Noted comics blogger Jill Pantozzi recently put up a post discussing why Marvel doesn’t have any famous women. She also discusses the mystifying cancellation of X-23, written by novelist Marjorie M. Liu.
I’ve got to be honest, I agree with her, with one caveat—Marvel women can absolutely kick butt when it comes to team books. Here are some notable female characters that stand out for me who have only existed in teams:
Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Storm, Rogue, Psylocke, Jean Grey, Moonstar/Mirage, Invisible Woman, Valkyrie, and Spider-Woman II.
These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure I could come up with more, but you get the idea. Then there are the female characters who apparently can’t keep a single title running to save their lives. She-Hulk is a pretty obvious stand-out in this category. So is Ms. Marvel. I should include Spider-Woman I in this category, but her ongoing was canceled decades ago.
I’ve got to be honest, part of the problem has to be the writers. She-Hulk seemed to be doing pretty well under Dan Slott’s guidance, but when Peter David took it over he disbarred She-Hulk, made her a bounty hunter, and introduced all sorts of subplots that first left me confused, and then just left me cold. As an aside, I hate to come down on Peter David like this because I genuinely like most of his work…but his She-Hulk run was completely unmemorable. The same goes with Ms. Marvel. It was somewhat interesting, but Brain Reed just constantly failed to deliver. I think part of that had to do with all the fallout from Civil War and Dark Reign, but come on—she recruits Machine Man and Sleepwalker to aid her in one issue, has a beach wrestling match with Tigra in another issue, and then disappears to be replaced by Moonstone, with absolutely no suspense, at least not to me.
This leaves us with one question—why are there so many great female characters in team Marvel books? I hate to harp on the point again, but let’s face it, female characters in team books have been fortunate enough to get some grade-A writers. Chris Claremont invented some of the greatest female characters in X-Men. Jean Grey became Phoenix under his reign, and then simply settled for being one of the most powerful telepaths and telekinetics in the Marvel Universe. Storm became the leader of the X-Men, Rogue became a mainstay and he turned Psylocke from a British telepath into essentially the female version of Wolverine—put through the wringer only to come out stronger on the other side.
John Byrne turned the She-Hulk into the fun-loving character we know and love today, someone who can either beat you in a physical fight or beat you in a mental battle using the legal system. He also turned the Invisible Girl into the Invisible Woman, and in the process made her one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe.
I’d also like to point out that Fabian Nicieza is no slouch at this, either. Namorita and Firestar were second-rate castoffs before he put them in the New Warriors. Then he introduced Silhouette, and then Turbo, a new character based off an obscure old character.
You might be able to say that with team books writers can juggle characters, give each member some kind of subplot that you don’t have to spend too much time with before leaping to another character. So all the characters can shine, and everyone gets a chance to look good. You might also be able to say that when you put women in their own book, they are mostly written by men, and the target demographic is largely male, so who cares unless the heroines are being fetishized.
However, here’s another thought. Wolverine, one of the most popular characters to spin out of a team book, got his own miniseries back in the 80s when his popularity was soaring. It worked so well Marvel started putting out more miniseries, like Meltdown, and then spun him off into his own series. In the 90s, they did the same thing with Gambit. Over at DC, the same thing happened with Robin. I also think the same thing happened with Power Girl, too. Geoff Johns put her on the Justice Society, she got a two-issue spotlight in JSA Classified, and then got her own book. I’d like to make the case that maybe, what Marvel should do, is spin one or two characters off into their own miniseries for a bit. Maybe Brian Michael Bendis has a Spider-Woman solo project he’d like to do for four issues. Maybe Rogue needs to go off on her own for a bit. It’s worth thinking about.
The final point I’d like to make is that female writers on female titles, which should be the best combination ever, seem to be criminally undervalued. I thought Marjorie M. Liu was doing a great job on X-23, giving someone who was created with no personality some personality. Similarly, Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman was pretty good—and as a plus she made Giganta an engaging character, which seems to have been forgotten after her run. I’m not going to speculate on any goings-on there except to say I think pulling those writers off their respective books was, and still is, unfair. Right now Gail Simone is writing Batgirl—we’ll see what happens.
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