Profile: Enchantress

June Moone, Enchantress
First appearance: Strange Adventures #187, April 1966. Besides having an origin almost similar to that of Captain Marvel/Billy Batson, it’s possible that the inspiration for Moone at the time may have been Elizabeth Montgomery’s comedic role as a young witch in the Bewitched television series, which ran from 1964-1972.

Current status: appeared in Shadowpact in 2006.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: as early as 1980, she was turned into a villainess in Superman Family #204, in a story starring Supergirl. Even after Crisis on Infinite Earths (where she’d been part of the villain’s army), this continued, with June next becoming a cast member of the Suicide Squad. Later on, in 1999, she was reworked again in Day of Judgement as less of a villainess but still far from a real heroine. However, the story had Faust (the son of Felix Faust, I think), murdering the Enchantress portion of June in order to restart the fires of hell, leaving June in a passive and almost catatonic state.

What’s wrong with how this was done? I know that by the time the whole change done in Superman Family came around, DC had long moved away from some of the goofier approaches they’d specialized in during the Silver Age, when Moone first appeared, but that’s still no excuse for turning a character who could’ve had comic relief potential into a crook! But Day of Judgement is worse, with a pretty ludicrous premise of June having her persona dealt another terrible blow. JLA: Black Baptism did fix things a little though, when a character named Anita Soulfeeda was revealed to be the Enchantress portion of June’s soul.

But with Shadowpact, which was scripted by the pretentious Bill Willingham, whose works I will not support after the jaw-droppingly crass job he did when he wrote Robin and Detective Comics, it only got worse again, because here, once again, a character who could be better repaired gets stuck in a story that’s little more than another abysmal effort to abuse Jean Loring as the new Eclipso. Need I continue?