NYSOM: Still Waiting for Gadot...

Last month I had a bit of a seasonal moan here about the ‘supporting’ role of women on screen. I don’t consider myself a ‘capital F’ feminist and, frankly, I don’t care the sex of a lead character as long as they’re interesting. But there’s no denying that when it comes to super-powers, comic-book adaptations and jumping glass ceilings in a single bound, the buzzword is still hero rather than heroine.

I thought it was the festive season and the prospect of a long  yuletide flight that was generally making me melancholy (or possibly the generous inflight beverages as I changed hemispheres). However, somewhere over othe Pacific, I struck up a nice conversation with a fellow passenger  (on his way to coach one of the Australian Winter Olympic teams, I kid you not) and when we exhausted talk of ski-ing and all things snowy, the subject turned to MY day job in the industry.  Ten minutes of me denying it’s half as glamorous as people think it is, is usually enough for any sane guy to turn on his headphones and pray for turbulence, but in this case he seemed to be someone who thankfully preferred Scorsese to Showgirls.

It also turned out that his girlfriend had recently been complaining of exactly the same lack of celluloid female empowerment and he asked if I knew of any solo outings were in the works. Now I could list a hundred films that might be lingering between Development Hell  (patent pending) and Complicated Rights Issues ™  but short of the much-discussed Superman-Batman-Wonder Woman trifecta and a few female mutants in the X-Men, it was hard to name any super-heroine you’ll see doing it for themselves any time soon. 

But here’s the interesting thing. It isn’t for a lack of candidates.

I began reading comics waaaay back when the reaction of a girl walking into a comic shop was akin to the way that The Big Bang Theory now plays it for laughs (and, seriously, while I know it’s a comedy, it’s the one part of the show that irks because, hello, anyone who’s been into any comic shop recently knows it’s where the good guys AND gals are hanging out!). Nowadays I don’t get down to the Big Apple’s Forbidden Planet on Broadway as much, but if I did, the chances are that I’d probably bump shoulders with some of the film industry people I’m already meeting – and who have long since discovered that comics are like storyboarded portfolios for investing in future projects.

But it wasn’t so long ago that the female characters that populated the comics were often little more than a pair of breasts welded on to existing icons. Superman,  Hulk and Spider-man are famous for their longevity but titles such as Supergirl, She-Hulk and Spider-Woman were (and to a certain extent, still are) less successful in their own titles.  In previous decades, the name is the clue; their whole reason for existence was the need to replicate a previous success story. 

It’s a little different these days. It remains true that female-led comic-book titles don’t seem to last as long, but there are more female characters that feel unique to themselves - their stories being originated around them rather than shipped in and cloned from another title. Equally, they appear to be empowered rather super-empowered, the strengths coming from what they do rather than how they do it.

Let's look at some contenders...

Brian Michael Bendis has given us the subversive Scarlet (from Marvel’s Icon imprint) which might have a shipping schedule that clearly assigns it a lower priority than the likes of the merchandising-magnet  X-Men, but which breaks formula just as much as it breaks the fourth-wall with the anarchist addressing police corruption and the audience in the same frame. She’s a breath of fresh and profane air, a Militant Miss with a believable agenda taken to  dramatic extremes. No super-powers here, but plenty of attitude. Lazarus, written by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Michael Lark and Santi Arcas, is a story set in the near-future in a world run in a not dissimilar fashion to the families/kingdoms of A Game of Thrones and features a genetically-engineered woman called Forever Carlyle, physically and psychologically bred as the protector of her family’s financial empire. Her ability with a katana is a threat to others, but a subtle questioning of her role could be a danger to herself.  It’s published by Image, frankly the go-to company for the freshest of action ideas in the medium at the moment.

CONTINUES... >>>

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