Profile: Golden Glider

Lisa Snart, Golden Glider
First appearance: The Flash #250 Vol 1, 1977. The sister of Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, she was co-created by Irv Novick, who gave her a costume design almost similar to one worn by Talia al-Ghul that he drew for her in the Batbooks.

Current status: dead

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: Mark Waid, when writing the 1992 Flash Annual, reverted her to her criminal status, after all the time when, since Barry Allen had died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, she’d reformed, not having any further purpose for being a criminal – the Flash was her only reason for being one, as she held him responsible for the death of her boyfriend, the Top, and wanted to seek revenge upon by targeting his loved ones, whether they be Iris West Allen or Barry’s parents. Then, in 1996, after being largely out of the picture for four years, Waid revealed her having been frozen to death by one of the Chillblaines she’d recruited as her crime partners/boyfriends.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Contrived, forced writing, for the purpose of bringing back an adversary who’d been effective in the time that Barry was around (her first three storylines were dynamite), but afterwards needed no more use as a criminal character. I remember reading Flash #18 Vol. 2, where she’d had a memorable role in the party the Rogues Gallery was holding as part of a reunion with a few other villains as well, and Waid decidedly didn’t respect what was done there by predecessor William Messner-Loebs. And then, after Waid had reverted her to being a criminal in the Flash Annual, he didn’t even make any more use out of her, and subsequently killed her off at the hands of one of her Chillblaines in 1996, when the latest one turned out to be smarter than he looked. Captain Cold later tracked down and killed this last one in 2002.

I know that with Iris West Allen returning to the picture in 1994, it’s not like Lisa Snart could’ve been a regular cast member or a friend of the main players so easily, since Iris had the most definite grudge against her and would no doubt have wanted to break her neck, but that doesn’t mean that they had to turn Lisa back into a crook again, even one who operated behind the scenes. That’s what’s come to be known as lazy writing, pure and simple.