Supergirl could be dangerous, since she had not had any practice using her super-powers. He decided that she would have to stay in an orphanage and live under a false identity until she had mastered her powers and gotten used to Earth customs. She wore a brunette wig to disguise herself and chose the name "Linda Lee." She also had to try to keep herself from becoming adopted, for fear that her foster parents would learn of her secret identity. Supergirl was a little confused and asked, "But Superman... weren't you adopted by an Earth couple who knew of your secret identity?" In response, Superman slapped her and told her never to talk back. This last part never made it to print, though.

Superman told her that the existence of a Supergirl must be kept a secret from the world, but in times of trouble, he might have to make use of her powers. Thus, Supergirl would act as Superman's "secret weapon." He later would tell her that his friends in The Justice League might call on her for blow jobs, which, as The Justice Society had assured Wonder Woman, was standard training for new superheroes. The perky and innocent Kara was fine with her life of anonymity, thinking that by helping people without being seen, she would be like a guardian angel. Yes, that will be important later.

Some people may have noticed that Supergirl chose the name Linda Lee, which has the same initials as Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane, Superman's childhood sweetheart Lana Lang, Superman's mermaid girlfriend from college Lori Lemaris, and the woman who Superman almost marries in the comic from which the above panel was taken Luma Lynai. Superman writers Otto Binder and Jerry Siegel would have you believe that it was all just a coincidence that all of the women in Superman's life have the same initials, but I know better. I think that back in Smallville, Clark used his heat vision to etch "C.K. + L.L. 4-Ever" into a tree trunk. Now, for as long as the tree stands, he can never love anyone whose initials aren't "L.L." or else he would be a liar and no better than the villains who he fights. It sort of makes you wonder about the true nature of his relationship with Lex Luthor. This issue is more thoroughly explored in my series of erotic fan fictions, "Man of Steel, Ass of Kleenex" (with apologies to Larry Niven).

Come to think of it, I apologize to everyone for that last joke.

Lesla-Lar of Kandor (1961)
A.K.A. Supergirl's First Awkward Phase
A.K.A. What the fuck?
A.K.A. No, seriously, what the fuck?

Here is a typical day at the Danvers household:

Here is the same scene on a much less typical day:

I love how proud Lesla is of her own trickery. Like any great subterfuge, it involves layer upon layer of deception:

LAYER 1 - Wearing a brunette wig
As a natural blonde, Lesla had to wear a wig to take Linda's place. It had to be in Linda's hairstyle, too, so as not to arouse suspicion.
LAYER 2 - Eating breakfast
Lesla knew from her intensive study of Earth culture that this is what "humans" customarily do in the morning. She would have to play along with this "breakfast" for her plans to work.
LAYER 3 - Not mentioning to the Danverses that she's really Lesla-Lar of Kandor
Considering that Linda's parents had never heard of Lesla-Lar, nor of Kandor, and that they did not consider it within the realm of possibility that an alien might kidnap their daughter and take her place, you'd think this would be fairly easy. However, we know from Lesla's internal monologue that she's the sort of person who has to constantly remind herself of who she is. She would have to be careful about this.

I'm getting ahead of myself. In order to understand Lesla-Lar, you first have to understand Brainiac, and in order to understand Brainiac, you have to have several psychological disorders.

Brainiac's ambition was to rule the world. I don't see why that automatically makes him evil. Hey, Superman, why don't you listen to some of his ideas before you punch him? He might be a really good world leader! Unfortunately, Superman has no time to discuss policy when there are villains to punch, so, like so many would-be world conquerors, we never really find out what Brainiac would do as ruler of the world.

What sets Brainiac apart among supervillains, though, is his admirable perseverance in the face of adversity. For most people, having their entire planet wiped out by some space disease would really put a damper on their world domination plans. Some would consider this problem insurmountable, but not Brainiac. For Brainiac, this was just an opportunity for his diabolical genius to shine through. His two goals became to repopulate his planet and then to conquer it. This would require travelling to other planets, shrinking their cities small enough to fit in bottles, carrying the bottles back to his home world, and restoring them to full size. You may say this plan is insanely convoluted, or vastly impractical, or just really stupid, but I know that deep down you're just jealous that you didn't think of it yourself.

Brainiac's tragic flaw was lack of research. If he had decided to steal Gotham from Earth, he would have gotten away with it. Really, what would Batman have done about it? Instead, he tried to steal Metropolis and Superman escaped from the bottle, restored all of Earth's cities, and even recovered Kandor, a city that Brainiac had taken from Krypton before it was destroyed. Superman kept Kandor in his Fortress of Solitude, right next to his ant farm, and swore he would some day find a way to return them to normal size, which would produce a city of unstoppable, indestructible superhumans, any one of whom could destroy the entire planet in seconds.

Lesla-Lar was one of the people living in the bottled city of Kandor. She watched Supergirl's exploits from her Earth Viewer (which, I guess, allows you to view Earth - it wasn't really explained how it worked without anything transmitting signals into the bottle) in her science laboratory and grew very jealous. After all, Lesla-Lar was a Kryptonian, so she would have the same powers as Supergirl outside of the bottle, plus she was a scientific genius. She even looked like Supergirl! So when Superman was finally going to reveal his cousin's existence to the world, Lesla shot Supergirl with a Kryptonite Ray (a ray made of kryptonite, as portrayed by a green Jamie Foxx) that took away her powers. Thus, Kara was Supergirl no more. Superman had to cancel the announcement, but he did decide that, since she wasn't a superhero any more, she would be allowed to have parents. Wasn't that nice of him? So it was that Linda Lee was adopted by a childless couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Danvers.

Then, Lesla started Phase II of her plan. Using her Teleport Ray (capable of transporting things from one place to another, and shrinking or enlarging them - needless to say, it could revolutionize the world of practical jokes!), she transported Linda into the bottle city, where she used the Brain-Wash Helmet (I think you can figure that one out on your own) to convince Linda that she was Lesla, while Lesla took Linda's place on Earth. Disguised as Supergirl, she told Superman that she had gotten her powers back, and Superman once again prepared to unveil Supergirl to the world. Her plan was to give criminal mastermind and fellow scientific genius Lex Luthor instructions to build his own Kryptonite Ray with which he could kill Superman. Then, with Superman out of the way, she would kill Luthor so that the crime couldn't be traced back to her and then she would be the only superperson on Earth.

You may see this as a fairly obviously flawed plan. You may wonder why she didn't just teleport and brain-wash Superman to get rid of him. She probably would have gotten away with killing him with her own Kryptonite Ray. It's not like the Earth authorities are likely to trace the murder back to a bottled city in a fortress hidden somewhere near the North Pole. You may question how wise it is, having recently acquired invulnerability, to entrust someone you know to be devious and disloyal with a weapon capable of killing you. Then again, maybe once you've invented your own Teleport Ray, then you can criticize her plan. She's a genius and her thinking is light years ahead of you. Just deal with it.

Fortunately, Superman's dog Krypto noticed something was amiss. He teleported Linda back to Earth and Lesla back to Kandor using the Teleport Ray that Superman left lying around the Fortress. This is exactly why you should always leave potentially deadly devices in places where your dog can easily reach them - for situations like this. Unfortunately, Linda was still under the effects of the Kryptonite Ray and didn't have any powers. With a heavy heart, she decided to dispose of her costume. While she was doing that, a magical imp named Mr. Mxyzptlk saw this girl with a "Superman" costume and thought it was pretty funny. That gave him the idea to magically grant her super-powers, because it would drive Superman crazy if there was a girl who was as tough as he was. Meanwhile, the police on Kandor arrested Lesla and smashed up her laboratory, so even after Mxyzptlk's magic wore off, Linda kept her super-powers.

So, through a needlessly circuitous series of events, it was finally time to introduce Supergirl to the world.

Supergirl Again (1961)
A.K.A. Linda Lee Danvers

Before the world could find out about Supergirl, she would have to reveal her secret identity to her new parents. Fortunately, she had Superman to explain everything for her. When the revealing-her-secret-identity-to-her-parents scene was replayed in the 90's, it didn't go so smoothly. When Linda said she had something to tell them, at first, they thought she was pregnant. When she assured them that she most certainly wasn't pregnant, they thought she was coming out of the closet. Frustrated, she cried out, Literary historians may recognize this as the greatest line of dialogue in American literature.

With that out of the way, Superman went on television to announce Supergirl and to explain her origin and her powers. Then, they had a parade.

Though they had just learned of her existence, they were all ready to accept that she was "The World's Greatest Heroine." Upon hearing of this, Wonder Woman issued a press release saying, "Up Yours, Metropolis!"

It was in this period that Supergirl got a pet horse named Comet. It was also in this period that Supergirl started dating Comet the Superhorse. There are so many things wrong with that. Actually, now that I think about it, there's only one thing wrong with it, but it's still pretty bad. I sort of see the logic in her having a pet horse - after all, girls love horses. However, I think Jerry Siegel might have missed the fact that they don't want to make out with horses. To be fair, I am aware that Comet was actually a centaur who had been turned into a horse by an evil witch. On the other hand, it's not like centaurs are exactly the same species either. Then again, considering that Kal and Kara were the last remaining kryptonians, technically nobody she ever dated was the same species as her. That's pretty fucked up, too.

Some people find it peculiar how often Supergirl's costume changed during this era, but, personally, I don't see why they make such a big deal every time a superhero changes his clothes. Superman was the worst example of this. His costume was made from indestructible Kryptonian fabric, taken from the blankets he was wrapped in when he came to Earth. It was thoughtful of Kal-El's parents to pack their baby's spacecraft with enough blankets to clothe a grown man with enough left over for a full-length cape, but that meant that he only had one costume that he always wore under his clothes and he could never change it.

In the Superman/Spider-Man crossover, when he faced Dr. Doom, he suddenly fell, drained of power. Unbeknownst to him, Doom had sprayed him days earlier with Doom's specially designed time-release Kryptonite. There are two notable things about this: First is that, by not using just regular Kryptonite, Victor Von Doom was setting himself up for failure. He should know that if you procrastinate killing Superman, Spider-Man or Wonder Woman or the Fantastic Four are just going to come to save him. More importantly, though, it means that Superman never washed his costume.

The real issue behind the changing costumes is that of secret identities, which is especially important among characters who are identified solely by their costumes. People give Superman a lot of shit for expecting nobody to recognize him when he wears glasses. (The glasses, by the way, were made of special Kryptonian glass taken from the spacecraft Superman came to Earth in, because Jor-El knew how important it was that an unpiloted spaceship have a hypnotic windshield.) I don't think it's that strange, especially considering I have a friend who looks just like Ben Affleck, and I never even thought to ask if he secretly was Ben Affleck, let alone set up a complex scheme to prove that they were the same person, even though they have never been photgraphed together. However, I do find it a bit far-fetched that Lois Lane never noticed that Clark Kent had the same overwhelming body odor as Superman.

Power Girl (1976)

A.K.A. Kara Zor-L
A.K.A. The Supergirl of Earth-2
A.K.A. I'm sorry. Were you saying something? I was a bit distracted...
A.K.A. Lady Jugs-A-Plenty

On Earth-2, the alternate reality where the Golden Age stories took place, 30 years had passed since Superman's debut. They had their own older version of Superman and he had a cousin named Kara who nobody knew about, least of all the readers. Superman had kept her existence secret through adulthood. She finally revealed herself to join the Super Squad alongside Robin and The Star-Spangled Kid.

That may be the stupidest name for a group of superheroes I have ever heard, but I think it suits them. Power Girl had all of the powers of her Earth-1 counterpart (Supergirl), but with one power that Supergirl had not yet developed: Giant superhero breasts. You see, comic book artists have a tendency to draw women as if they were smuggling basketballs under their shirts. I never found it that appealing. I sort of have a thing for women who can stand up straight. That's just me. So the message for everyone who liked that they had found a properly proportioned heroine in Supergirl was, "Just wait."

I should also explain the nomenclature. There was some controversy over calling superheroines "girls" when they were clearly adult women. Some said it was demeaning and it belittled the roles of women. It's what led the Invisible Girl of the Fantastic Four to change her name to the Invisible Woman. The same point does not exactly apply to Supergirl. The male Kryptonian was Superman, but the teenage male Kryptonian was Superboy, so the teenage female Kryptonian would be Supergirl. However, the only explanation for Power Girl's name is, "Fuck you, Gloria Steinem!"

Ms. Marvel (1977)
A.K.A. Binary
A.K.A. Rogue, sort of

In 1967, Stan "The Man Who Killed Bucky" Lee introduced Captain Marvel, whose name is very similar (in that it's the same name) to another comic book superhero whose name you might recognize from several paragraphs ago. Otto Binder's Captain Marvel Adventures had been out of print for a decade and a half, and Marvel Comics seized custody of the name that seemed their birthright.

Captain Marvel was Mar-Vell, captain of an alien army who defected to start his career as a superhero on Earth. Say what you will about Marvel, they have characters with the title "Captain" in their names who actually are captains, like Captain America and Captain Marvel, as opposed to, say Otto Binder's Captain Marvel or Flash villain Captain Cold (left), who wasn't captain of jack shit. He only made sergeant before Jack had him discharged.

When you're writing for a character who has the same name as an older prominent character, people are going to accuse you of being derivative. That is why it takes huge balls to have such a character work with a United States Air Force pilot (a flying woman, you could say) with a name like Carol Danvers. Carol was a frequent partner of Mar-Vell and she eventually got her own comic book, in which she became a feminist superhero.

You mean like Wonder Woman?

You know what, italics? I've had just about enough of your attitude!

Along with her oddly familiar name, she acquired some oddly familiar super-powers, including flight, super strength, and invulnerability. Her series was short-lived, and then, embittered but with her spirit still unbroken, she joined a group of superheroes called the Avengers. Then things got a little weird.

In The Avenger's 1981 annual comic, Chris Claremont, writer of Ms. Marvel and The X-Men introduced a character called Rogue. Rogue was the daughter of the Ms. Marvel villain Mystique and the newest member of the terrorist organization called The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She had white streaks in her hair that were reminiscent of a black cat that had leaned against a flagpole with white wet paint on it in a Pepe LePew cartoon and the power to absorb someone's thoughts, memories, and certain genetic attributes (including super-powers) by touch, like some sort of... I don't know... parasite or something. In her first appearance, she drained Carol dry, leaving her mind blank and permanently absorbing her thoughts, memories, personality, and super-powers. This comic had some great dialogue, like the Scarlet Witch's brilliant comeback, which I use whenever I'm in an argument, no matter what it's about:

"DESTINY: We must act quickly, decisively, before the tide of battle turns irrevocably against us.
PYRO: Give me a few more seconds to collect me wits, Destiny, an' I'll fry those sanctimonious yobbos.
THE SCARLET WITCH: You want time, Pyro? How about a few more years?
IN PRISON!!"

Rogue had trouble coping with having two minds in her head, and that's what led her to seek Professor Charles Xavier's help and to enroll at his school for young mutants. Sometimes, Carol would become the dominant personality and hilarity would ensue. Eventually, she got over it, but she retained those suspiciously Supergirl-like powers.

So, in a roundabout way, The X-Men's Rogue was part of the rich tradition of Supergirls and their insane origin stories, kind of. Anyway, she's close enough to justify posting a picture of Anna Paquin playing Rogue in the X-Men movie in order to make the point that dressing up as classic superheroines is not just for porn stars and pop singers. Academy Award winning actresses do it, too.

Captain Headband (1984)
A.K.A. The Headband Commando

It had been 25 years since Supergirl had arrived, and as an anniversary gift, D.C. gave her this new costume. They probably should have kept the receipt. They also gave her a movie ("... an unhappy, unfunny, unexciting movie." - Roger Ebert) and a new comic book series. For the series, they forgot about the last 25 years of her life and made her into a teenager again. That's one of the great things about being a comic book character - if the writer forgets how old you're supposed to be, you get to relive your childhood. It's entirely possible to remain the same age and watch all of your friends grow old. Just ask Bobby Drake. She also no longer wore a wig to change into her secret identity, because she got a magical comb that changed her hair colour. This was a boon to everyone who was worried that Supergirl comics weren't insane enough.

I haven't actually read much of this series, largely because I consider every panel featuring that awful costume that I don't have to look at a small victory. Seriously, just look at her! She looks hideous! The entire decade of the 80's ought to be ashamed of itself.

This was the second Supergirl to die in action. She was killed in the sense-shatteringly stupid Crisis on Infinite Earths. Her death was as brave and heroic as it was unnecessary. I know I'm not a superhero. The closest I come to fighting crime is when I'm too broke to buy pot and just get really drunk instead. Still, even without any "super-intelligence," I could figure out that if you're part of a strike force consisting of all of the strongest people from five different realities, you don't fly off alone to fight a guy who is powerful enough to destroy the entire universe without telling any of the other impossibly powerful heroes who you came with. It's not only suicidal, it's downright rude.

I'd imagine some of the comics readers in the audience might argue, "Well, maybe Kara's death could have been avoided, but it was necessary because it inspired Dr. Light to save the universe." You know, I wasn't going to bring Dr. Light into this, but since you mentioned her, let me just say - fuck that icy cunt. Fuck her up the ass with a rusty metal dildo. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so insensitive that I would blame this horrible tragedy on Dr. Light. Obviously it was the Monitor's fault - the whole situation could have been avoided if he had just thought to hire a minion who wasn't a total fucking sociopath. Maybe he could have found someone who wouldn't just stand there and watch Supergirl get killed. It wouldn't have to be someone particularly heroic - I'm sure that there are plenty of normal people who would decide that they want to help stop someone from destroying the universe, even without having to watch someone get murdered to motivate them.

Of course, Supergirl's death wasn't even the worst part of that stupid fucking comic, but I think I've already written enough about that. The bottom line is that not only did she get killed, but after the story was over, she never even existed. Man, she got her ass beaten.

Post-Crisis Supergirl, Take 1 (1988)
A.K.A. John Byrne's Supergirl
A.K.A. Lana Lang
A.K.A. The Matrix
A.K.A. Mae Kent
A.K.A. Morph Goo Supergirl

It was John Byrne who was responsible for Supergirl's death. He was restarting the Superman series and wanted Superman to be the last survivor of Krypton again, meaning that Supergirl would have to go. It was only suiting, then, that Byrne would have to come up with a replacement for her.

She was Lana Lang, Superman's girlfriend from his childhood, from an alternate reality. This reality had no superheroes before Lana, except for Superboy, who was missing, presumed dead. A problem arose when three space criminals escaped from the Phantom Zone. You see, instead of a normal prison, the Kryptonians would exile their criminals to another dimension called the Phantom Zone. This dimension was not destroyed when Krypton was. Everyone who saw Superman II knows about this. So much for Superman being the last survivor of Krypton. The three Kryptonians were able to take over the world, and the humans were helpless until Lex Luthor found a way to give Lana Lang super-powers. She wore a costume based off of Superboy's and called herself Supergirl, but she still was not able to defeat the space criminals, so she sought the aid of John Byrne's Superman in his home reality.

Superman traveled to Lana's world, where he was able to defeat the former Phantom Zone convicts, but not before they had killed everything in that reality except for Lana, who they had beaten so badly she became some sort of pinkish goo (which is not as badly as Captain Headband got beaten, but she'd certainly feel that in the morning). As Lex Luthor lay dying, he explained to Superman that actually Lana Lang had died years ago, and Supergirl was just that goo that he had created and imprinted with Lana's genetic matrix to make a synthetic person. With the whole world dead, Superman took the remains of the synthetic person back to his world's Smallville, where his adoptive parents the Kents could look after her while she recuperated. They called her "Mae," short for "Matrix" (isn't that cute?), and she eventually became post-Crisis D.C.'s first Supergirl.

Now, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against malleable living protoplasm (morph goo, as I call it). After all, the best X-Man ever was made out of morph goo. I'm just saying it's a really fucked up thing for Supergirl to be made of. Also, it sort of bothers me that Lex Luthor created her. It reminds me too much of Pandora, or - for those of you who aren't into Greek mythology - Smurfette. By the way, if anyone has any idea what a "mother pus bucket" is, feel free to let me know.

Not being from Krypton, Mae's powers didn't work exactly like Superman's. Like most morph goo-based beings, she had the ability to change shape, with the related ability to turn invisible. She could also simulate some of Superman's more famous powers using psychokinesis. For instance, instead of being invulnerable, she had a psychokinetic force field. Instead of flying, she could psychokinetically lift herself into the air. Instead of superstrength, she could use her psychokinesis to lift great weights or hit someone with great force. While we're on the subject, I'd just like to say that Superboy's very similar power that he called "Tactile Telekinesis" really pissed me off. Psychokinesis means moving objects using one's mind, whereas telekinesis means moving objects from a distance. They're usually used interchangeably to describe the phenomenon of moving distant objects with one's mind. However, if (as the term "tactile" suggests) you have to be touching something in order to move it, it's not fucking telekinesis! Asshole.

She didn't have the same name as Kara, nor the same origin. She didn't have the same super-powers. She didn't even look that much like Supergirl. Still, the logo says "Supergirl," and who am I to argue with the logo?

Post-Crisis Supergirl, Take 2 (1996)
A.K.A. Peter David's Supergirl
A.K.A. Linda-Mae
A.K.A. Earth Angel
A.K.A. Buzz's Girlfriend

Reading Peter David's Supergirl, I got the impression that Mr. David had been a big fan of Supergirl's old Action Comics adventures and he had a lot of fun writing for this character. It could be said then, that the series was a matter of wish-fulfillment. If this is the case, and Matrix is in a sense fulfilling a dream for Peter David, then it is only fitting that he would grant Mae's fondest wish - to be a real girl.

In Supergirl #1, we met a curiously familiar woman named Linda Danvers. She was an artist and a bit of a hellion. She had no direction or meaning in her life - by all accounts, she was someone in need of saving, in more ways than one. Perhaps the most significant way in which she needed "help" was because she had been kidnapped by a demonist cult who were planning to ritualistically sacrifice her. Matrix flew to the rescue, and was able to drive Linda's attacker away with her psychokinesis, but Linda was already bleeding to death. Then, when Mae went to carry Linda off, something curious happened. In a scene lifted from a Reese's commercial ("You're getting morph goo in my wounds!" "You're getting blood in my goo!"), they merged. It was pretty gross. Thus, rather than just staying with an existing character who was pretty far removed from the character who he was trying to write or creating a new character who was more like the old Supergirl, Peter David did both, or is it neither? Anyway, it worked.

You may think that when two people are suddenly sharing one body and one mind that you would have many crippling personality conflicts. Instead, Linda and Matrix combined to make a whole that was stronger than either of them alone, because each of them was missing something essential that the other provided. Mae gave Linda morality and a purpose in life. Linda gave Mae her humanity, her identity, and a cast of supporting characters, including her best friend Mattie, her parents Fred and Sylvia Danvers (remember them?), an aspiring reporter named Wendell "Mary Sue" "Cutter" Sharp (sometimes "Sharpe"), and her diabolist ex-boyfriend Buzz. Buzz would later turn out to be a demon in human form (or a human in demon form, depending on your perspective) and one of the all-time greatest villains. Come to think of it, he was one of the all-time greatest anything. You cannot possibly understand how much I love Buzz. If I ever have children, they will be named "Buzz," "Buzz, Jr.," and "The Other Buzz." This is one of the many, many reasons why the women I date are very conscientious about contraception.

Cutter's ex-wife Andy also showed up and tried to seduce Supergirl. This is a very delicate topic of discussion, not because Andy was a lesbian (as if I've never discussed sexuality in this blog before), but because I don't like her very much, and when you publicly don't like someone who is a known minority, people are quick to say that it reveals your own prejudices. Let me assure you that I would love to see Supergirl involved in some hot girl-on-girl... wait, scratch that... I mean, I respect and celebrate all forms of sexuality between any consenting adults, provided that nobody involved is or has ever been a horse. I just don't really like Andy.

By the way, do you remember when Kara mentioned in passing that she was sort of like a guardian angel? Peter David did. That's why Linda-Mae was transubstantiated into an actual angel (you know, the mythological creature - that kind of angel). She got wings of flame and spooooky divine powers.

She was able to change shape between her Supergirl form and her Linda form as part of her angel powers (which is sort of fucked up - more fucked up than the wig, but not as fucked up as the magical comb - sort of a medium level on the Fucked Up Ways to Change Between Blonde and Brunette scale), but she had lost her shape-shifting and invisibility powers because, as she would find out later, she was no longer made of goo. When she moved into Linda's body, she lost the gooey aspect of herself, and the goo washed off in the shower. It reformed into Supergirl shape in the sewer, then came back to the surface to fight Linda, because, hey, they're superheroes - it's what they do. The Morph Goo Supergirl had to be incapacitated, but the story eventually had a happy ending, because she found another angel to bond with.

So I guess this series was a little weird, but, then again, Supergirl was always weird. People have an unfortunate tendency to think of the series as not really being Supergirl because it wasn't Kara, but the fact is that the series was not so much a departure from the 60's Action Comics stories as a return to them. While the series was original (which is important, because too many series just do the same thing over and over), there were countless allusions to the old Supergirl comics, as well as several characters and plot devices taken directly from them. Although Kara was dead and never existed and couldn't be brought back, the series was Peter David's way of bringing the stories back into the D.C. Universe after the Crisis, even if he couldn't bring back the character. I mean, for God's sake, he even brought back that fucking horse!

Really, Linda, I don't care how he's hung - you could do better! When it comes to making out with ungulates, I vote, "Nay!"

Supergirl: The Cartoon (1998)
A.K.A. Kara In-Ze
A.K.A. Kara Kent

When such luminaries as Paul Dini and Bruce Timm (who are American heroes in their own right, of the same caliber as Nathan Hale or Scott Lobdell) worked on a Superman cartoon, they brought back a lot of characters and stories from the 60's. They wanted to include Kara (the "original" Supergirl), but D.C. was afraid that if Kara was brought back in one medium, goblins would come at night and steal their shoes. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what D.C. was afraid of, but they were adamant that Supergirl not come back, even in stories that had no bearing on the comics - including cartoons and Star Trek fan fictions (which I still believe is the only reason why nobody would publish my epic Kara/Uhura adventures). A compromise was reached, whereby Supergirl would appear in the cartoon, but she wouldn't be from Krypton. She would be from Argos, a sister planet inhabited by the same race of people. For some reason, this made a difference to them.

Anyway, she lived in Smallville with Mr. and Mrs. Kent. In her secret identity, she was Clark's cousin Kara (though D.C. insisted she only pretend to be his cousin - those goblins weren't going to get their shoes) and she wore glasses. As Supergirl, she wore a variation on the Superman costume that reflected the horrible clothing shortage of the late 90's, when families in Smallville, Kansas could barely afford enough fabric to cover their tits and ass. Her personality was neither that of the innocent and cheerful Kara, nor the introspective and self-deprecating Linda. She was an impetuous firecracker, loaded with spunk (which is sort of like goo, but not exactly the same). This ain't your daddy's Supergirl any more! Whoomp! There it is! Where's the beef?

Supergirl 1,000,000 (1998)
A.K.A. Ari-El

In November, 1998, D.C. published the one millionth issues of their comics, in which writers imagined what their series would be like over 999,000 months in the future. There may have been some reason why they did this, but if there was, it was explained in the miniseries D.C. One Million by Grant Morrison, and, as much as I admire D.C.'s heroic and inspirational hiring practices, I think I would be happier not reading it.

Supergirl #1,000,000 was sort of like a Warner Brothers cartoon. It was about aliens being terrorized by a rambunctious and indestructible 6 year-old Kryptonian. It was both funny and unsettling.

Her origin wasn't explained until the last issue of Supergirl before it was cancelled, as part of the storyline Many Happy Returns. I won't repeat it here, because those of you who have read Many Happy Returns already know the story, and everybody else doesn't deserve to.

Supergirl (2001)
A.K.A. Linda Danvers
A.K.A. Karaouac

This is my personal favourite Supergirl, and would be the most popular incarnation of the character, except for the fact that everyone else in the world is a complete fucking moron.

After the fiftieth issue of Peter David's Supergirl, the divine aspect of Supergirl was separated from her terrestrial self (Linda) and abducted by a malevolent spirit. It was up to a depowered Linda (not completely powerless, but without all of her strength or any of her angel powers) and Buzz to save her. So, they set off on a road trip to find and rescue the angel Supergirl. If you're into symbolism, Linda and Buzz's quest to find the divine Supergirl could be seen as a metaphor for the series' goal to recapture the magic of the old Supergirl comics, something that some readers would claim that the series so far had failed to do. Of course, those readers are idiots and I hate them.

Not having the ability to shape-shift at all any more, she had to wear a blonde wig to change into Supergirl (irony!). She adopted the cartoon Supergirl's "Super Tramp" look. Some people refused to accept her as the "real" Supergirl, and Linda, who had a seriously lacking sense of self-worth, never seemed to realize that it was Linda who made Supergirl special, not the other way around.

The series culminated in a beautiful story called Many Happy Returns. The set up was that Kara Zor-El was detoured on her way to Earth-1 and landed on post-Crisis Earth, where there already was a Supergirl. As I recently found out, some people criticize the story for being too esoteric because it draws from so many diverse sources in comics. I hope these people never try to read T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." Their tiny little minds might snap.

Fallen Angel (2003)
A.K.A. Not Supergirl
A.K.A. Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. She's not Supergirl.
A.K.A. American McGee's Supergirl

In 2003, Supergirl was cancelled. I'm not sure who made that decision, but I can only assume it was someone who enjoyed the wailing sound of broken-hearted children crying. Peter David, who - fortunately for us - doesn't know the meaning of the word "cancelled," started working on the fantastic series Fallen Angel, which, as the name implies, was about a fallen angel doing odd superheroics in the dreary town of Bete Noir. She went by the name "Lee" (wink, wink) and had very similar powers to Supergirl, even though she wasn't really Linda Danvers wearing a wig (or possibly dyed hair) with an assumed identity. Seriously. She's a completely new character. Really.

Then, in 2005, D.C. cancelled Fallen Angel, and the cruel soulless beast who works in comics publishing laughed at the thought of crushing the already broken-hearted children's dreams. I think it was the same guy responsible for cancelling Alpha Flight. At that point, the fabulous Mr. David seriously considered looking up the definition of the word "cancelled," but he was busy writing the new series Fallen Angel to be published by IDW. Now that it's being printed by another company, they legally cannot make reference to Supergirl. Still, just for fun, I'd like you to take a moment to compare the cover of Supergirl #16 published by D.C. to the cover of Fallen Angel #3 published by IDW:

There are only two words I can think of to describe these covers: coincidental and unintentional.

Cir-El (2003)

Superman and Lois Lane's daughter from the future called herself "Supergirl." Hey, "Supergirl," Rachel Summers called. She wants her origin back.

Supergirl (2004)
A.K.A. Kara Zor-El. Really.
A.K.A. The Supergirl from Krypton. We mean it this time.
A.K.A. The Guy Who Wrote Teen Wolf's Supergirl
A.K.A. The Guy Who Wrote Teen Wolf Too's Supergirl

Many Happy Returns had opened the door for Kara to be brought into the post-Crisis world, and with so much pressure from writers wanting to work with the "original" Supergirl, D.C. could only hold out for so long. They finally let Kara back into their comics. And who would have the honour and responsibility of creating a cousin for Superman who was born in the post-Crisis reality? None other than big-shot Hollywood screenwriter Jeph Loeb.

The story goes that Zor-El was the only one who believed Jor-El when he warned about Krypton's destruction. While Jor-El was building the prototype rocket to save his baby son Kal, Zor-El was building a larger rocket for his teenage daughter Kara. When Krypton was destroyed, Kara was put into suspended animation (for those of you who were doing something worthwhile while the ones who already know what suspended animation is were memorizing Star Wars, she was frozen in time) and sent off in her rocket, which was programmed to follow Kal-El's rocket (though, apparently, not too closely, considering it didn't land until 30 years later).

This time, when Kara landed, she was naked and didn't speak English. It makes sense that she wouldn't know English, because this time she didn't know she would be landing in America. Also, it makes sense that she wouldn't have landed wearing a Supergirl costume, considering that Mrs. Kent hadn't even made Superman's costume at the time she left, but why was she naked? I mean, didn't they wear clothes on Krypton? Oh, and speaking of not wearing clothes, after she had been on Earth for a while Mrs. Kent made Kara her own costume.

Apparently, Mrs. Kent is some sort of dirty old lady. I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. Maybe I have reached the age when I just can't understand kids these days and the crazy clothes they wear. Maybe I'm just not a stomach man. Maybe I'm saddened by how horribly malnourished she looks, and just wish I could reach into the comic and give her a sandwich. I'll stop thinking about it now.

Anyway, Superman was thrilled that he was no longer alone, that he had a newfound family. Batman didn't trust her and didn't believe her story, and who could blame him? She couldn't even remember her mother's name! (This was Jeph Loeb's little joke - you see, Kara's mother's name had never been mentioned.) Eventually, she regained her memories and remembered that her mother's name was Alura. So, 45 years after she first appeared in a comic, someone finally gave Kara's mother a name.

(OR SO I THOUGHT! A week after I posted this, intrepid reader Daniel told me that, in fact, in Action Comics No. 309, Supergirl's mother's name was revealed to be "Allura." At first, I wasn't sure I could trust him. I had read his profile, and according to the Chinese Zodiac he's a horse! Of course, I haven't read every comic that Supergirl appears in and this happened to be one that I had missed. So I tracked down the issue and read it for myself.

Sure enough, Daniel may be a horse, but he's a better nerd than I am. The issue not only featured Supergirl's parents, it also featured President John F. Kennedy, which is sort of weird considering it was printed in early 1964. At first I thought that perhaps it was a zombie President, or that Superman writers had believed Kennedy's assassination to be an elaborate hoax. The actual explanation - that the comic was written shortly before the assassination and didn't make it to newstands until shortly after - seems a bit less poetic. Fucking reality ruins everything.

I apologize to everyone for any confusion this may have caused. To be fair, though, I had read Askani'son and was under the impression that Jeph Loeb was very clever.)

The next morning, all of Jeph Loeb's shoes were gone, stolen by goblins.

Superwoman, Super-Sister, Bizarro Superwoman, Mighty Maid, Bizarro Supergirl, Marvel Maid, The Supergirl Emergency Squad, Bizarro Supergirl (yes, there were two of them), Superwoman, Superwoman, The Supergirl Clone Army, et. al. (1943-??)

They aren't Supergirl and you can't make me write about them. So there.

Sticker!

2006-04-26T12:27:00.000-04:00

Wonder Woman's cancellation has been hard on all of us, though it has given me the opportunity to get in touch with some of the more important things in life - like Supergirl. I've been writing a Supergirl entry for the past couple of months, and I will post it when it's done, but I warn you - it's a bit long.

In the meantime, Mint - friend to this blog and friend to all creatures great and small - gave me a sticker that she says she found at work. I'm not sure where she works or why they would have this sticker, but I thought it was just too cute not to share it with you. In fact, it's so cute that I stuck it on my notebook, amidst some of the doodles I did at work:

Homophilia Addendum

2006-04-06T11:07:00.000-04:00

Batman's relationship with Catwoman was competitive and combative, whereas his relationship with Robin was cooperative and supportive. Which relationship you interpret as romantic may depend upon your idea of the nature of a romantic relationship or what attitudes towards sexuality you ascribe to Batman.

However, whichever way you read it, Batman's relationship with Robin could be described as "Platonic."

Think about it.

Marvel Comics Presents Wonder Woman

2006-04-04T10:28:00.000-04:00

Some people may criticize me for writing about Marvel comics in a blog dedicated to a D.C. character. They say that it may be difficult for me to keep abreast of the latest in Wonder Woman when I don't even read D.C. on a regular basis. Well, you can all eat me. Here's why:

One of the comics I read religiously is Exiles. The premise, basically, was six alternate reality versions of dead X-Men travel to different realities to complete various missions. It's sort of like the television show Quantum Leap, only infinitely better, because it's got the best X-Man ever, Morph.

It started out as a spin-off of Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira's The Astonishing X-Men, which, by the way, was the best four issues of X-Men ever. A full half of their current team is taken from that series, as you can see in the handy diagram below:

click to enlarge
Their roster has changed over the years. In fact, they are in the middle of a storyline in which their lineup is being dramatically changed (but, of course, keeping the three characters from the best X-Men story arc ever). Their new team had just finished forming in their latest issue:

You notice the woman in purple standing to the far right? That's the Exiles' newest member, Power Princess. She's an alternate reality version of Wonder Woman.

She originally appeared in Mark Gruenwald's masterwork, Squadron Supreme, which was his version of a Justice League story that he did for Marvel. The Squadron's members had pretty much the same powers and personalities as the League, but different names and costumes (for legal reasons more than anything else). I know what you purists are thinking. "So, she's not really Wonder Woman." I guess you have a point there. I suppose that if you're going to be such a literalist, then you can stick to just reading the real Wonder Woman comics that are printed by D.C.

That reminds me... what is going on in this month's Wonder Woman?

Oh, that's right. It's STILL CANCELED.

Lindsay Lohan as Wonder Woman

2006-03-29T12:01:00.000-05:00

A weak rumor weakly insinuates that Lindsay Lohan might be a candidate to play Wonder Woman in the upcoming Joss Whedon film. Egotastic correctly opines that "Wonder Woman shouldn't look like you could snap her in half like a twig."

Homophilia

2006-03-15T12:58:00.000-05:00

I am nothing if not sensitive to the feelings of my readers. I understand that I hurt some people's feelings with my Doctoral Fucking Thesis on Wonder Girl, so I think some apologies are in order. First of all, I apologize to all of the Grant Morrison fans reading this. I'm sorry that you idolize a terrible, terrible writer.

For all of the over-sensitive Grant Morrison fans who can't tell when someone is joking, let me assure you that this blog is full of lies deliberately intended to upset you. In actuality, nobody really has a different opinion than yours. In fact, I didn't even write the last paragraph. It was written by my evil twin. He's also the one responsible for women sometimes taking off their clothes, and for some men and women enjoying watching those women. In fact, it's his fault that women have breasts. He only does these things because he's too sane and too well-adjusted. He was hatched from an egg and is secretly Magneto in disguise. Also, his brain is a star.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to respond to serious criticism of something that I wrote as a joke. At least, though, I should respond to criticisms of statements that someone seriously made, albeit five decades ago.

Homophobia is a serious problem in our world today. Homosexuals are hated and discriminated against. Courts and legislatures are working to deny gays rights that most people take for granted. They say that homosexuality is fundamentally immoral and unnatural. They say that marriage is something that should be exclusive to straight people. Worst of all, some people even go so far as to imply that fictional characters from 70 years ago might have been gay.

In order to combat homophobia, it is important to first understand it. Homophobia is a fear, mistrust, or hatred of homosexuals or homosexuality. It is not an honest attempt to understand homosexuality, nor is it a genuine concern for homosexuals' mental health, like what was demonstrated in Dr. Wertham's work. I know that the idea that homosexuality is learned behaviour and can be symptomatic of mental illness was itself born of homophobia, even if there was a time when it was accepted as fact. It's only a logical conclusion that anyone in the 1950's who wasn't aware of our current attitude towards homosexuality was an ignorant gay-basher. I can only pray that the scourge of living in a different time period can be eradicated in our lifetime.

I didn't post an in-depth analysis of Batman and Robin's relationship, because I didn't think any explanation could be more convincing than, "Dear Lord! Just look at them!" It seemed overkill to explain how someone might detect some sexual tension between the poster boys for the butch-femme archetype. They are very close, certainly, and live a secluded life far from the touch of women. They spend most of their time together, wearing outfits that leave very little to the imagination. Their very internal monlogues so often seem to betray their true feelings.

However, I do not personally think that Batman and Robin were supposed to be gay. The idea that they are gay is very well-supported and in the minds of many of their fans they are lovers, but I don't think that was what was intended by the character. I saw Batman Forever. Nobody who dates Nicole Kidman could secretly be gay.

Where I think the confusion comes from is that Batman comics, particularly Bob Kane's work on the character, were overwhelmingly phallocentric. Phallocentric means "concerned primarily with men and the male perspective." Literally, it means "centering on the penis." Batman is both of these things. In fact, I would say it was the most phallocentric comic of all time until Sin City came along and made it futile for any other comic to compete for that title.

I could accept that Batman having a little partner named Dick was just an amusing little coincidence were it not for the Batmobile. When thinking of what sort of vehicle Batman should use, you might expect something fast and maneuverable to aid in high-speed chases. Perhaps it should be small and capable of flight - you know, like a bat. I'm not entirely sure by what logic a giant cock is appropriate. You Batman fans may know that there have been several designs for the batmobile and think that I probably chose this one - with its long, shaft-like chassis and the head at the front; this one that is piloted from a ball-like compartment near the base of the vehicle - because it is the most phallic model and I am trying to distort the facts to fit my point. That's simply not true. If that were the case, I would have chosen this model:

The fact is, there have been over 100 batmobiles. As if it weren't weird enough that Batman owns that many cars, most of them look like he's vastly over-compensating for something.

Of course, it's possible that stuff like this was unintentional, but if it was all subconscious, that just makes it doubly creepy. Don't get me wrong, I don't find this sort of thing objectionable, just funny. What I find objectionable is Batman's almost palpable gynophobia.

Dr. Wertham saw characters like Catwoman - a romantic interest for Batman who was secretly also a master thief - as a negative portrayal of women in general. The women in Batman tended to be shifty and untrustworthy. Wertham seemed to think that this showed a cynical view of heterosexual relationships. I would say he was reading too much into it if it were just an isolated incident. I would like to draw your attention to a Batman villain called Poison Ivy (right), who uses a poisonous lipstick. One kiss from her controls men's minds (and, yes, it only works on men) and another kiss kills them. For those of you who don't see why I might think this is a little misogynistic, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines subtext as, "The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text." Maybe that will help.

Maybe I'm being unfair, though. Batman had some female allies, too - like Batwoman (left). Sweet Jesus! Do I even have to explain what's sexist about her? Without even getting into how Batman tried to convince her that crime-fighting was too dangerous for her (because a woman can't take risks and make tough decisions as well as Batman and the little boy in panties he hangs out with), she carried a fucking utility purse! The weapons in her war on crime included lipstick, foundation, and a hairnet - a God damned hairnet! I'm honestly shocked that she never resorted to throwing tampons at villains - not even exploding tampons or cyanide tampons. Granted, the cyanide tampons would only work if she forced the villains to eat them, but wouldn't that make an excellent comic?

I'm not saying that I'm offended by Batman, I'm just saying I can totally understand how someone could be. Personally, I like Batman. He has been featured in some great comics and incredible cartoons and at least one decent movie - maybe two. The thing is, these characters have changed hands so many times and each writer and artist has shaped them in different ways, so there's no single definitive interpretation of Batman. For my money, the best creative team Batman ever had was Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, and nobody could accuse them of not liking women.

(NOTE: I did not post that picture. It was my evil twin again.)

This is a hijacking! Take this blog to Canada!

2006-03-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, women have not sent us any pictures of themselves dressed as Wonder Woman lately, which presents a serious crisis for this blog. However, I will continue keeping the blog going, as it does give me the opportunity to discuss other matters of vital importance, such as how many Canadian Super Soldiers there were before Wolverine.

Wolverine was Marvel's first openly Canadian superhero. He enjoys hockey, knows Michael J. Fox, and is governed as a parliamentary democracy. Paradoxically, he is also arguably the most popular comic book superhero of all time and appears in over five monthly series in addition to guest appearances in just about every comic Marvel publishes. I am led to believe that his past is shrouded in mystery. I wouldn't know. It's entirely possible that his whole history has been explained - broken down into fifteen minute increments - in the thousands of comics in which he has appeared. Who can keep track? What I do know is that he was created as part of a "Super Soldier" program, similar to the one that created Captain America.

The story goes that during World War II, in addition to developing bigger and better weapons, the U.S. Army was also trying to develop bigger and better soldiers - ones who wouldn't have to be taken off the battle field every time they get shot (I mean, honestly, how annoying is that?). Finally, they hit upon a serum that would make an ordinary soldier stronger and more durable

and with a much gaudier costume. Obviously, bright primary colours were sorely lacking from our fighting boys' uniforms. So it was that in 1941, Captain America was introduced, written and drawn by the legendary and inimicable Jack Kirby and some other guy that nobody cares about. Of course, by "inimicable," I do not mean to imply that his drawing style isn't constantly imitated. While not technically dressed as Wonder Woman, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Captain America was a client of her tailor.

The original Super Soldier Program was a great success. As you can see, in Captain America's first month of service, he managed to punch Adolf Hitler right in the face. Unfortunately, he failed to capture or detain the Fuhrer, thus allowing the war to continue for another four years. This may help explain why he was never promoted above Captain.

Work sort of dried up for the Captain after the war ended, but he was brought back in the early sixties to lead The Avengers. There, he fought alongside such luminaries as the Mighty Thor and the Incredible Hulk. Some of the more observant among you may have noticed that Captain America is a soldier in the United States Army, whereas the Hulk is relentlessly pursued by the same army and may wonder whether this is sort of a conflict of interest. The answer is, "When one of the members of a superhero team is a Norse deity, the political affiliations of the gamma-irradiated monster are far from the least plausible thing in this comic."

However, the Hulk's politics did come into play in 1974, when Swamp Thing creator Len Wein took over writing the Hulk's comics. Wein noticed that for the last decade Hulk had faced off again and again against the United States military, and since they had failed to stop him, Len decided to take the series in a new direction: North. Len decided to have the Hulk wander into Canada, where he would have new adventures, fighting Canadian monsters and the Canadian military and Canadian superheroes. The possibilities were endless! That is, until Len remembered that there weren't any Canadian superheroes. Or is that just what they wanted him to think? Maybe the Canadian army had secretly been training their own Super Soldiers who just hadn't done anything important enough to get into a comic yet. After doing a little research to see if Canada actually had its own army (apparently it does), Len set about writing a story that would change comics history forever.

So it was that The Incredible Hulk fought against a Canadian government agent codenamed Weapon X. Sounds ominous, doesn't it? "Hey," you're thinking, "isn't 'The Wolverine' his codename? Or did he have weird hippie parents who actually named him 'The Wolverine'?" No, you, his real name is Logan and the codename that he uses in his Official Canadian Government Business is Weapon X. The Wolverine is a nickname he earned for being short, furry, and Canadian. As a sidenote, Hugh Jackman was an odd choice to play Logan in the X-Men movie, because he is neither short nor furry. He's not even Canadian! However, I forgive him, because he's so dreamy. As another sidenote, notice how the comic cover describes Wolverine as "The World's First and Greatest Canadian Super Hero." Some may say that it's easy to be the greatest before any others have been created, but I say that doesn't make the description any less accurate.

Although Wolverine was the only Canadian agent who claimed he could take down the Hulk by himself, and thus was the only one who made it into the comic, it could be assumed that they had at least 23 other operatives (Weapons A-W), but we would have to wait until some other time to meet them, because in an absolutely shocking and inexplicable turn of events, the five-foot canuck got his ass handed to him by the unstoppable rampaging behemoth, and by the next issue, Hulk was back in the States.

A year later, when writer Chris Claremont assembled a new team of X-Men, he had Wolverine quit Department K (the secret Canadian government agency for whom he was working (secret Canadian government agencies only get one letter)) to join them. I'm guessing that Claremont was counting on the comedy of a young Rick Moranis on television's SCTV to incite the public's demand for short Canadians. Unfortunately, Rick Moranis wouldn't join the cast of SCTV for another five years, and in that time, the character of Wolverine failed to catch on. However, Canadian comic book artist John Byrne was intrigued by the idea of the Canadian military's clandestine super-powered operatives, so in 1978, he and Claremont revealed the original Canadian Super Soldier, Weapon Alpha.

He looks pretty much how you'd expect Canada's version of Captain America to look. I'm fairly sure he was another client of Captain America and Wonder Woman's tailor who was trying to establish a "desecration of national emblems" motif.

In the early 80's, when the comedy of a young Rick Moranis on SCTV sparked Canadamania, John Byrne introduced a whole team composed of superheroes that the Canadian government had been hiding called "Alpha Flight." There was also a back-up Canadian superteam called "Beta Flight" and the Canadian supertrainees were in "Gamma Flight" (there was probably a Delta Flight in there, too). They were all overseen by Department H.

It makes a person wonder about the nomenclature of Canadian government agents. By a person, of course, I mean me and nobody else, because if anyone else thought about it, it would be more than a person. Anyway, why was Weapon Alpha named for a Greek letter, when Weapon X's name was an English letter? The obvious answer occured to me - all of the Canadian agents and agencies could have been Greek letters. Departments H and K could have actually been "eta" and "kappa." As for Weapon X, he may have been named for the Greek letter "chi" rather than the English "eks." So, since X is the 22nd Greek letter, that would mean that there were only 21 Canadian super soldiers before Wolverine. Granted, I came up with this when I was about 11, but I have yet to hear a better explanation.

I've read a bit of Alpha Flight, mostly because I love Scott Lobdell, no matter what anyone else says. They just don't understand our love. Anyway, in Lobdell's first issue on the series, he introduced Weapon Omega, at which point I thought the Canadian military couldn't create any more super soldiers, because what would they call them? However, little did I know that in a comic that I hadn't read, they had already introduced a new Weapon X named Garrison Kane.

That means that they were reusing letters. So, really, all we know is that at the time Wolverine was created, there were at least 21 active Canadian super soldiers. For those of you keeping track, it was over 15 years between when Wolverine quit Department K and when Kane showed up. You may wonder why it took so long to replace him. Actually, it would later be revealed that there were a few Weapons X between Logan and Kane, including Deadpool (right) and some people that I don't really care about. So there's no official word on how many Canadian Super Soldiers there were before Wolverine, but no discussion of the topic can be complete without the complete-fucking-moron's perspective, and to get it, we turn, as usual, to Grant Morrison's New X-Men.

The problem with Grant Morrison's comics is that there are so many things wrong with them that I have no idea where to begin explaining. Remember when he said that the Joker was too sane - implying that the best way to cope with the absurdities of twentieth century life is to dress up in a purple suit and kill people? How do you even start to articulate why that's stupid?

Anyway, according to unbelievable imbecile Grant Morrison, the Super Soldiers were not named for letters at all, they were numbered using Roman numerals. Thus, Wolverine was really Weapon 10 and Weapon Omega was really... um... Well, it seems he didn't mention Weapon Omega. How strange.

I hope I can trust you all to think of your own list of reasons why this is idiotic. Honestly, when Steffan first told me that the X-Men - that is, the 10-Men (led by Prof. 100har50es 10a51er) - were fighting Weapon XI, I thought he was just making a bad joke. No, Grant Morrison thought he was really fucking clever for coming up with that. His next incredible insight into Wolverine's character was, "If you turn the letter X sideways, it's a plus sign!" I spent the next two hours crying.

What makes it worse is that in New X-Men, Mr. Morrison reveals that Weapon I was... (get ready for this) ...Captain America! I sort of see how he would come up with that. After all, Captain America and Wolverine were both Super Soldiers created by the government, so it would make perfect sense that they were created by the same government program. I guess nobody took the time to explain to Grant the small detail that Canada and America have different governments. I have to wonder if the editor actually bothered to read any of Morrison's work, or if he just curled into a fetal position every time a script arrived at his office (I can't really blame him if he did, though - that's what I'd do). The trouble is that at this point, calling Grant Morrison retarded can no longer be considered a cute hyperbole, and that puts me in an awkward position, because MAKING FUN OF THE HANDICAPPED IS NOT COOL! So I'd like to take this moment to take back some of the mean things I have said about Grant Morrison and to applaud Marvel Comics for their brave and open-minded hiring practices.

Make Mine Marvel Addendum

2006-02-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

All right, when I said that you all should be reading X-Factor I did not mean that you should buy Midtown Comics' last copy. That should have been mine, asshole. Maybe this grievous missing-an-issue predicament is my own fault for not making that clear. It's just that I'm not used to anything I like being popular enough to sell out this quickly.

You know what? Now that I think about it, this is everyone else's fault. It's a matter of basic etiquette. If you're going to buy something that you know I like - be it a comic or a DVD or a car - you're not supposed to buy it somewhere I shop. If that can't be avoided, you should at least buy me one, too. It's just common sense. What did they teach you in Kindergarten anyway?

we are so classy and artsy all the sudden!

2006-02-02T01:55:00.000-05:00

This blog isn't all about pornstars! Enjoy this original illustration by John Leavitt (click to enlarge):

red tight and blue

2006-01-30T17:55:00.000-05:00

This is a $315 latex Wonder Woman costume.

If someone gets me this, I will wear it everywhere. To the grocery store. To the proms of Midwestern high school boys. To wherever there is evil to be fought.

My Doctoral Fucking Thesis on Wonder Girl

2006-01-25T22:53:00.001-05:00

"Who is Donna Troy?" demands the cover of The New Teen Titans #38.

"I am Donna Troy," says the girl voguing in her Wonder Woman pajamas.

"I am Donna Troy," says Susie Felber.

"I am Donna Troy," says The girl who must have been doing her laundry that day and didn't have anything else clean.

"I am Donna Troy," says Jen Dziura.

"I am Donna Troy," says Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

"I am Donna Troy," says Spartacus.

Donna Troy was Wonder Girl - a pioneer in the fine art of dressing like Wonder Woman. Indeed, everyone who has ever dressed up like Wonder Woman owes a little something to Donna Troy. I take the responsibility as the only writer for this Wonder Woman blog who reads comics very seriously. I recently decided that no discussion of people dressed as Wonder Woman would be complete without a close look at the walking fashion/continuity headache that is Donna Troy. That meant that it was up to me to write that post. The biggest problem with that is that I consciously avoid any comics that feature Wonder Girl. So, I started reading some comics that have Wonder Girl in them, and the first thing that I found was that my decision to avoid Wonder Girl comics was one of the wisest choices I have ever made in my life. Still, since I would do anything for my loyal readership (which, as far as I can tell consists only of Jen (Hi, Jen!)), I soldiered on.

The next obstacle I encountered was that there were way too many tangents that were not directly related to Wonder Girl, but some of which I thought were important for context. So, as penance, after long, unwieldy tangents, I have included pictures of Nikki Nova.

Although I write a lot about D.C., particularly in this blog, at heart, I am a Marvel Zombie. When I was much younger I could never really get into D.C. and read exclusively Marvel Comics. As I grew older, I became more open-minded, and I have read and enjoyed many comics from D.C., but currently I find that the only comics I pick up monthly are Exiles, Cable & Deadpool, Fallen Angel, and X-Factor, none of which are printed by D.C. By the way, you should all read X-Factor, too. Really. I don't care if you don't read comics, read X-Factor anyway. Peter David is a wonderful writer and should be encouraged.

I'm not sure what it is exactly that attracts me to Marvel Comics. I know that the bulk of Marvel Comics are really awful, and I mean really, really awful, but there's something in the good ones and even some of the mediocre ones that is never quite captured in D.C. Marvel Comics are just more fun. Of course, you should keep in mind that any criticism I have of D.C. does not extend to Vertigo. Vertigo is a branch of D.C. that prints comics aimed at adults, and I would never speak ill of it, except the part of it that is written by Grant Morrison.

The problem with Marvel is that D.C. was around first, so people are quick to accuse Marvel of being derivative. The easiest retort to that is, "People who create Aquaman shouldn't throw stones." For those of you who couldn't figure out on your own that talking to fish doesn't make a very exciting superhero, it doesn't, but I think his lameness is doubled by the fact that he's really just a cheap knock-off of a Marvel character called Namor the Sub-Mariner. Aquaman's name isn't even as clever.

For another example, people sometimes point out some odd similarities between The X-Men and Doom Patrol, which were created at about the same time, but what they usually fail to mention is that The X-Men was a better comic in almost every way. As ridiculous a premise as a superhero high school is, The X-Men did some interesting things with it. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that The X-Men was a good comic in the early sixties, just much better than Doom Patrol. The only edge that Doom Patrol has over The X-Men is that Grant Morrison didn't fuck Doom Patrol up quite so badly, but, then again, it's hard to imagine anyone fucking anything up as badly as Grant Morrison fucked up the X-Men. In fact, I think "Grant Morrison writing the X-Men" should replace "the blind leading the blind" as the accepted metaphor for people having no idea what they're doing. I think "Grant Morrison" should replace "SNAFU" as military slang for something going horribly, horribly wrong.

Words cannot tell how much I hate Grant Morrison, and yet here I am using words to do just that. Grant Morrison is a one-eyed fuck monkey, meaning that my distaste for him is so strong that it shorts out the part of my brain responsible for coming up with epithets. Of course, I liked Arkham Asylum. Dave McKean's work was great, and the writing, although stupid, was still readable. I had hoped that Grant Morrison would develop into an entertainingly stupid writer instead of an obnoxiously stupid writer. Unfortunately, he did just the opposite.

Perhaps I should explain for those of you who didn't notice the subtle stupidity in Arkham Asylum. Take for example the character of the Joker. For those of you who don't read comics, the Joker's origin story is as nebulous as his modus operandi. Different writers have fundamentally different takes on his character, and not even his most basic characteristics are set in stone, like in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, where the Joker goes the whole story without telling a single joke, because Miller seems to have missed the word "Joke" in the character's name. What remains fairly constant in the origin story is that the Joker had accidentally fallen into a vat of unspecified chemicals (sort of like the ones that gave the Flash his powers). The chemicals bleached the Joker's skin and hair (astoundingly evenly) and distorted his facial features (perfectly symmetrically) and caused some neurological damage (usually manifesting itself in schizotypal or violent tendencies). You wouldn't expect someone like that to be particularly dangerous, but he was quite amusing, so they kept bringing him back. In one comic I have from the 60's (when comics were regarded by their writers as disposable children's fantasy and nobody took them very seriously), the Joker was diagnosed as having hebephrenia (NOTE: it's a real medical condition), a form of schizophrenia characterized by delusions, regressive behaviour, and inappropriate laughter. The doctor in Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum had a slightly different diagnosis:

"The Joker's a special case. Some of us feel he may be beyond treatment. In fact we're not even sure if he can be properly defined as insane... It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception. More suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century... Unlike you and I, the Joker seems to have no control over the sensory information he's receiving from the outside world. He can only cope with that chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That's why some days he's a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd."

It's cute how Morrison is trying to account for different writers creating varying identities for the Joker, but notice how this trained doctor who is uncommonly fond of sentence fragments sees dissociative identity disorder as a perfectly acceptable approach to life and thinks that the only thing wrong with the guy who dresses up as a clown and kills people is that he's too sane. Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?

The little absurdities in Arkham Asylum were nothing, though, compared to New X-Men. Granted, I haven't read his entire run of the series, but I don't think it's my fault. Even hearing about some of these stories makes my head throb violently. Keep in mind that, despite my musings about the Flash, I am usually a great advocate of suspension of disbelief. For instance, I think that The Saga of the Swamp Thing is a wonderful, intelligent comic, although it doesn't seem entirely scientifically plausible. You just have to remind yourself that Alan Moore's job is to write horror comics, not to study planariae and get on with your life. I try to be forgiving of ludicrous plot elements. I had been through at least five different Supergirl origin stories, each one more insanely convoluted than the last. Remember when she was a puddle of synthetic goo that Lex Luthor had created based on Superman's girlfriend's genetic template? I got through that relatively unfazed, but Grant Morrison's New X-Men stories pushed my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. The major plot points in the issues I missed were relayed to me by my friend Steffan in conversations like the following:

ME: So what's with the robot?
STEFFAN: You mean Xorn?
ME: All right, what's with Xorn the robot?
STEFFAN: He's a mutant.
ME: So ... someone built a robot and it mutated?
STEFFAN: No, he was born a robot.
ME: So ... he's a person who looks like a robot?
STEFFAN: Sort of. More like his DNA was altered so that he's a robot.
ME: So does he do anything other than have a stupid origin story?
STEFFAN: His brain is a star.
ME: You mean ... it ... has its own sitcom or something?
STEFFAN: No, it's a star. Like a celestial body. That kind of star.
ME: Does Grant Morrison know what a star is? For that matter, does he know what a brain is?
STEFFAN: Apparently not.
ME: Damn it. My head is throbbing again.

Even with all the help that Steffan gave me in making the plotlines more manageable, nothing could prepare me for the horror that was "Planet X." "Planet X" was the worst comic that I have ever read and that includes all of the comics that I read because they're terrible. In fact, "Planet X" gave me a new understanding of kitsch. Some people think of kitsch as a quality of art that is "so bad it's good," which I now see to be a fallacy, because "Planet X" was much worse than "so bad it's good," but wasn't entertaining at all. It was so bad it's really horribly scarringly bad.

Although I don't expect fantasy and science fiction writers to be scientific geniuses, there are certain basic facts that you shouldn't need a medical degree to know, things like that if you lose an eye, it doesn't grow back; that most biological functions (heartbeat, respiration, etc.) cease after death; and that in a situation where you are stranded without any source of food, you cannot survive indefinitely by eating your own arm (even if your arm heals, you cannot gain enough energy by eating your arm to sustain you and to heal your arm, providing you with more arm meat - the human body is not a perpetual motion machine). Over the course of "Planet X," Grant Morrison demonstrates that all of these concepts and more are beyond his grasp.

Also, if you're going to make reference to the classic story arc "The Phoenix Saga," it would be helpful to actually read it. Then maybe you'd know that Jean Grey chose the codename "Phoenix" as a metaphor for how she was believed dead and returned, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. She was never actually dead, nor is she actually a Phoenix. That means she didn't hatch out of an egg, you fucking special ed dropout.

Some people defend the comic by saying that it showcases Magneto's brilliance. No, really, multiple unrelated people have mentioned this in discussions of how bad this comic is. Really, Magneto's characterization was the worst part of the story, although I realize that picking out the worst part of "Planet X" is a task akin to shitting in a bucket for a month and then trying to determine which of the turds smells the worst. First of all, the entire thing was completely out of character for Magneto. I would point out specifically what actions and bits of dialogue Magneto would never do or say, but it wasn't like there were any specific aspects of Magneto's personality that Morrison didn't understand; it was more like he had never read a comic with Magneto in it. If he had, he never would have made a big surprise twist be that Magneto was still alive. Nobody thought that Magneto was dead. Magneto has been brought back so many times, it would have been a bigger surprise if they had found Magneto's body and it wasn't a hoax or a robot or a clone, but it was really him and he was really dead and they weren't going to bring him back to life. There's an exercise you "Magneto's brilliance" people can do: Cut out pictures of Apocalypse or Diablo or Dr. Doom or Brainiac or Ra's-al-Ghul and paste them over every picture of Magneto in the comic. Notice how it doesn't change the story in any significant way. I think he wrote the entire script with the villain identified as "[insert villain here]" and decided to go with Magneto because nobody would expect that.

Some people say that Magneto joining the X-Men under a false identity and curing Xavier's paralysis to gain his trust was a great plot device. Well, sure it is, but you know what would have been more brilliant? Not curing Xavier's paralysis and skipping right to the taking over the world part of the plan. Why was gaining Xavier's trust such a big priority anyway? Remember when Magneto was part of the X-Men, with no false identity, just as Magneto? Or the other time he was part of the X-Men? Or the other time he was part of the X-Men? Or all those times when he saved Xavier's life? Or that time when Xavier left the Earth for a few years and hired Magneto to run the school? Or how Magneto and Xavier are best friends and had been since the Korean War? I don't think Magneto really needed to come up with a fake name and a miracle cure for paralysis to win Xavier's trust.

But I totally see why Magneto had to infiltrate the school. He had to amass an army. And what an army it was. Between the guy who can jump really far and the guy who had a beak instead of a mouth, I don't see how his bid for world domination ever failed. How could Magneto have foreseen that they would be even less useful than my description makes them sound?

Then again, if he had jumped right into his world domination plan, then people might have noticed that it consisted primarily of knocking a few buildings over. It wasn't so much a coup as it was a temper tantrum. But the part of the plan where he becomes a pathetic, washed-up drug addict could only be described as a stroke of genius. I certainly never would have thought of that.

I would complain about how it is Wolverine that finally kills Magneto - that the guy whose bones are laced with metal kills the guy who has the power to control metal - but at that point, I was just glad it was over. And I've only scratched the surface of how bad this thing is. I haven't even mentioned how painful and forced every single line of dialogue is, how shallow and one-dimensional ever character is, nor how devoid of any sort of emotional stimulation the entire story is, but I really should get back to Wonder Girl.

Wonder Girl's origin starts in the pages of More Fun Comics - the comic book so insecure that it needs to put the word "FUN" in big letters on the cover, lest the reader start to question how much fun these comics really are.

There was a recurring feature in More Fun called "Superboy." The concept was simple - Superman must have had some zany adventures before leaving his boyhood home of Smallville, and in "Superboy," you got to see the exploits of li'l Clark Kent. Despite the fact that Smallville has got to be the dumbest name for a town I have ever heard, the feature was immensely popular. Then in 1959, about 15 years after Superboy's first appearance, a writer named Robert Kanigher emerged. He was a bold man, one with the courage to dream the impossible. "What if," he posed, "we did the exact same thing with Wonder Woman?" The entire company was in an uproar. "This Robert Kanigher must be mad!" they said. Still, mad or not, an idea that innovative was worth any risk.

Unfortunately, it began to look like Robert Kanigher was indeed losing his mind. I don't mean for creating Wonder Girl. The world needed to know what it was like for Wonder Woman growing up a heroine on Paradise Island. When he started writing about Wonder Woman as a baby (Wonder Tot (right)), that was sort of fucked up, but not really crazy. Even his use of the phrase "saucy Amazon babe" can be chalked up to mere eccentricity. No, the point at which it was safe to say that the pressure of writing Wonder Woman comics had finally gotten to him was Wonder Woman #124 - a story called "The Impossible Day."

While you're pondering what sort of twisted, diseased mind could come up with something like that, I should tell you the premise of the comic - this was a story that Wonder Woman's mother Hippolyta made by splicing together films of Wonder Woman at different stages of her life. You may be wondering why she would do that. I know I am. I could sort of see splicing together three different Wonder Women if it has always been your dream to see an all-Wonder-Woman three-way, but this is her mother, and she's using home movies of her daughter as a baby. I don't think you could come up with an explanation that isn't horribly inappropriate. Maybe it's something simple. Kanigher had just decided that Hippolyta having way too much free time on her hands was a thrilling plot device. I'm going to stop thinking about this. The less I know about the thought process whose conclusion is Wonder Tot, the better.

In these "Impossible Stories" that Hippolyta made, Wonder Girl's role changed from young superhero to kid sidekick. Much like Stan Lee, I hate kid sidekicks. That's one thing that I think is great about Marvel - the dearth of kid sidekicks. In 1964, when Stan Lee brought Captain America back, the first thing Stan "The Man" did was kill his sidekick Bucky. You see, Stan Lee didn't get the nickname "The Man" for nothing. He got it for killing Bucky.

Sidekicks are those little kids who follow superheroes around and say, "Golly!" They are pathetic things that don't have any lives or identities of their own, so they have to ride the coattails of someone who is better than them in every conceivable way. They usually don't contribute much to stories, except for illustrating how irresponsible the superhero is for constantly putting the child's life in danger. Sidekicks very often need to be rescued from villains but they don't get killed nearly often enough. The idea behind sidekicks was that the readership of superhero comics were mostly adolescents, but the superheroes themselves were mostly adults, so the sidekicks were added for the readers to identify with. I don't think it really worked. Maybe I just hung out with the wrong people, but I never heard anyone say, "Robin is the greatest hero ever! I wish I could be Batman's bottom!" What I'm saying is that maybe some kids did relate to the kid sidekicks, but they were largely the same kids who related to Judy Garland, if you catch my meaning. No, that isn't just my own homophobic musing, there's research behind it.

"As our work went on we established the basic ingredients of the most numerous and widely read comic books: violence; sadism and cruelty; the superman philosophy, an offshoot of Nietzsche's superman who said, 'When you go to women, don't forget the whip.'

We also found that what seemed at first a problem in child psychology had much wider implications. Why does our civilization give to the child not its best but its worst, in paper, in language, in art, in ideas? What is the social meaning of these supermen, superwomen, super-lovers, super boys, supergirls, super-ducks, super-mice, super-magicians, super-safecrackers?

How did Nietzsche get into the nursery?"

-From Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Fredric Wertham

Allow me to introduce my friend, Dr. Wertham. Dr. Wertham was an uncommonly witty and astute pediatric psychiatrist who tried to figure out what may be the root cause of juvenile delinquency. He noticed the meritless and irresponsible writing in movies, television, and especially comic books that children were being exposed to and was shocked to find that parents and his colleagues in the psychiatric field were largely unaware of this problem. He set out to inform them of the possible adverse effects of their children's entertainment in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent.

I should explain that I am a staunch advocate of freedom of speech. In fact, I may be a bit of an extremist. I think that children don't always need to be shielded from objectionable words and ideas and that neonazis have the same rights to free speech that everyone else does - the audience should be allowed to judge for itself how rational, valid, or potentially harmful an idea is. Considering that I'm also a fan of comic books, it may seem paradoxical that I am at all a fan of Wertham's. The fact is that Wertham himself did not support censorship, nor was he opposed to comic books as a medium or fantasy/science fiction fandom. In fact, in his 1974 book, The World of Fanzines, he indicated how such fandom can be a positive creative influence. This may seem to contradict his previous works, but only to people who weren't actually familiar with his previous works. As with everything, it is too much to expect people to actually read what they are criticizing.

I don't think that Wertham was right about everything. I personally feel that there is some value in mindless entertainment. Also, his assumption of causality between violence in the media and violence in real life was not necessarily accurate. There is no question that even today the vast majority of comics glorify violence. Depending on how charitable a mood I'm in, I may concede that they encourage imitation. However, it should be noted how low a proportion of comic book readers become murderers or thieves or masked vigilantes. As I realized while reading Captain Britain comics, it's really sort of a shame that comics didn't inspire many copycat criminals. It's not that I am in favour of violent crime, but someone who is going to turn to a life of crime because of comic books or television shows is probably not very well-balanced anyway, and wouldn't it be nice if the crimes we had were more colourful? I doubt that organized crime would have quite as much of a stigma attached to it if there were a real gang based on the works of Lewis Carroll. Also, imagine how many lives would be saved if killers relied less on random shootings and more on elaborate death traps.

Regardless, most of the problems that arose as a result of the book were not caused by what he had actually said, but by the way people reacted to it. The Comics Code Authority - an organization established to regulate the content of comic books - seems to have had admirable goals. However, instead of a higher standard being set for the comics, by censoring and limiting their content, the writing in comics suffered quite a bit. That is ironic considering that Wertham's primary complaint against comics was in the low standards of their writing.

It does not seem that the connotation of comics as being solely a children's medium was Wertham's intention. One of his biggest arguments was that children shouldn't be exposed to inappropriate comics, not that such comics shouldn't exist. Whether or not you think that the publishers' intent was to market comics featuring adult themes to children, the fact is that children were reading them, and it wasn't Wertham's fault for noticing that. Besides, Wertham also cited the harmful effects of television and film, and people aren't as inclined to dismiss them as juvenile media. The damage done to the comic book industry was considerable but it wasn't exactly what Wertham had wanted.

When I first set out to read Seduction of the Innocent, I had already read many analyses on the effect of the book, and most of them characterized Dr. Wertham as the Man Who Ruined Comics - a bigoted demagogue who was out to dispose of any idea that he found distasteful under the guise of protecting the children. I had intended to read it for amusement, to laugh at the crazy reactionary ideas, but, to my surprise, I found that it was far from reactionary and even farther from crazy. In the first chapter, Dr. Wertham revealed that he was dismissed as a crackpot by colleagues who did not think that comic books warranted analysis, yet he had not lost his sense of humour, and he persisted in his research out of what seemed to be a genuine concern for children's well-being.

As a comic book fan, I can say with surety that his observations on the content of comics, on the reaction of comic readers, and on the marketing tactics used were pretty much dead-on. I think the fact that Dr. Wertham is so widely regarded as paranoid and delusional by comic fans shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness. The passages that made specific reference to comics that I was familiar with were particularly delightful to read. The story of the child who died trying to imitate Superman was manipulation of the worst kind, but his only real complaint about Superman - that his stories contained so many scientific inaccuracies and implausibilities that they would undermine a child's understanding of physics - made me chuckle.

As for the allegations of sexually enticing content in comics, that is a bit more of a divisive topic. The thing is that accusations of subversive material in children's entertainment usually reveal more about the mindset of the accuser than about the source material. For instance, some people say that Shaggy from Scooby-Doo is a marijuana smoker. Although there is very little substance to the character, it is likely that he is imitative of a counter-culture that includes recreational drug use, but his creators had not intended him to even address the issue of drug use. So, although he is likely to share mannerisms with drug users, any specific reference to drug use is only in the mind of the viewer.

I would say that Dr. Wertham chose his targets well, though. For instance, he had some disparaging words to say about the lesbian bondage themes so prevalent in Wonder Woman. In this matter, as with most of the book, I agree with Dr. Wertham's premise, but not his conclusion. If anything, I think that there is not enough lesbian bondage in comics, but it's hard to deny that it's portrayed in Wonder Woman. Proponents of the You're-Reading-Too-Much-Into-This school of thought might point out that she fights crime with a lasso, so of course people are going to be tied up, but would be hard-pressed to find an example in Greek mythology or crime comics that indicates a lasso as an acceptable crime-fighting implement. Even among comic readers, it is widely accepted that the sexual undertones were an intentional touch by her creator, William Moulton Marston, who was himself an admitted polyamorist and sadomasochist (a polite way of saying "sexual deviant").

People sometimes accuse Dr. Wertham of homophobia for identifying Batman and Robin as icons of gay culture (for those of you who think that "gay culture" is just a recent phenomenon, they've been saying that for at least fifty years), but I don't think that's fair. I don't even think he's homophobic for implying that Batman comics might have caused some young men to become gay. I would say he was homophobic if he said something like that nowadays, but he was operating under the misapprehension that homosexuality was symptomatic of mental illness, and when searching for the cause it is understandable that he did not consider that it might be naturally occurring. That still doesn't invalidate his findings about Batman having a gay audience. Regardless of whether Bob Kane and Bill Finger had intended Bruce Wayne and Dick (if you think Dr. Wertham was above pointing out what a suggestive name "Dick" is, think again) Grayson to be a gay couple, the fact is that gay adolescents related to the character of Robin and his relationship with Batman. It is more likely that they had gay inclinations and imagined that they found approval for their lifestyle in the pages of Batman than that they decided to pursue a homosexual lifestyle because of a perceived endorsement from Batman comics as Wertham had presumed. Still, Dr. Wertham was nowhere close to being the first person to notice Batman's implied "alternative lifestyle," he was just the first person to publish a book that made reference to the phenomenon.

I find the most interesting thing about Batman and Robin's relationship to be that their partnership continued unabated even amidst the censorship and series cancellations that followed the release of Seduction of the Innocent. With the comic book industry in upheaval, they could not have claimed ignorance of the charges against them, and yet, if anything, Batman and Robin got even gayer. I wonder if this was more a refusal to validate Wertham's claims by even acknowledging them or an admission of guilt. Maybe they were deliberately trying to court a young homosexual male audience (not literally, of course (I think)).

In the so-called "Silver Age" that followed the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, D.C. printed a comic called The Brave and the Bold, a versatile title that allowed for any sort of story with any combination of characters, provided that at least one of the featured characters was brave and at least one of them was bold. Some may say that the series peaked in 1960 when they introduced The Justice League.

The Justice League featured Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, The Green Lantern, The Manhunter from Mars, and Aquaman. The idea was that they would put all of D.C.'s strongest and most popular characters and Aquaman in the same comic. It doesn't matter how little sense it would make for them all to be on the same team, the fans would buy it. The only problem with that is, where do you go from there? When you have all of your best superheroes regularly appearing together in a comic, how can you possibly top that? Fortunately, D.C. still had a trick or two up its sleeve and in 1964, they totally did top themselves.

That's right! It's a group made up of sidekicks! It's just like The Justice League, except they're kids and there are only three of them. The only things that might keep them from great commercial success is the fact that their leader doesn't have any superpowers and a full third of their team is not even a fish-talking superhero, but a fish-talking superhero trainee. When the group returned a year later, they found a novel way of remedying their biggest problem.

By adding Wonder Girl to the team, they were able to reduce the proportion of the team made up of Aqualad by over 8%. Thus, the Teen Titans were born. At first, I found it a bit suspicious that only a couple of years after Marvel introduced a team of teenage superheroes, D.C. introduced a group of teenage superheroes. However, having read them both, I can say that there is no comparison between The X-Men and The Teen Titans. Teen Titans cut out the teenage angst, the constant moralizing, the forced political allegory, and any pretentious semblance of depth and got right to the surfing and motorcycling.

Cowabunga! This was a comic that could really talk to the kids in their own language - like in one comic where the Titans show up in a town where all of the teenagers have disappeared, leaving a note that says, "All us cats deciced to skip / Until adults to the music get hip!" Robin sensed something was amiss. He said, "Fellows, that note's a phony! No teen-ager would use the word 'music' in a hip language message... They'd use 'jive!'" You cannot honestly tell me that your life is the same now as it was before you read that.

Those of you who remember that the "Wonder Girl" from Wonder Woman comics was just a product of trick photography may be confused as to how she could be on a team with Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad. The actual explanation for that is that Teen Titans creator Bob Haney hadn't actually read those comics and was under the impression that Wonder Girl and Wonder Woman were two separate characters. Oops. You'd think that he might have tried reading some of those comics before finishing writing his own comic, or at least that his editor would say something, but personally, I don't blame them. I can attest to how hard these Silver Age comics are to actually read through. Writer Bob Haney and editor George Kashdan by not reading the Wonder Girl stories were trying to avoid the psychological deterioration so common among comic writers of the time, like poor Robert Kanigher, who I imagine ended up opening fire on a local Denny's, believing himself to be the Avenging Angel of Death.

Half a decade later, Marv Wolfman - the writer with the spookiest name ever - noticed the error and wasted no time correcting it. In a story buried in the back pages of Teen Titans #22, he explained that this Wonder Girl was not Wonder Woman as a teenager, but Donna Troy, who Wonder Woman had rescued from a fire that had killed her parents when she was a baby. Wonder Woman took Donna to Paradise Island, where she gained superpowers using a device created called "The Purple Ray". Real slick, Marv. Then, so that readers wouldn't confuse the nascent Donna Troy with Wonder Woman, they gave her a new costume.

Suffering Sappho! It's the Disco Amazon! This new costume raised a number of questions, foremost among them, "Who is responsible for this?" and "Was he allowed to live?"

Did you get all of that? Well, it doesn't matter if you did. Forget it. It never happened. You have just experienced the magic of retcon.

"Retcon" is an impossibly geeky word. If you ever hear someone use this word, it is perfectly acceptable to beat him up, take his lunch money, and stuff him in his locker. Really, he's asking for it.

Retcon is a portmanteau (another really, really geeky word) that is short for retroactive continuity. It describes when something that has already happened in a serialized story changes. You see, usually in comic books and other forms of serialized story-telling, the events in one issue occur, then the events of the following issue occur. Sometimes, the events in one issue require something to have happened previously or something that we had previously seen happen not to have happened, so the writer explains what really happened in the new comic, retroactively changing the story that you had been reading, and then the readers have conniptions.

The D.C. Universe (where Wonder Woman is from (I think it's somewhere in Turkey)) has many problems with retcon, owing largely to the fact that their writers are completely insane. You see, back in the 40's and early 50's, there were many, many superhero comics, including The Flash and Green Lantern, but there was a declining market for superhero comics (which some assholes blame on Dr. Fredric Wertham), so by the mid-to-late 50's the only superhero comics left were Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman (Yay, Wonder Woman!). In the late 50's, D.C. tried to bring back some of the old characters, but rather than have the characters who had failed and been cancelled return, they created new characters with the same powers. In fact, the new Flash had read the old The Flash comics when he was younger. You see in the new The Flash, the old Flash was a fictional character. Try to keep up. The problem arose when the new Flash teamed up with Superman, because some readers noticed that the Superman who was teaming up with the Flash was the same Superman who had teamed up with the old Flash who was now a fictional character in the Flash's world, which means that Superman was... ERROR! ERROR! DOES NOT COMPUTE! Then their brains exploded.

Facing litigation from the families of those whose heads exploded, The Flash's writer Gardner Fox wrote a comic to explain this. The story goes that The Flash ran so fast that he ripped a hole in reality. For those of you who doubt that this is what happens when you run really fast, keep in mind that you don't have a degree in relativistic physics and neither does Gardner Fox, so it's your word against his. Anyway, The Flash ended up on another reality, where the old Flash lived. It turns out that this world was the one that all of the comics prior to 1959 had taken place on. They had their own Superman and Wonder Woman and Batman who were all older than on the new Flash's world. So everything made sense, or as much sense as things ever make in D.C. The new Flash called his world "Earth 1" and the other world "Earth 2." So the first Flash lives on Earth 2. It was at that point that I should have stopped trying to figure out what was going on with D.C.

Things were stable like that for a while. Every once in a while, the characters from the two Earths would team up for some adventures. D.C. started printing comics that took place on Earth 2. Then, in 1985, D.C. decided that things were too complicated what with more than one Earth, so they resolved to make everything even more complicated by moving everyone onto the same Earth. This required the largest retcon ever, which they called, "The Crisis on Infinite Earths."

To explain "The Crisis on Infinite Earths," Teen Titans writer Marv Wolfman wrote a horrible comic called The Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's not quite as bad as Grant Morrison's "Planet X," but on the other hand, it isn't as good as a root canal. When my friend Mike asked me to explain it to him so that he didn't have to read it himself, I wrote this. It's a scene-by-scene paraphrasing of the entire comic (trust me, the whole thing being in present tense was more annoying to write than it is to read) written in the scatter-brained style in which I write everything. I tried to be thorough, because if I missed anything, then some day, someone could be reading a comic that made reference to that one thing that I missed and would feel compelled to read The Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I don't want that on my conscience.

For those of you who are willing to just take my word for it, in "Post-Crisis" D.C., everyone is on the same Earth (except the ones who aren't) and all of the comics printed before 1985 no longer exist, and there is a comic that explains everything, but it doesn't do a very good job of that, considering it doesn't make any damn sense.

After The Crisis, the Wonder Woman series restarted from the beginning. The problem with that was that Wonder Woman was now a new superhero, but Wonder Girl was already an established member of the Teen Titans. This called for a new origin story. In the Post-Crisis story, Donna was not rescued from the fire that killed her parents by Wonder Woman, but by the Titans - not the Teen ones, but the actual Titans of Greek mythology. They trained her and gave her superpowers on their home base in outer space, then sent her to Earth. Naturally, nobody had remembered any of this before because the Titans had given Wonder Girl false memories, which is one of those great convenient plot devices for changing someone's origin. On Earth, Donna had taken on the role of Wonder Girl, modeling herself after Wonder Woman - not the current Wonder Woman, but the Wonder Woman who had fought in World War II, who was the current Wonder Woman's mother Hippolyta. Once Donna regained her memories, she abandoned her Wonder Girl identity and became Troia. She also got a new costume (Thank God).

When John Byrne took over writing Wonder Woman, he decided that the biggest problem with Wonder Girl was that her origin story wasn't complicated enough. He did his best to try to correct that. The quick version is that Dark Angel, an enemy of the old Wonder Woman from World War II vowed to take revenge by abducting Wonder Woman's (Hippolyta's) daughter, but she accidentally abducted Donna who she had mistaken for Wonder Woman (the current one), because it turned out that before she was in the fire that the Titans saved her from, Donna was actually a duplicate of Wonder Woman created by an Amazon sorceress to be her childhood playmate. Dark Angel then transported Donna to a series of alternate realities, where she would be forced to live the lives of alternate Donna Troys, each one frought with great tragedy. Dark Angel's plan backfired, though, because Donna was actually made stronger by her experiences and became a composite of all of the alternate versions of herself. Oh, by the way, it turned out that Dark Angel was herself an alternate reality's Donna Troy.

Pardon me if I just BLEW YOUR MIND!

On Dark Angel's reality, she wasn't saved from the fire by Wonder Woman or the Titans, but by the Anti-Monitor - the evil ruler of the evil antimatter universe. Anti-Monitor, much like Wonder Woman and the Titans, trained Donna and gave her superpowers, but he did it all evilly. The important thing to take away from this is comic books once again trumping "real" science. Hey, if Hermann Weyl was so smart, how come he never even considered the relative morality of the positron? It took John Byrne to discover that antimatter sided with the Nazis in World War II. If that's not evil, I don't know what is.

Now that we have the whole story, I return to the question that started this, "Who is Donna Troy?" Maybe she is just a girl in a Wonder Woman costume. Maybe in spirit, she is every girl in a Wonder Woman costume. I am reminded of a maxim that goes, "He who reads a Wonder Girl origin story knows who Donna Troy is. He who reads two Wonder Girl origin stories is never sure."

how much mileage can one comedienne get out of one pair of pajamas?

2006-01-04T15:07:00.000-05:00

In reference to the previous, prolix post by Syd...

I, too, have had my pants stolen!

Photos by Ryan Brenizer.

Pants!

2006-01-03T19:15:00.000-05:00

This is an entry for everyone who was wondering, "Don't you have anything better to do than write essays about Wonder Woman's underwear?" Of course, most of you already know the answer.

While the basic design of Wonder Woman's costume has remained constant for the past seven decades or so, there have been some subtle changes that bear examination.

If you remember, there was a time before she had her own series when she fought crime in a skirt. That's cute and all, but if you're going to sell comics, you have to show a little bit more leg.

That's better. You see, this is the outfit that she wore in her eponymous series. It got her through World War II. Note the hot pants and fuck-me boots, which I assume were de rigeur for the WAC. However, the war ended and the fifties came, and the Powers-That-Be decided that they needed to update her image to make her more accessible to a new generation.

What do you mean, it's the same costume? Look again! Still don't see it? Here's a little hint:

Here's a less subtle hint: IT'S HER SHOES! That's right, she started wearing sandals to reflect her Greek heritage. Wait a minute - what Greek heritage? When was she ever in Greece? [EDITOR'S NOTE: Wonder Woman comes from Themiscyra, part of the island chain of Greece located on the river Thermadon somewhere in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Duh.] Anyway, these are MAGICAL sandals. Their power?

They can turn into ballet slippers when the artist isn't paying attention! This bold new look lasted her 18 years, until 1968, when the unthinkable happened.

What's this? A new Wonder Woman?! Well, really it was the same character, but she wasn't a superhero any longer. She lost her powers and got a job running a mod boutique, then became an apprentice to a karate master and solved crimes on the side. You see, Wonder Woman writers wanted to distance her from the superhero world to show that she didn't need fantastic powers to be heroic. They wanted to make her into a hero for the real world. Sure, the pressures of being a shop owner/kung fu detective were not what most women faced in the real world, but it's what passed for reality in comics.

And so, with a tearful goodbye, ~~Wonder Woman~~ Diana left her star-spangled hot pants with her mother, never to wear them again. But that was not the end of the story. Though some saw showing ~~Wonder Woman~~ Diana's heroism as a real woman rather than an impossibly powered demigoddess was a very progressive, feminist idea, it was not feminist enough for Gloria Steinem. Ms. Steinem was a Wonder Woman fan who was outraged that they took the power away from the strongest woman in comics, and was apparently not very good at following directions, like the clearly printed "FORGET THE OLD" on the cover of Wonder Woman #178. That is why Wonder Woman appeared on the cover of the first issue of Steinem's Ms. Magazine back in a superhero costume.

Some liberties were taken with the costume. For instance, some people with a fine eye for details will notice that on this magazine cover, Wonder Woman is really, really big. Also notice that she is back in the high-heeled boots, presumably because Gloria Steinem is racist against the proud Caribbean people of Greece. At any rate, Steinem and her followers' lobbying proved successful and in 1972, just a few months after Ms. Magazine was first published, Wonder Woman returned to the world of superheroics.

Yes, the Justice League needs you, Wonder Woman! The Watchtower is a mess!

Hey! Hold on just a second. There's something different this time. I can't quite put my finger on it...

HER PANTS! HER PANTS ARE GONE!!! Who could have stolen Wonder Woman's pants? This is not what Gloria Steinem had in mind when she put Wonder Woman on the cover of her magazine.

Actually, looking back on it, that's exactly what she had in mind. So, for those of you keeping track: GLORIA STEINEM STOLE WONDER WOMAN'S PANTS.

This journey of discovery started while I was looking at John Byrne's homepage. Byrne wrote and drew Wonder Woman for three years and even wrote a Wonder Woman novel called "Gods and Goddesses." When I was looking around the labrynthian chambers of the site, I found this:

The only explanation given was that it was a character sketch he did for Wonder Woman. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions - perhaps this was supposed to be an alternate costume for arctic missions - but it seems like John Byrne had intended to give Wonder Woman new pants. It's just as well that he didn't, though, because hordes of feminists and adolescent fanboys would have murdered him before he finished the first issue.

Lasso of Truth meets Lucky Cheng's

2006-01-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

What the world needs now
Is Wonder Woman drag queens
Sweet Wonder Woman drag queens...

Catia Lee Love (real name: Aron Harvey, also known as Miss Gay America 2000) is obsessed with Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman: plastic bombshell

2006-01-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

This is a Wonder Woman doll made by the Ideal Toy Company in the '60s. It is apparently very valuable and hearkens back to Syd's post about Wonder Woman's costume changes over the years.

Wonder Woman commitment

2006-01-02T21:03:00.000-05:00

Tattoo artist Gene Bernardo of New Jersey has created this very brightly-colored Wonder Woman tattoo on someone named Sondra:

Oh, Those Wacky Liberals

2006-01-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

This was sent to me by Alisa:

Not to get too political, but this sort of assumes that Bush has any idea what the truth is...

if you see a woman on the Upper West Side in her underwear in public ... well, isn't that always me?

2005-12-30T18:43:00.000-05:00

I have a Wonder Woman photoshoot tomorrow. This thing is kind of taking off.

Molly Crabapple, one of Fleshbot's Top Ten Hotties of '05, has declined to be photographed as Wonder Woman, and has instead offered to draw herself that way. Oh, the powers of illustration!

Amazon

2005-12-30T17:32:00.000-05:00

The Marvel Vs. D.C. series exemplified something very basic that is wrong with comic books and comic book fans. There is a prevalent idea that a stronger character is one that can beat up other characters. This is absolutlely ridiculous. Take Batman and Superman for example. As the characters were first created, Superman could kill Batman in hundreds of ways before Batman could even consider fighting back, and yet Batman comics are often much better than Superman comics.

This demonstrates that the enjoyability of a character does not rely on physical strength alone, and that it is relative to the character's environment. Having Batman appear in the same comic as Superman was a mistake that comics have never quite recovered from. Some may say that their relationship worked because they each brought something different to the table - Batman was the brains and Superman was the muscle. However, it was well established in Superman comics that Superman was supposed to be super-intelligent - that is to say smarter than any mortal could naturally be - meaning that Batman didn't even have that going for him. To level the playing field, writers would provide Batman with impossible amounts of ludicrous gadgets, and it would get to the point when you wouldn't so much be watching Batman solve crimes as watching Batman watch his gadgets solve crimes. It quickly becomes apparent that anything Batman can do, Superman can do much more cheaply and easily. Then you realize that Superman could eliminate all crime in Gotham City on his lunch break and Batman could use the extra free time to get counseling and maybe come to terms with his parents' death thirty years ago that is somehow still ruining his life. Then you realize how ridiculous almost all superhero comics are, so you stop reading them for five or six years, but your friend Steffan gets you back into them, and a few years later you find yourself writing a Wonder Woman blog and you try to figure out where your life went wrong. Wait, what was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, Marvel Vs. D.C. What made the series worse was that the outcome was decided by the readers' votes. That means that in someone's mind, it made sense that the most popular character would be the one who could beat the less popular one up, which is what makes him a better character. To put that in perspective, I am a much bigger fan of Stephen Hawking than I am of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I still have no illusion about who would win in a fight.

When you have a good mental image of the governor of California beating a wheelchair-bound physicist to a bloody pulp, you may understand what I mean when I say that many of the fights in Marvel Vs. D.C. never should have happened. One of these battles was between The Flash and Quicksilver. Somebody seems to have thought that we should see this fight. The only advantage that either has over a normal human is that they are both really fast. Quicksilver moves impossibly fast, but even at his fastest, he can't go faster than sound, whereas The Flash is faster than the speed of light. So not only is The Flash faster than Quicksilver, but The Flash routinely surpasses relativistic speeds, and since the writers generally don't understand relativistic physics, The Flash can pretty much do anything he wants.

Once you realize that The Flash can move faster than a neuron can fire, then you realize that every time The Flash has an opponent that has time to even formulate a thought or draw a breath, then The Flash is moving at such a small fraction of his top speed that for him, it must seem like he's hardly moving at all. Looking only at powers (I realize that superpowers should not be the only defining attribute of a character, but I think this post is long enough without going into characterizations), although Quicksilver is less powerful than The Flash, the lack of power makes him a better character. Once you've established that a character can move faster than his opponent can react, it doesn't even matter how much faster. Regardless, the result will be the same - the speedster will carry out his plan of attack before it has even registered in the opponent's mind that the speedster has moved. Having The Flash move as ridiculously fast as the speed of light only serves to underscore how poorly thought out the character is. You realize that once he reaches the escape velocity, he should just go shooting off the surface of the world. Then you wonder how he gets the energy to move that quickly. Then it dawns on you that you're trying to figure out the physics behind comic books and that you are a hopeless nerd and you hate yourself, so you stop writing in your stupid Wonder Woman blog to eat ice cream and cry.

At their best, comics should be considered as works of art and literature, and a discussion of literature is never enhanced by an understanding of who could beat up whom. That is why English professors rarely argue over whether Ophelia could beat Jay Gatsby in a fight (that and because it's so obvious that Gatsby could take Ophelia). Consider the following story that I just made up:

One time, I was at a comic shop, about to purchase a comic, while a rabid comics fan at the counter was going on about how great he thinks Wolverine is. "Wolverine is the coolest!" he raved. "Wolverine could beat up anybody! I bet he could beat up..." he glanced at the comic that I was buying, "...Supergirl!"
I retorted, "Well, Supergirl is a better developed and more relatable character than Wolverine."
The Wolverine fan considered this for a moment, then shot back, "Well, sure, but what if Wolverine was carrying kryptonite?"

My point is that in 1996, Marvel fought against D.C., I had a hissy fit, and it allowed the following picture of the X-Men's Storm wearing a Wonder Woman costume to see print:

comedian Susie Felber as Wonder Woman

2005-12-29T22:24:00.000-05:00

Quoth Susie: "Best I ever looked in underwear as once I got boobs I busted out everywhere."

Visit Susie's blog.

Kate Beckinsale as Wonder Woman

2005-12-28T20:57:00.000-05:00

From Egotastic -- Kate is being considered for the role of Wonder Woman in the upcoming Joss Whedon film, and these pictures from Halloween '04 seem to be bolstering her case.

not safe for work

2005-12-28T17:26:00.000-05:00

Here are some porn stars Photoshopped to look like they are bodypainted as superheroines. But, regrettably, none of them is Wonder Woman.

lasso powers

2005-12-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

From Seanbaby.com:

And maybe it's just me, but when a sexy woman in trampy hot pants and a halter top ties me up, I'm done playing games. When we were sharing drinks earlier, I told her I was captain of the olympic diving team and that I won a Nobel prize in Penis, but now... it's time for blunt, sexy, dirty talking honesty. If that kind of situation can't drag unmitigated truth out of you, nothing ever will, double-o-seven. I wouldn't lie to Wonder Woman, the only thing the lasso would do to me is get me uninhibited enough to go through with my idea to sing Barry White at her.

a quarter-century of wonder

2005-12-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

So, last week when my mom saw pictures of me in my Wonder Woman underpants, she, naturally, assumed the act of wearing them was referential; of course I had had Wonder Woman underpants as a child, and of course I would remember this.

On the occasion of my visit, my mother searched through her photo collection, and finally discovered the germane photos -- but it turns out, I was not four or five as she had remembered, but rather a mere two-and-a-half, which is why I have no memory of having owned (and posed for photos in) Wonder Woman underpants.

And now, having returned home to my scanner with these photos, I present, "Jen as Wonder Woman: The Past Twenty-Five Years."

Uncanny, no?

Girl Power!

2005-12-27T18:57:00.000-05:00

When you think of Womyn's Lib, of course, the first image to pop into your head is always Wonder Woman. This is usually followed by images of Wonder Woman tying you up, then slowly undressing. However, if you stay with the feminine empowerment line of thought, the next ones that you are likely to think of are the Spice Girls. Now, I know you're wondering how you can enjoy both Wonder Woman and the Spice Girls simultaneously. Don't worry! As those of you who saw Spice World know, someone has already thought of this and figured out a solution.

That is Geri "Ginger Spice" Halliwell in a Wonder Woman costume. I don't think you could find a more potent symbol of feminism unless you had a photograph of Gloria Steinem punching Friedrich Nietzsche in the face. While burning her bra.

In case you wondered what these looked like stretched over some DDs

2005-12-27T16:53:00.000-05:00

Adult star Jenna Charm has Wonder Woman underpants.

Origins

2005-12-27T13:03:00.000-05:00

This was the cover of All Star Comics #8, from December 1941. The comic featured Wonder Woman's first appearance. You will notice that Wonder Woman does not appear on the cover. She's not even mentioned on the cover. She got eight pages of story that were buried in the back of the comic. That's apparently because the Justice Society hates women. Here, the metaphorical "glass ceiling" in their organization is represented by The Specter's stupid crystal ball, which would have Wonder Woman revealed trapped within, if not for the ultra-lame Dr. Mid-Nite and Starman appearing in a fog of their own disdain for anything with a vagina.

8 months later, she ended up joining the Justice Society. She was easily the strongest member of this line-up of superheroes, so, naturally, she became the team's secretary.

Aside from the honour of getting the last billing in every issue, she got to read exciting letters about the boys' adventures. Her other duties included making coffee, laughing at the other members' jokes, and, of course, daily blow jobs.

The cover of Sensation Comics #1 was taken from Wonder Woman's first appearance in All Star Comics #8. This was during comics' "Golden Age" that took place from 1938-1954 (I have read many comics from that era, and can only assume that the name was intended as ironic). Notice the (relatively) modest skirt that she is wearing. This was common among heroines of the Golden Age, like Mary Marvel (right) and... um ... Mary Marvel (right) and other heroines like... um... uh...

Okay, so there weren't many heroines in comics at that time. So sue me.

In the summer of 1942, Wonder Woman became the first woman to star in her own serialized adventure comic book. I understand that this is what counted as a great step forward for women in 1942. It's easy to make fun of the sexism in comics of this time, but it should be noted that they really were trying to present a positive image for women to aspire to. Alongside William (inventor of the lie detector test (no, really (and, yes, that is related to why Wonder Woman had the power to make people tell the truth))) Marston's stories of Wonder Woman's adventures were comics that Alice Marble wrote about actual heroic women throughout history. So, say what you will about the psychosexual subtext, it really was a feminist comic.

Among the indignities that Wonder Woman had to suffer in order to get her own comic was the removal of her skirt in favour of a similarly patterned pair of short shorts.

By the premier of her new series in 1987, even the shorts were gone leaving only her underwear. Thus, flipping through Wonder Woman covers is sort of like the world's slowest strip-tease. (Eventually, it becomes worth it (right).) In this version of her costume, the eagle on her breast was replaced with the letters "WW," in case she forgot her initials. We can only speculate as to whether she ever turned it upside down and lent it to Mary Marvel.

Many have noticed the similarity in design between Wonder Woman's outfit and the American Flag (left). Others have noticed other subtle references to her national identity, such as her working for the United States government and busting the heads of dirty Krauts alongside the United States Army. This is a bit odd, considering that Wonder Woman isn't really an American at all. In All Star Comics #8, Wonder Woman's home was on Paradise Island, a small island in the Bahamas. Paradise Island was once known as "Hog Island," but I think the new name probably attracts more tourists. When Wonder Woman's origin was rewritten in the 80's, her home was identified as Themiscyra, the capital city of the Amazon tribe, which was located on the Terme River in northern Turkey. Interestingly enough, in the comic, this Eastern European city was located somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, because aside from really sucking at physics, D.C. comics writers were apparently also not too keen on geography.

Themiscyra no longer exists, if it ever actually did exist (Greek histories claim it did, but they also believed in snake-haired women who could turn you into stone on sight, so some of their accounts have to be taken with a grain of salt). Herodotus said that after the Amazons' defeat at the battle of Thermodon (Oh, does that make you feel like big men, Greeks? Beating up a bunch of women? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!), the Amazons fled to the Russian Steppes, where they took their husbands from the Scythians, which was the origin of the Sauromatian culture. (As a side note, some maintain that the Scythians are philologically related to the Ashkenazi Jews. I mention this only because Ashkenazi has got to be the funniest name for an ethnic group I have ever heard.) There is archaeological evidence of the Sauromatians, and that they did indeed have warrior women, but they were conquered by the Mongols around 370 AD. Some anthropologists believe that there is genetic evidence among Mongolians that indicates their Amazon origin.

I wasn't particularly interested in the genealogical details of Amazons until I saw one episode of the cartoon series The Justice League, in which the League fights Amazon warriors on Themiscyra and I noticed that one of them was black. At first I thought this was an error, like the black Viking in The Norseman, but I did a bit of research to make sure. I found out that there was a group called the "Dahomey Amazons" in Africa, who were completely unrelated to the Turkish Amazons, except that they had warrior women. Also, I found out that Wonder Woman had a long-lost black sister named Nubia. The origin (above right) goes that Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, had made two figures out of clay, one black and one white. I haven't read the whole comic, but I think she was trying to make a set of novelty salt and pepper shakers, but misread the scale, so she decided instead to have Aphrodite bring them to life. Nubia was then kidnapped by Mars (who apparently didn't realize that he was from a different mythology) who trained her to be a warrior. Nubia is usually seen as Wonder Woman's enemy, but they do have their playful moments, like when they were in the local production of Rebel Without a Cause together (below).

Barbie as Wonder Woman

2005-12-27T05:15:00.000-05:00

There is a Wonder Woman Barbie, but she's out of stock.

comedy is a tough job, but someone's got to do it

2005-12-27T05:06:00.000-05:00

This is me, in my Wonder Woman underpants at the Jenny Vaudeville Show. In between my emceeing and joke-telling, I wondered aloud where I might find a man tied to train tracks to rescue.

Photo by Brian Van

Photo by Semyon

Also by Semyon. The fellow on the left is co-blogger Syd.

Read a recap of the entire show here.

Trish Stratus as Wonder Woman

2005-12-27T05:03:00.000-05:00

Trish Stratus of WWE's "RAW" and "Smackdown."

from Epinions: an article on Underroos

2005-12-27T05:02:00.000-05:00

Underoos: It’s Cool To Look Like A Fool

Rachel Bilson of "The O.C." as Wonder Woman

2005-12-27T04:59:00.000-05:00

a modern Amazon

2005-12-27T04:55:00.000-05:00

Humor writer Elizabeth Hanes on Mediabistro:

no no, Shania Twain really DOES work as Wonder Woman

2005-12-27T04:50:00.000-05:00

This site features a veritable plethora of Wonder Woman "wannabes" -- by which the site creator means that Wonder Woman headbands have been Photoshopped onto photos of celebrities, as such:

Wonder-Background

2005-12-27T04:47:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia on Wonder Woman:

In most adaptations, Wonder Woman is Princess Diana of the Amazon warrior tribe of Greek mythology. (Note that Diana is the Roman name for the Greek goddess on whom this character is based; Artemis is her Greek name.) The Amazon ambassador to the larger world, she possesses several superhuman abilities and gifts from the Greek Gods, including the Lasso of Truth, created from the Golden Girdle of Gaea and indestructable silver bracelets, formed from the Shield of Aegis. For several years she was described, in the splash page of each story, as being "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Mercury, and stronger than Hercules."

Go here for more.

Here is where to get your underpants

2005-12-27T04:32:00.000-05:00

The Wonder Woman cami and panty set is a cozy and economical way to develop a Wonder Woman-like appearance. Buying it here supports Bust Magazine, which we like to read.

Note - I ordered a small and found that the material is not very stretchy, so the bottoms barely fit up over my hipbones. So if you are vacillating on the size, you might want to order the next size up. ("Small" in this case means "size 2").

Coming soon -- photos of Wonder Woman underpants being worn in public. And posts from my blogging partner-in-crime-fighting, Syd Bernstein.

If you have some Wonder Woman underpants or other Wonder Woman costume, we encourage you to send us pictures for the site! Send to jen-at-jenisfamous.com

Welcome to the Wonder Woman Blog

2005-12-27T04:12:00.000-05:00

This blog was created due to the convergence of several events:

First, I became aware of the site Leiasmetalbikini.com.
Then, a few short days later, I met burlesque performer Gigi LaFemme, who appears on Leiasmetalbikini. At the same burlesque show at which I met Gigi, I also met Creamy Stevens, who performed a Supergirl-themed strip act.
Unbeknownst to anyone, I had recently been to the Bust website and purchased the Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set.
While waiting for my new Wonder Woman underpants to arrive and then seeing Creamy as Supergirl, I thought about how I might employ my new Wonder Woman underpants in the service of public WonderWomanhood.
I had a vaudeville show coming up (I am a comedian), and I like to rock a good costume from time to time. Then, while advertising the vaudeville at a comedy show the week before, I blurted out "...and I'll be hosting in my Wonder Woman underpants!" And then I was committed to doing so.
I did, in fact, host a vaudeville show in my Wonder Woman underpants. Photos were taken, and those photos were put on the internet.
In response to this, my mother dug through her family photos and produced a thing I did not know existed: photos of me in Wonder Woman underpants from when I was two.
Therefore, I clearly needed a blog about this.