Black Canary, Wasp, and Raven walk into a bar. No, this is not the beginning of a bad joke. It’s not even a strange sort of menagerie. It’s a squad of superheroines whose combined talents could level the building they stand in. What’s that you say? You want to know even more about these superheroines? If you’re interested by this first paragraph, you’ll be interested in my ELI on the history of superheroines.
Let’s start at the beginning, the comic book boom that came just after the thirties. Newspaper comics had been popular throughout the Great Depression. The obvious money making idea was to take the comics people had shown they loved and stick them into a book. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two entrepreneurs with one big idea, started it all when they got their brainchild comics character published in 1938. You might know this brainchild as Superman.
Superheroes were a fantasy for young and old readers alike. Everyone loves the idea of swooping through the skies to save a falling plane or to stop a bomb. Not only were superhumans popular from the start, but they couldn’t have appeared at a more opportune moment. World War II was upon us, bringing with it an automatic archenemy for the new superheroes to face. Now, I know what you’re thinking. What about the superheroines? Do not worry, citizens, for the first female costumed crimefighter appeared in 1940. Her name was the Woman in Red, and she was not to be messed with.
After the Woman in Red, superheroines popped up almost daily. The war was not just profitable for the male supers; it also allowed for superheroines to join the fight, just as women in the real world had left their homes to work in factories to help the men overseas. Just like Rosie the Riveter, female superheroes were symbols of empowerment for the women who were saying goodbye to a cult of domesticity.
Wonder Woman was the most memorable of these female symbols. She was created quite close to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and jumped into the war effort with a costume of red, white, and blue, complete with an eagle-emblazoned top. Without further ado, she began to bash supervillains alongside the other supers.
After World War II, when women began to trickle back into the home as men took back their jobs, superheroines fell from the limelight as well. Then Frederic Wertham dealt the final blow to superheroines that had survived to the 50s; he published Seduction of the Innocent, a book dedicated to convincing already paranoid Americans that comics were corrupting their children. This led to new editorial codes in many comics publishers, including a section in the new DC comics Editorial Policy Code that stated “The inclusion of females in stories is specifically discouraged. Women, when used in plot structure, should be secondary in importance…”
Next we arrive at the 60s, when modern was cool and supergroups were rampant. Most of these supergroups had a 4-1 ratio of males to females, teams usually including just one token female character. Unfortunately, the popular modern aspect caused a lot of fantasy and mythology in comics to disappear. This was a special issue for Wonder Woman. In 1968, she lost her powers, opened a boutique, and cried a lot.
The 70s was a time for, as Mike Madrid puts it in The Supergirls, “Sirens and Suffragettes.” There was an outburst of sexual freedom that transferred from the real world to the comics. Heroines were trying to find themselves, just like women in real life. The 80s came around with darker, more mysterious heroines, including Elektra, who appeared in her own film later on.
The 90s brought with it a flood of beautiful, perfect, supermodel heroines. The comics of the time showed impossible ideals and paragons of beauty. To end on a happy note, the 2000s aren’t doing half bad. With strong female readership and a plethora of heart pounding superhero action movies, superheroines are starting to resurface. Unfortunately, they are still in the minority. For instance, in the roughly seventeen movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that have been released or planned, only one (Captain Marvel) has a superheroine lead.
I’ve only just scratched the surface of superheroines, however. What I just covered is a base I’ll be building on for more of this project. If you find you’re interested and want to read more, don’t worry. I’ll be doing a second blog post; you should come back and check it out later. The history of superheroines is tightly intertwined with our own. I’m excited about this topic and ready to learn more. Are you?
~Tia
