1960-1961

Here we go with some more well known heroines, as always please check out the Lady Comic Book History Podcast if you’d rather listen to this content.

We are starting right in with Invisible Woman, otherwise known as Sue Storm created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby the Fantastic Four becoming one of their first and most iconic collaborations. Sue made her first appearance in the first issue of The Fantastic Four in November of 1961, when Sue was exposed to a cosmic storm she gained the powers of invisibility, and force field projection to simplify things a bit. Stan Lee made sure that she was not only a strong female character but the female lead of the team. Lee and his collaborators were thoughtful and careful in her creation making sure not to oversexualize her, the original idea for her controlling her powers was that Sue wouldn’t be abe to easily become visible after activating her powers the second point being that she would have to take off her clothes. By the time the publication came to pass her invisibility affected whatever clothes she was wearing and she could become visible again at will. Starting in issue #22 In 1964 the creators expanded Sue’s abilities allowing her to render other people and objects invisible, strengthening her force fields and psionic blasts. With the expansion of her powers she becomes more assertive and confident in her abilities. She finds that she can use her force fields abilities to manipulate matter through the air, immobilize enemies and administer long-range attacks. After this expansion and dive into the range of her powers she is transitioned from Invisible Girl to Invisible Woman...we won't talk about how it was utterly ridiculous for a grown woman to be tagged as “girl” in the first place….even the most progressive minds are reflective of their times and can only stretch so far. In April of 2019 it was announced that Invisible Woman would be receiving her own 5-issue mini series, her first solo title, Adam Hughs drew the cover for the first issue. Sue gets pregnant twice throughout her story arcs because you can’t have a female character and not get her pregnant, because as we all know women are incomplete if they don’t have kids. Anyway her first child is a mutant who has a whole redemption arc this isn't about him, her second child is stillborn sending Sue into a deep depression and allowing Psycho-Man to manipulate her mind into becoming Malice, her darker, evil alter ego created by Psycho-Man. (So I've mentioned it before just to be clear we have another female character with mentally related abilities that goes “crazy” because she’s not emotionally stable and guess what exhibits powers she's never had access to before) again this will be discussed more when I get to Scarlet Witch and Jean Grey but this trope is disgusting, sexist, and extremely damaging and male creators should feel free to stop at any time. During the Infinity War storyline Reed Richards apparently dies, leaving Sue to lead the team, which she does rather spectacularly so when she rescues Reed from his time displacement Reed starts questioning his own leadership skills because Sue has proven herself so capable, therefore subtly stating that strong women emasculate men, I was going to say strong men but if you are actually a strong man you do not find yourself threatened by capable women. In the Civil War storyline Sue starts as pro-registration but as the series events go on she makes the same decision as several other pro-registration heroes do (in case you needed it to be any clearer for you which side was right) and she joins Team Cap. Lets discuss the only live action adaptation the matters which of course was Jessica Alba, now in the first movie she has a kind of throw away line about being called Invisible Girl, ya know because she's a grown woman but I would also like to remind everyone that sexism is alive and well in the world of comic book adaptations as well, Sue in one of the 2 decent Fantastic Four movies has a scene where she is crying and the director stops the take and requests that Jessica Alba cry prettier...in an emotional scene where Alba was doing her job to the best of her ability conveying this moment in an authentic and real way she was told to throw away her impeccable acting ability and cry prettier, thats gross. When we say we hate men we mean you, we mean any man that thinks that's an appropriate or helpful thing to say to a woman on set doing her job, That wraps up Sue and we will be back after this very short commercial break.

Another Icon to discuss today we have Batgirl, which of course there are several. Betty Kane was the original Batgirl introduced in 1961, but she was replaced by Barbara Gordon the most iconic Batgirl in Detective Comics #359 in January of 1967. Barbara Gordon is actually a great character to talk about when we discuss the level and kind of violence against women in comic books. She is shot and left a parapalegic in the Killing Joke, a truly awful, sexist storyline that there is absolutely no excuse for whatsoever. In the Killing Joke Barbara is stripped, mutilated, tortured, it's heavily implied that she is raped and then she is paralazed. So one more time for the “violence happens to everyone in comics' ' crowd, I will give you all the money I make for the rest of my life if you can find me a Marvel or DC storyline that strips, mutilates and rapes a male character and leaves him permanently altered. Because yes violence happens but when it happens to male characters even in the cases of serious injury they are almost ALWAYS restored to their original state whereas as the women such is the case with Barbara Gordon her entire character is changed because she is permanently physically altered. Also one more time STOP USING RAPE AS A PLOT POINT, seriously stop doing, never a reason for it, stop sexualizing women while their being tortured. It's gross, you are gross the men who wrote this should not be allowed around women PERIOD. Len Wein was asked by creator Alan Moore if it was okay to cripple Barabra Gordon and Wein’s response was “cripple the bitch” Even Moore recognizes and has stated that they should have reeled him in but they didn’t. So just to be clear it's not just the writers that need therapy it's also the editing staff. Barbara then becomes Oracle and orchestrates the Birds of Prey but again just to be clear just because a female writer swoops in to save a character that you needlessly butchered doesn’t justify your shitty treatment of the character.

There are 2 new Batgirl’s in the No Man’s Land storyline starting with Helena Bertinelli who takes a brief hiatus from being Huntress and assumes the title of Batgirl until she is stripped of the identity by Batman for not adhering to his stricts rules, so now we have established that for some reason Batman has control over Batgirl and who carries the identity...why? She’s not her own person apparently she is tied to the caped crusader and is his to do with as he pleases….chill. The second Batgirl of this storyline is Cassandra Cain who appears in the monthly series in 2000 running until 2006 when it was cancelled. She then appears in the 1 Year Later storyline where she is established as a villain and head of the League of Assassins, DC realized that that was stupid due to the response from readers and restored her to her original conception however shortly after she was replaced by Stephanie Brown who was originally Spoiler and later becomes Robin. Stephanie Brown became the featured character of the Batgirl series from 2009 to 2011. With the New 52 launch Baraba Gordon has surgery and regains the ability to walk and joins the relaunch as Batgirl.

Let’s get back to the lesser known heroes with Phantom Girl, she is the fifth member to join the legion and has the ability to phase out of reality and become intangible. She originally appeared along with Triplicate Girl and Saturn Girl in Action Comics #276. Now normally I go pretty in depth with histories, arcs, and major storylines but the unfortunate reality is that sometimes DCs universes are so convoluted that there just isn’t a point because things get changed in each universe nd in each continuity and then it gets rebooted and it's just too much to bounce back and forth between so we’re really just gonna discuss her abilities and go; Phantom girl can phase her body as a whole or in isolations and phase body parts separately, while phased she is immune to physical harm, and she can maneuver through solid objects and fly under her own power. She is also immune to most energy blasts and radiation though of course her writers have been very inconsistent with her vulnerability to those kinds of attacks.

There you have it, the major players of 1960 and 1961, next we tackle 1962 and Jane Foster!