![]() ![]() (She eventually switched to Photon, and then Pulsar, and then Spectrum.) Marvel got a kicky new black costume and lost her powers and memories while another character, Monica Rambeau-able to turn into any form of electromagnetic radiation-took on the Captain Marvel name for a while. It’s hard to build differentiable stories around that. This can happen with female derivations of male characters without a good writer or an editorial push, they’re just characters with the same powers as another character. She was sexually assaulted she got handed an unfortunate brainwashing-and-pregnancy storyline. ![]() Marvel didn't have the best run in the Marvel Universe in the 1970s and 1980s. The thing is, empowering name be damned, Ms. (Also, Marvel Comics already had a Marvel Girl-Jean Grey, the mutant telepath and telekinetic member of the X-Men who would eventually become the genocidal, cosmically powerful Phoenix.) Marvel had a precognitive “sixth sense ” acquiring superpowers had literally raised her consciousness. Like new cultural awareness over the possibilities of pronouns today, the idea of a honorific for women that didn’t point to their marital status or age was both revolutionary and necessary. It symbolized that decade’s spreading wave of feminism, so much so that it was the name of a whole magazine about feminism (the very first issue of which featured Wonder Woman on the cover). And in the 1970s, “Ms.” was still in contention. It wasn’t weird to see an honorific in a superhero or villain name: there were Misters (Terrific, Fantastic, Mind, E) and Doctors (Strange, Fate, Octopus, Midnight, Manhattan). My point here is, you might be underwhelmed by a character being named Ms. She’s scheduled to show up in the Arrowverse of DC-based television shows on the CW this season, potentially in advance of her own show. Nowadays she’s a former soldier, a lesbian, kicking a lot of ass, and wearing arguably the best costume in comics today. Like Lilith-who was cursed with infertility and forced to haunt the night collecting semen spilled during masturbation, becoming mother to the seductive sex demons the incubi and succubi (and grandmother, then, to all the vampires)-Batwoman, too, has a more interesting side story. But she was too equal, and eventually the publisher wrote her out, recapitulating the biblical myth of Lilith, Adam’s all-too-equal wife in the Garden of Eden before he complained to God and had her kicked out in favor of Eve, who was nominally more compliant until the whole apple thing. Now, before Batgirl there was a Batwoman, created as a foil and love interest for Batman (and to show that there was nothing untoward going on between Batman and Robin). She started out as the Cat and then got needlessly specific.) (A major exception: Catwoman, Batman’s forever foe and romantic partner. And so too we had Batgirl, Hawkgirl, Miss Arrowette, Miss Martian, Mary Marvel, Spider-Girl, She-Hulk, She-Thing … the naming was uncreative at best, infantilizing at worst. Did Superman have a Superwoman? No! (Well, yes, but it’s complicated.) He had Supergirl. For years, decades even, women superheroes were often gender-swapped versions of existing male characters. The naming of women superheroes is, as TS Eliot kind of said, a serious matter. (See: Frankenstein.) DC Entertainment's Shazam movie comes out in April, and as far as I know he’ll be the only superhero who can’t say his own name without losing his powers. DC eventually absorbed Fawcett and the Marvel family into mainline Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman continuity, but eventual legal trouble with Marvel Comics resulted, decades later, in the character being known only as Shazam, which had been the name of the Wizard. Created just a year after Superman by CC Beck and Bill Parker for Fawcett Comics, that Captain Marvel couldn’t defeat the lawsuit that DC launched in the 1950s, claiming infringement on Superman. ![]() When Billy said the word “Shazam!”-an acronym for the abilities of Samson, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury, and yes, I know-he was transformed into a strapping, red-besuited monster fighter. Another wrinkle: this Captain Marvel isn’t DC Comics' Captain Marvel, who also had an augmented Superman powerset but was actually a plucky orphan named Billy Batson gifted with magic powers by a wizard. ![]()
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