What the Shea

dcwomenkickingass:

When I was at Boston Comic Con, I stopped by to chat with Cliff Chiang who told me there was a young man who was a fan of the blog looking for me. I never met with him at the show but did catch up with him in my quest for guest posters for my vacation week. I soon pieced together that this was actually a young writer for Boston University whose writing on other topics had caught my eye. Please meet Jon Christianson, who today writes about female villains.

“Why can’t female villains stay villains?”

That statement, made by Grace Randolph during her Between the Pages webshow, brings up the curious conundrum of why so many of the already few female villains never seem to stay on “the dark side” for long. 

Catwoman went from being one of Batman’s greatest foes to being one of his greatest allies. Black Widow started out as a Russian spy, Black Cat intended to be more evil before meeting Spider-Man, and Emma Frost, Scarlet Witch, and Rogue all got their start opposing the X-Men. Since the New 52 reboot, Poison Ivy is now on the Birds of Prey and Silver Banshee has been hanging out with Supergirl. What is going on here.

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I love me a good morally ambiguous hero or villain of either gender, but this is an interesting article that’s convinced me we could all use a few more Cheshires and Scandal Savages around the DCnU and Earth-616.

dcwomenkickingass:

While I on vacation this week I have a series of guest posts from readers, bloggers and other writers. This guest post is by Josie Campbell whose name you may recognize from her work writing news at Comic Book Resources. Josie is writing on the importance of Wonder Woman. It’s a terrific essay and I ask that you read the whole thing. Her thoughts follow,

Of all the superheroes in all the world there is only one, in my eyes, who has fundamentally changed our culture as a whole — and it ain’t Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or any of the other superlative-Men who get trotted out in that capacity. 

That superhero is Wonder Woman.

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This is wonderful and deserves a good read.