Profile: Invisible Girl/Woman

Sue Storm, Invisible Girl/Woman
First appearance: Fantastic Four #1, 1961

Current status: member of the FF and mother of two children

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: underplayed in the first several issues of the FF when it first began (until she got her force shield powers, she was hardly that effective in portrayal), then, when John Byrne was writing in the mid-80s, she had a miscarriage (later reversed, with Valeria becoming the second child), was tortured along with Mr. Fantastic by Mephisto in his astral lair of hell, and was even turned evil at one point. Oh, did I mention that lately, with J. Michael Straczynski writing, she went into death limbo? (Of course it’ll be reversed, and better be too, but it’s still bad enough.)

What’s wrong with how this was done? Well, I suppose I can overlook Stan Lee’s underwhelming depiction of Sue at the time it all began, because it wasn’t exactly, you know, excessively violent, but John Byrne’s writing was a lot more worrisome and questionable. Did Sue really have to go through that initial miscarriage?

There was also that other point where she got brainwashed into badness. And the time when both she and Reed and, lest we forget, their son Franklin, got trapped in Mephisto’s astral plane of hell. Who needs it?

And now, in 2006, the House of Ideas seems to think they’re clever by writing a story in which Sue’s the latest to go into presumed death limbo. We’ve already had Reed and Ben do that (and her brother Johnny will probably be next), but it’s already old news, and aggravating at that.

Was there anything good to come out of any of this? It was the miscarriage being reversed in recent years, and the result was in birthing Valeria. But even so, why couldn't Marvel have given Sue the chance at bearing a second child even back in the 1980s?

For a character who’s the strongest member of the FF thanks to her force shield powers, I’d think she deserves better than that.

Profile: Black Canary 2

Dinah Laurel Lance, Black Canary 2
First appearance: since this is the daughter of the first one we’re talking about, her first appearance, retroactively speaking, was in Justice League of America #75 in late 1969, but it was only in Justice League of America #219-220 in 1983 that this actually became known officially, when Johnny Thunder’s Bahdnesian genie, Thunderbolt, explained how, thanks to a spell cast upon her in childhood by the Wizard, she’d gained her Canary Cry, but because at that time it was thought to be a curse, parents Dinah Drake and Larry Lance and also Johnny himself decided that she’d have to be put in comatose protection, which T-Bolt did by storing her inside his own magical realm, bringing her out when her mother died off-panel following the battle with Aquarius in JlofA #73-74, and turning what might’ve been a curse into a blessing. And then, in 1986, Roy Thomas, the writer who’d come up with the whole retcon idea in the first place, revised it again in Secret Origins so that it was told that she’d grown up normally, taking up the Canary mantle at age 19, and that her Canary Cry was the result of exposure to some of the first Green Lantern’s energies, and became fully manifested as she grew older.

Current status: continuing in her career as a crimefighter, getting her missions mostly from the former Batgirl Barbara Gordon, now Oracle.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: the Blonde Bombshell had been underused many times before, and even subjected to at least one really stupid storyline in an issue of The Brave and the Bold in 1981. In Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters in 1987, she was captured and tortured by a drug baron, whom Green Arrow shot to death, but not before the scumbag’s violence deprived Dinah of her ability to have children, and also of her Canary Cry. But the real bottom-feeder discriminatory act to have been inflicted upon Dinah was in Identity Crisis #3, when Deathstroke, in a more or less out-of-character appearance, tried to strangle and handcuff her in a contrived fight scene.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Anyone could argue, not without justification, that what she went through in The Longbow Hunters was more gruesome than need be (as far as I know, it was said that she hadn’t been raped by the drug baron, yet that itself still doesn’t make the story any good, nor does it justify its existence). But what she went through in Identity Crisis at the hands of Deathstroke, that was crude, vulgar, obscene, to say nothing short of juvenile and imbecile. And those reviewers who fawned over the miniseries have the chutzpah to say that this is storytelling at its most masterful? Puh-leez.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Out of The Longbow Hunters, yes, but out of Identity Crisis, NO. Following The Longbow Hunters, when Green Arrow got his own series, and Dinah was a frequent co-star, she developed surprisingly well as a character, even getting her own mini-feature in Action Comics Weekly written by Sharon Wright, who’d also assisted Mike Grell in writing her parts in Green Arrow's own series. In 2001, two years after Birds of Prey began as an ongoing series, Chuck Dixon wrote an adventure for Dinah in which she tripped to one of the Lazarus Pits Batman’s adversary Ra’s al Ghul used to revitalize himself, and this restored Dinah’s Canary Cry and ability to have children. With that in mind, what else can I say, but, bravo, Dixon!

Profile: Zatanna

Zatanna Zatara
First appearance: Hawkman #4 Vol. 1 in 1964

Current status: all but retired from being a superheroine, she continues in her showbiz career as a stage magician

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in Identity Crisis, she was made to look like a baddie because she mindwiped Dr. Light, while the villain’s rape of Sue Dibny, after the script smacked the readers over the face with it, was ignored altogether. Zatanna also never got to present her viewpoint of how she felt about seeing another woman being violated; she was perfectly mute on the subject, ditto Black Canary. And to make matters worse, she was punched in the stomach by Deathstroke, causing her to vomit.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Discrimination against a woman it was, to say nothing short of binding and gagging her of a voice on the subject of the violation of women, just like with Sue Dibny. The part in the Identity Crisis miniseries where she’s socked in the tummy by Slade Wilson reeks very unpleasantly of the idea of hitting a woman out of bigotry.

In the JLA story arc, “Crisis of Conscience,” that’s where we finally get her viewpoint and she stands firm on the punishment she gave to Dr. Light. But that only serves to show what was wrong with IC to begin with, and why the story has now been almost entirely discredited.

Profile: Betty Ross-Banner

Betty Ross-Banner
First appearance: 1962 in the Incredible Hulk #1 (first volume. The second one grew out of Tales to Astonish)

Current status: may have turned up alive and under the influence of Nightmare in 2004, when the Hulk experienced a bizarre adventure on an island in the sea.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: her first husband, Glenn Talbot, had dealt her quite a few beatings when he realized that she loved Bruce Banner, the Hulk, more than she loved Glenn, she was even turned into a creature called Harpy at one point by MODOK, she went through at least one miscarriage, and then, in 1998, to cap it all off, she was secretly poisoned to death by Emil Blonsky, the Abomination.

What’s wrong with how this was done? The Hulk’s own world may be a dark one, I’ll admit to that. But they still went way too far, capped off with the death Peter David put her through in 1998, which may have been done as an act of revenge upon Marvel’s own editorial for some complications they’d caused him earlier. Why couldn’t Betty have some children and at least lead a good enough life, as a wife, mother, and even sidekick to the Hulk, Bruce Banner? It was uncalled for, to have her rubbed out, and this was a real nadir in an otherwise very good run David had on the Hulk for 11 years.

It’s possible that she may have recently returned to the living world (as of this writing, David himself returned to writing the Hulk again in 2004), but they really hammered Betty’s own problems away much too hard, right down to one point where what would seem to be her spirit (?) is seen shouting at the Hulk in the third volume to stay away from the people he cares about, because he always seems to end up hurting them, however unintentional.

Which is just sledge-hammering an already moot point about the green goliath.

Profile: Magenta

Frances Kane, Magenta
First appearance: The New Teen Titans #17, 1982

Current status: all but cured of insanity and villainy

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: her magnetic psyche began to affect her sanity, causing it to alternate between positive and negative, and then, in 1993, she was implanted with “Trigon seeds” by Raven, but was eventually cured of that. However, with her sanity still damaged, she attacked her former boyfriend, Wally West, former Kid Flash and now the main Flash, in 1995. In 2001, she fell in with the cult of Cicada in the “Blood Will Run” story arc in The Flash #170-173, attempting to drag Wally to his doom, but the gang of Cicada was thwarted. It was after her stint with a new gathering of the Flash’s Rogues’ Gallery that she began to regain her sanity, and went to get psychiatric therapy.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Well you know what? I think it was that DC threw away some potential to give Fran some real direction as a character, and instead resorted to using her as a semi-villainess who lost her way. And when I think about it now, bringing her back in 2001 just to use her as a folly tool against the hero that can make one’s jaw drop in startlement, was more than a bit forced too.

Fran almost got a good direction to go in when she tried to help rescue the Titans from Brother Blood in 1987, rounding up some other superheroes from such groups as the Justice League to help her and them. But since then, alas, the political correctness of the 1990s seems to have gotten the better of the writers at DC, even if she has turned to the good side again. (In “Rogue War” from 2005, she joins the “good” Rogues in battling the bad ones in Keystone City in the Flash’s book.)

Profile: Captain America

Steve Rogers, Captain America
First appearance: 1940 in his own title

Current status: continuing his career as the Star-Spangled Avenger and swinging his mighty shield.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in “The Superia Strategem” story arc from 1991, he was turned into a woman, no joke. Then, in 2002, when published in a Marvel Knights-labeled series, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s classic creation became the victim of political bias, depicted as believing that his country was to blame for the attacks upon it during 9-11. The Marvel Knights version only got worse from there, as he went through additional stories that insulted Steve as a patriot or even as a ladies man. It was thankfully cancelled a year and a half later, and since then, Steve Rogers has returned to better form in another volume rightfully set again in the regular Marvel Universe and line, written by Ed Brubaker.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Taking a beloved character and exploiting him for a practically obsessive political bias that succeeds only in alienating the audience, both liberal and conservative, is simply non de-riguerre. And in a time when America is at war with the enemy, it’s also offensive. Not to mention that the way the character was degraded in a storyline written by Chuck Austen, a now ousted hack writer, depicting him as anti-love/sex, was also unbearable.

Thankfully, with the negative reception growing and the book’s sales plummeting, the editors at Marvel had to retract the position they were taking, and returned Steve to a respectable characterization again as well as the regular Marvel universe and line, writing off the Marvel Knights rendition as “alternate universe” (something that seems to have overrun their whole publication line as of recent), and Ed Brubaker’s own writing, I’ll admit, is certainly a lot better than the mess Captain America was put through for at least two years.

“The Superia Stratagem” storyline, conceived by Mark Gruenwald, was a big misfire in an otherwise respectable run that he had on Capt. America’s solo books in his time as writer/editor as well, and was embarrassingly bad. Thank goodness that too was done away with.

Profile: Scarlet Witch

Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch
First appearance: X-Men #4, 1964

Current status: self-depowered

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: the children she bore at the time she was married to the Vision turned out to be figments of her imagination, conceived via her magical skills, and dissolved, then, she went crazy in West Coast Avengers and turned to the bad side again, cutting her hair short and rejoining her biological father, Magneto, along with her twin brother Quicksilver, before coming back to her senses again. Then, in Avengers: Disassembled in 2004, she – or, more precisely, her bad clone, it turned out, was acting in revenge for “hiding the truth” from her by not telling her what her children really were, and tried killing off some of the Avengers and making others like She-Hulk go insane. And the only person who could subdue the doppelganger, it turned out, was Doctor Strange, who then told everyone the “truth” about what caused Wanda’s double to go off the edge. It was in the House of M crossover that this was revealed to have been a clone, and that the real one was apparently being controlled by Quicksilver (I wonder what Crystal of Attilan thinks about that?), and upon emerging from under his influence, the real Wanda then exacted a payback lesson against both Pietro and her father Magneto by depowering many mutants on the planet, including herself.

What’s wrong with how this was done? In the aftermath of discovering that her two children were just products of her own mind and magic, John Byrne, who was responsible for the “development” that took place at the time, turned her into a really laughable stereotype. Her devolving into a vixenish villainess teetered on the brink of Cartoonland, right down to the character design (while it took place off-panel in WCA #56, her scratching of Wonder Man across his chest was sickening). Worst, she was depicted as a lunatic just for the sake of making Magneto look good and the wiser – he was shown acting honorably, whereas Wanda by contrast was perfectly one-dimensional in the evil personality Byrne wrote her in, meaning that Magneto was in the position of arguing – very weakly at that – that she was screwing up.

It got worse. In 2004, in the aforementioned crossover, this very same storyline Byrne wrote up in 1990 was dredged up again, regardless of the fact that it made very little sense to begin with, and Wanda was again disgraced as a character, in a script by Brian Bendis that was virtually unchallenging, because, rather than to set up something involving a really challenging plot, we instead get a cliched plot rife with derivative stereotypes. That Wanda did turn out – unsurprisingly – to be just a pawn in a plot by her brother, doesn’t counteract the bad taste the crossover House of M leaves behind.

As far as I know, Quicksilver himself, in the aftermath of House of M, seems to have restored the mutant powers of a lot of those who’d lost them, perhaps including his sister's. But even that doesn’t redeem the fact that it was simply a bad idea to begin with.

Profile: Tigra

Greer Nelson, Tigra
First appearance: 1972

Current status: not so active as an Avenger, but still pretty active as a California police officer.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in late 1989-early 1990, when John Byrne was writing West Coast Avengers, where Greer was a regular, she went insane, devolving into…well, a cat-like, animal state, and Hank Pym had to shrink and incubate her (yes, he did). In the 19th issue of Ms. Marvel's second series, the Puppet Master makes her into one of his subjects. And then, in "New Avengers" she's beaten up by a minion of Jigsaw's in revenge for stopping his boss.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It was fairly reflective of the problems that littered the WCA during Byrne’s run on it for about a year – the women were almost all ineffective or unconvincing in their roles, reduced to mere window-dressing, as in the case of Janet Van Dyne, or, as in Tigra’s case, rendered trivial and insane, and needing to be locked up. Ugh.

Thank goodness that Byrne was soon taken off the title (before it happened, he wrote a joke panel in one WCA issue where he explained a continuity glitch), and Roy and Dann Thomas, who’d returned to do some more work at Marvel, did their best to repair all the damage Byrne had done that year.

Unfortunately, Greer was not done any favors when she became one of the pawns in Civil War, and then a marionette of the Puppet Master's, which almost seems out of character for Phil Masters, and certainly wasn't being done any favors when she was assaulted by one of Jigsaw's enforcers who used a pair of levity boots and an invisibility cloak. Mainly because Tigra would surely have been able to detect his arrival with her heightened senses, and thus the invisibility wouldn't have been that effective.

Profile: Katma Tui

Katma Tui
First appearance: Green Lantern #30 Vol. 2, July 1964

Current status: dead since 1988

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in Action Comics Weekly #602, she was slain by Star Sapphire, some time after Carol Ferris had fallen completely under the control of the Zamaron device that had taken control of her to begin with, and was possessed by the Predator. Katma's since-widowed husband, John Stewart, was outraged at fellow Green Lantern Hal Jordan for this. Katma was resurrected in 1992 at the end of GL: Mosaic, but this was ruined yet again when Zero Hour took place, and she was among those killed.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It couldn’t possibly be simpler to explain: cheap-jack wipeout of a pretty good character, presumably because they didn’t know what else to do with her. Christopher Priest may have written the storyline at the time, and it was simply dismaying. And the editors of ZH who decided to off Katma yet again after all the trouble taken to bring her back weren't doing any favors either.

Personally, I’d think it’d be high time already to bring Katma Tui back, but…who at DC Comics is going to do it now?

Profile: Carol Ferris

Carol Ferris, aka Star Sapphire (and Predator)
First appearance: Showcase #22, 1959

Current status: continuing in her career as chairwoman of Ferris Aircrafts, LTD.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: although Green Lantern defeated the male conception of her imagination called the Predator, it was not the end – it merged back into her, and at the same time, it also led to her changing back into Star Sapphire completely. Then, in Action Comics Weekly #602 in 1988, she slew Katma Tui, the female member of the GL Corps from Korugar, who’d been married to John Stewart for several years.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It didn’t need to be. And while Carol may have been under control of Predator, who was later revealed to be an alien parasite, this was still a case that reeked in some ways of, well…the stereotype of hostility between women?

At least that’s what it seems like.

Profile: Hank Pym, Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Yellowjacket

Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Yellowjacket
First appearance: 1961 in Tales to Astonish

Current status: inactive member of the Avengers, having taken time off with Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: he was brainwashed by his own creation, the mad cyborg Ultron. This later resulted in the deterioration of his mental stability, leading to despair in his work as a scientist. But what really ended up damaging Hank Pym as a character was when in 1981, in an overwrought storyline in which he was trying to regain his credibility as a superhero with his fellow Avengers, he ended up smacking his then wife, Janet Van Dyne, the Winsome Wasp, to try and chase her away from his preparations. He did this again a few issues later, which triggered Jan’s anguish for real, leading to her lashing back, and soon afterwards, they were divorced for many years. As far as I know, this was later revealed to have been the result of Ultron’s damage to Hank’s mental health, but even so…

What’s wrong with how this was done? Plenty! Hank Pym was a pretty good character when he first debuted, and thanks to what was apparently the meddling of Jim Shooter, this ended up ruining the reputation of the character and subjecting him to a lot of reader debate over whether this makes him usable anymore or not, including when he and Jan reunited and reconciled. To make matters worse, some writers, most notoriously Chuck Austen (and even Brian Bendis), perpetuated this whole storyline into a pure stereotype and cliché, making it almost unbearable.

Was there anything good to come out of this? When Hank was a co-star in The West Coast Avengers, Steve Englehart and others working on the book at the time did do a good job with him. But even so, that earlier storyline with the slap to Jan was uncalled for, something I’m sure many would agree with.

Hank and Jan may have since reconciled, and in all due fairness, I don’t think that Hank is capable of screwing up as badly as he did back then, most certainly not if written well. But that still doesn’t excuse the long-running damage that was done to his character, repeatedly running the risk of turning him into a wife-beating stereotype of a character, and making it difficult for readers to fully accept a reunition with Jan.

Profile: Karen Page

Karen Page
First appearance: Daredevil #1 Vol. 1, 1964

Current status: deceased

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she descended into working as a porn actress, and she became a drug addict, even going so far as to sell information on Matt Murdock’s secret ID as Daredevil to the dealer she’d been buying from, later became tricked into thinking she'd become ill with HIV, and was murdered at the hands of Hornhead’s leading nemesis, Bullseye, in Daredevil #5 Vol. 2, 1999.

What’s wrong with how this was done? The fall from grace she took, descending into drugs and pornography may have been handled well and was essential to the development of Daredevil's rivalry with the Kingpin, who'd gotten hold of the info and used it to his advantage against Hornhead, but Karen’s dying not from an HIV illness but rather, at the hands of Bullseye, is decidedly super-cheap. It seems pretty rushed, like as if she had to die ASAP, rather than to write a story in which she could go to the great reward via natural death. And this points to a leading problem that’s been cropping up in recent years in comics: death by murder, not by natural causes.

So what could’ve been a masterpiece in story development instead turned into a disastrous case of resorting to a classic cliché.

Profile: Ms. Marvel/Binary/Warbird

Carol Susan Jane Danvers, Ms. Marvel/Binary/Warbird
First appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes #13

Current status: balancing her time between regular life and being a superheroine

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in The Avengers #197-200, she was teleported to limbo by Marcus, the son of Immortus, an alternate version of Kang the Conqueror, where she came under his mind-control effects, becoming a love-slave. Then, in a most creepy Oedipus Rex-like storyline, the villain stored himself inside Carol’s body, in an attempt to emerge in the regular world and then build a machine with which he could ensure that he’d be able to continue life normally – and quite likely also to conquer. Plus, there was also the part in Avengers: Disassembled in 2004 where she said that she hated Scarlet Witch, which was out of character.

What’s wrong with how this was done? At the time it first went to press, the problem with it is that it seemed almost intended for weak shock value effect (and even under mind-control, one of the things Carol said to Marcus sounded in very poor taste). And, when it was first written, put together from a story Jim Shooter had actually come up with (yes, one of a few questionable stories he’d been responsible for drafting, assigning other writers like David Michelinie to fully develop), there was a line there that may have slipped under the radars of many: however subtly he did it, Marcus had actually admitted that he’d brainwashed Carol when he said she’d gotten a “subtle boost from the machines.” Given that she was still under mind-control, it’s understandable that Carol would fail to realize what was going on, but that the other Avengers who were witness to Marcus’ explanations would be oblivious to what he was saying was quite bizarre, and, on the scriptwriting surface, downright sloppy.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Surprisingly enough, yes! When Chris Claremont, who’d written her 1977-79 Ms. Marvel series, wrote the 10th Avengers Annual in 1981, which went to press a few months after the storyline with Marcus Immortus, he made more sense out of it than Michelinie or even Shooter himself had when they first put it together. As Carol told the Avengers following their foiling of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ attempted breakout from prison in New York, Marcus had actually put her under mind-control, and, after his miscalculations led to his speedy demise, within the time of about a week since Thor returned them to limbo, she was free of the effects, and realized what had really been going on. Angry at the rest of the Avengers for failing to use their heads, she teleported back to the regular world, packed her bags and took off to California where she tried to put her life back together, until she was attacked by Rogue in the days when she’d first been a villainess with the Brotherhood. Carol lost a lot of her powers to Rogue as a result, but thanks to Charles Xavier and Spider-Woman/Jessica Drew, she was able to regain 95 percent of her memories, including the part where Marcus admitted that he was pulling her strings.

And with the explanations that she gave to the EMH, ditto the reprimand for not seeing through what Marcus Immortus was really doing, her ordeal made more sense, and provided her with better character development. It also helped show that, personality-wise, she certainly was as smart and intelligent a character as she is.

Of course, Brian Bendis really flubbed when he had Carol saying that she “hated” Wanda Maximoff, as if she really were evil, in Disassembled, when here, Wanda was probably the most devastated of all when she found out about Carol’s being a mind-slave at the hands of Marcus (and as she wondered to her then-husband, the Vision, “what if Marcus had chosen me?”). That this was really just a clone of Wanda made no difference; it was insulting to Carol’s character that Bendis should’ve done that.

See also this article by Carol A. Strickland.

Profile: Linda Park West

Linda Park West
First appearance: 1989 in The Flash

Current status: mother to a pair of twins

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in 2004, in the “Blitz” storyline, the “new” Reverse-Flash (who's still around and even turned up in the pages of Justice Society of America #8), struck her to the ground with a vibratory ripple effect, terminating her pregnancy and leading to her wailing in loss and agony in her hospital bed. All this in order to strike at her husband, Wally West, and to try and make him “a better hero.” A year later, in a time-travel effect, this was changed, saving her pregnancy, and making her a mother instead, but even so…

What’s wrong with how this was done? I think this can best be answered with the following: did we have to go through all that excess violence just to get to the good news? I don’t think so. There were plenty of other story and adventure plots and concepts that could’ve been tried out, but IMO, Geoff Johns missed out on just about all of them (and what he didn’t, Identity Crisis’ “repercussions” got in the way of).

There may be a need for hurdles to get around and over before superheroes and their families can have children, but what Linda – and Wally – went through in order to get to that point was decidedly unneccesary, as was even the part a few issues earlier where Grodd tries to torture Wally’s mind with images of Linda and the family being crushed to death.

And when Linda finally did win her gift of being a mommy, I decided to trade/sell off the issues of “Run Riot” and “Blitz” that I had, getting in their place some old Avengers and Superman issues in their stead. Because really, who needs it? I decided that I was better off with just the good stuff.

Profile: Rogue

Rogue
First appearance: Avengers Annual #10, 1981

Real name: Unknown. If it has been revealed, I personally still don’t know it.

Current status: active in the X-Men.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: Rogue is a most startling case. She was long done to death as a character, because for a long time, the writers, including even creator Chris Claremont, did not give her any serious or convincing development: she long remained stuck with her largely uncontrollable power of siphoning off and duplicating human energy, consciousness, superpowers, etc. And when Gambit came onto the scene, she was reduced to something like a junkie bound to a pimp’s leash.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It’s uncreative to just simply box a character into a corner, and the whole notion that she’d become less significant if she could gain the ability to control her powers properly was truly ridiculous, to say nothing short of insulting. It made feel sorry for the lady to be left absolutely trapped by her own powers, unable to make physical contact with other flesh and blood human beings. Yet, the writers and editors, for a long time, kept on depicting her that way, and left her at the mercy of Gambit too.

In recent years, Claremont and a few other writers slowly began to move away from this nonsense, giving Rogue better control over her powers, and Peter Milligan too may have made some repairs by getting her out of the Gambit trap. But why it had to take so long is an utter mystery.

Profile: Vesper Fairchild

Vesper Fairchild
First appeared in: Batman #540, March 1997

Current status: deceased

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: In Batman: The 10-Cent Adventure “special” from 2002, radio talk show host Vesper was murdered by David Cain as part of a contract by Lex Luthor to strike at Bruce Wayne, who’s as much a rival to him as Superman is.

What’s wrong with how this was done? In that particular book, she turned up dead for otherwise just one purpose: to die. Rather than write a story in which she could have some development as a character, she’s turned into little more than a plot device, in the Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive crossover, just one in a sea of tired X-overs from DC Comics. To make matters worse, another woman in the story, Sasha Bordeaux, was also discriminated against.

Worst thing about this was that Vesper may have guessed that Bruce Wayne was also the Masked Manhunter, implying that anyone who finds out that Bruce and Batman are one and same is destined to end up dead (a notable example during the Bronze Age could be the parents of Jason Todd, who were murdered by Killer Croc in the original Todd premise).

How uncreative.

Profile: Jean Loring

Jean Loring
First appeared in: Showcase #34, 1961

Current status: in 2017, it written in a Justice League volume that she was married to the Silver Age Atom, Ray Palmer again.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in The Atom and Hawkman #45, Oct-Nov 1969, the last issue of the Silver Age Atom series, she was brainwashed/tortured into insanity by a subatomic race called the Jimberen, who thought her to be a descendant of an old queen of theirs, after they used a radiation-based device with which to brainwash her (see this page from Darkmark's Comics Indexing Domain for details). She was fully cured of these effects in Justice League of America #81, June 1970, with Hawkman’s help there too, when he took her to Thanagar for treatment to cure her. She later fell prey to a similar situation in Super-Team Family #11, June-July 1977, when there too, she was brainwashed by more alien menaces. In 2004, after an absence of 4-5 years, she was turned into a plot device, just like Sue Dibny, in Identity Crisis: she was first implausibly depicted as the culprit in the murder of Sue in issue #7, and, at the same time, without any clear explanation, she was “revealed” to be crazy. Jean was also forced by the book’s writer into a stereotypical situation when she invites Ray Palmer, her ex-husband, to hit her(!), was then implausibly incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, and a tabloid newspaper headline is later shown saying that she was sexually assaulted in prison. Then, in what must be something like just a few hours in comic book time, was possessed by the Eclipso diamond in the Day of Vengeance miniseries (Columbus Alive reported that the dialect sounded like a woman being sexually harrassed), and turned into an evil entity, later knocked comatose and left rotating in orbit (or something like that). It was later discovered in Infinite Crisis that the Psycho Pirate had what to do with turning her into a new Eclipso. Worse, this whole "Jeanclipso" went on for quite a while, having taken place in the 52 weekly series and even in the #16th issue of the new Blue Beetle. In Countdown to Final Crisis #17 (note that the numbering for this goes backwards), after a clash with Mary Marvel, she was broken free of the diamond and fell to earth. Her current status is unknown.

What’s wrong with how this was done? I don’t know about what Jean went through in the Silver/Bronze Age, what with her being brainwashed into insanity and all that, but what she went through in Identity Crisis, including the near-lynching by a hanging-noose, was the lowest, most obscene of misogynistic stereotypes, providing a picture perfect example of why women end up shunning comic books. The same goes for the demonization she underwent in Day of Vengeance. And it doesn't matter if she's being controlled by the Eclipso diamond, what's being done is really sick.

To make matters worse, not only did the miniseries not give any mention of what past storylines Jean had been through, but much of the press coverage of Identity Crisis did not give any clear indication that she’d been a victim of science-fiction brainwashing years before either. In the case of Wizard magazine, they seemed to be trying to perpetuate a lie that she’d suffered numerous mental/nervous breakdowns* years ago, when that was not the case, and even if it was, she’d only been through such circumstances twice. (Wizard wrote a very ambiguous note that she “had a history” of nervous/mental breakdowns, yet made no more attempt to clear things up than the miniseries itself did.) On Newsarama, there was another vicious lie written that she’d been repeatedly played as a villainess in past years. It’s a filthy lie mainly due to the fact that it didn’t even make it clear in just what way she was played as a villainess.

Why they’d want to go along with that crap is beyond me. But it shows that the media’s loyalties lie with the publishers, not with the audience or the character creators. Gardner Fox could be spinning in his grave.

The most devastating thing about this is the obvious contempt for the Atom, implying that the knee-jerkers who supported this demonization of Jean and the Atom don’t have any love for the characters. There was an assumption 3 years ago that the Mighty Mite was going to get a return to the spotlight in a new series or miniseries, and maybe even be reunited with Jean, which would’ve been a very inspiring move, but the discrimination against them in Identity Crisis seems to imply otherwise. And the most scary thing about the part where Jean is forced into the stereotypical scene of inviting Ray to hit her is that it seems almost as if the writer was subtly insulting Janet Van Dyne, the Winsome, Wonderous Wasp, who'd been struck by her own husband, Hank Pym/Yellowjacket in The Avengers in 1981. It's like a distorted reflection of what had happened in Marvel Comics back in the Bronze Age. And whether or not Jean may have been a pawn of any villains, that just doesn't counteract the bad taste left behind by the tasteless "event" books that exploited her so badly.

* On WIR, the term “nervous breakdown” is shown in between quotation marks, which seems to indicate that Gail also knew that this wasn’t so, and also may suggest that the falsehood of mental breakdowns may have been contrived several years ago too, I don’t know.

Profile: The Wasp

Janet Van Dyne, The Wasp
First appearance: Tales to Astonish #44

Current status: last time I checked, on leave from the Avengers

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in 1977, in “Bride of Ultron!” written by Jim Shooter, during the time he’d become EIC at Marvel, she was strapped naked (not in direct view, but you get the idea) on an operating table where Ultron hoped to trick Dr. Henry (Hank) Pym, then her husband for a decade and a half, into draining out her brain for the purpose of giving life to Jocasta, whom he wanted to make his robotic bride (the plot was foiled, Jan was saved, and Jocasta became her own, er...machine). In the Avengers Annual from 1978, she was possessed by a diamond containing the essence of Doctor Spectrum, in another story also written by Shooter, then, in 1981, there came that now notorious storyline in which, struck her down during an argument over his intention of using a robot with a secret weak point to regain his credibility with the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (should I note that she was in her nightgown when they were having a spat, even if it was in the home laboratory?). Hank struck her again a few issues later, and that led to her beating the crap out of him, and their divorce. (Note: this may have been the result of some of Hank’s Frankenstein creation, Ultron’s, mental manipulations of his creator’s brain, but even so, it was still very overwrought.) In 1990, in West Coast Avengers, when John Byrne was the writer, her talents were trivialized as she was made to look like little more than window dressing.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Simply put, the smacking Hank gave to Jan was forced, much more so than the first issue in The Kree-Skrull War storyline in 1971, when Hank was hypnotized into knocking her senseless and sending her back to their research boat, out of range of Ronan’s menace. It’s known that Jim Shooter, at the time he was both writing and editing titles like Avengers in his early days as EIC of Marvel, had apparently manipulated some of the scriptwriting during the time that David Michelinie was working on the title, and it appears that this too was the result of Shooter’s own meddling. Though Shooter made an even better editor than he did a writer years ago, this was incredibly awkward. Things did improve the year after, during which time Michelinie helped set the tongue-in-cheek direction the She-Hulk is usually known for today, but what led to the Wasp’s and Yellowjacket’s breakup has still stuck in some ways, disturbingly enough, mainly because of how bad writing efforts have allowed it to boomerang in reminiscience, if not in brand new depictions.

Did anything good come out of this? Well, It’d probably be more appropriate to say after, but anyway, during the time that Roger Stern took over the writing, that’s when Janet Van Dyne really came into her own as a character, and not only that, Stern as a writer treated her with much more respect than some other writers of yore did. And Kurt Busiek handled a discussion about that past storyline Jan was having with Scarlet Witch with sincerity (in Ultron Unlimited, 1999). But that still doesn’t excuse what was basically an overwrought storyline to begin with, and which, even if Jan and Hank have come back together in past years and reconciled, was still totally uncalled for.

And, most unfortunately, John Byrne made a mess out of what Stern was trying to build so carefully during the time he was writing West Coast Avengers (which, IIRC, was also the time when Jan and Hank began to reconcile), and Chuck Austen and even Brian Bendis were no better when they began insulting the intellect by either undoing or embarrassing what writers of yore were trying so hard to fix in the past two years.

And that’s something that people in the comics medium are going to have cut out.

See also this article by Albe Shiloh.

Profile: Sue Dibny

Susan Dearborn-Dibny
First appearance: 1961 in The Flash.

Current status: presumed dead.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: In the Identity Crisis miniseries, she was first shown being murdered by a strike to the brain, supposedly by Jean Loring, the ex-wife of the Silver Age Atom, then, she was shown being raped in flashback by Dr. Arthur Light (who didn’t actually use any of his own sci-fi powers until the Justice League showed up to deal with him). If she was shown in a happy state, it was only within the mind of people like her husband, Elongated Man Ralph Dibny, as a male-projected version of an idealized woman. Other than that, whenever shown, it was in nigh-nauseating scenes of being violated, fatally wounded or in misery, such as one part where Dr. Light himself shows a flashback projection of his own to the League.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It’s notorious by now. She was depicted as unable to defend herself against a male attacker, but the really corrosive death knell to the script is that there was no female viewpoint in the Identity Crisis miniseries, not even her own. She was not a character in her own right, and was there for otherwise just one purpose – to die. And worst of all, her death and violation were trivialized and made irrelevant. She vanished from the proceedings almost immediately after being shown in a heap of misery upon the floor, and beyond that, there was nothing to let the audience know how she felt about being violated. These were but a few things not even mentioned in many of the reviews of the miniseries.

Do I need to point out just how sad and offensive this is when here, after all these years, when one would think that there’d been plenty of advancements for female characters in development and as players in the stories being told, we get something most incredibly backwards? Nope, didn’t think so. And regardless of whether the damage to Sue gets repaired in time, it will not erase the fact that she too has joined the doubtlessly long line of female characters who’ve been exploited by the companies that own them to use as nothing more than one-dimensional plot-devices.

Profile: Elasti-Girl

Rita Farr, Elasti-Girl
Status: deceased

Life span: 1963-1968

Cause of death: she and her Doom Patrol teammates sacrificed their lives to prevent the Doom Patrol’s archnemesis, General Zahl, from murdering the residents of a small island fishing town (Zahl blew up their own island HQ in an explosion). Her two other teammates and mentor, Robotman, Negative Man, and Niles Caulder, survived (at least for awhile).

What’s wrong with how this was done? Well, at the time it was done, not much, really. Rita sacrificed her life out of noble causes, to save innocent lives from being murdered. Where things took a turn for the appalling and in fact, insulting, was when the other members of the Doom Patrol, the male ones at that, started coming back from the dead, and she, by sharp contrast, didn’t!

Now in fairness, I could certainly buy Cliff Steele/Robotman’s coming back, since he did, after all, get a new lease on his life as a cybernetic machine with a human brain (and there was a very good New Teen Titans story he co-starred in during 1981). Where DC Comics fumbled the ball was when they wrote Negative Man and particularly Niles Caulder returning from the grave. It was exactly that step that angered me, because, if Rita was left behind, then that’s why I find DC’s bringing back Negative Man and Caulder to be insulting to Rita’s own status, because if they can return, shouldn’t she be able to as well?

What’s good about how this was done? It’s that she’s served as a motivation for Beast Boy/Gar Logan, whom she’d been a custodian of when she married inventor Steve Dayton, who’d first tried to impress upon her by becoming Mento, a de-facto superhero, but on occasion went off the deep end, descending into madness, becoming a de-facto villain as well (which also made for some good storylines in its day). But it would’ve been a lot more effective if it hadn’t been for the astounding way that they gave the male team members of Doom Patrol a full green light, while keeping her in the grave.