All Female Teams

With so very many all male superhero teams I of course want to talk about the all female teams that exist. Now these are significantly less but they are worth talking about, and of course this is going to be another book plug and preview for Lady Comic Book History.

A Force is a team that was created in 2015 by G. Willow Wilson and Marguerite Bennett. This team was a unique opportunity for characters that would not normally interact a chance to do so. It was received well by critics and it has been teased in the MCU and Brie Larson who is our Carol Danvers has called for it. The co-creator Bennet said this about the series…

“It's this world where the Marvel heroines are leaders in their own civilization. I really didn't want to have some kind of validating reason... So I didn't want to do anything like, "all the men disappeared years ago" or "ever since all the menfolk were killed in that war" or something like that. There are men—there are heroes there. You'll see familiar faces and favorites, but the heroines are in charge, by majority. It's just this is how their world evolved. They were competent. They were clever and they were the ones in charge because of their skills and they were the best fit for these roles and demands of their world”

The team consisted of Captain Marvel, Medusa, She-Hulk, Dazzler, and Minoru Nico. Now this is the one I think would play best on screen, whether it actually be a movie or simply a What If… episode I think we deserve to see it.

Perhaps one of the wider known teams is Birds of Prey, a team created in 1996. There were a few one-shots but the team didn’t really gain relevance until the wonderful Gale Simone got her hands on it in 2003. Simone added Huntress to the team and demonstrated an understanding for these characters beyond just their superhero identities. The series proved to not survive without Simone’s guidance as it was canceled shortly after her departure and was only revived with her return.

The main team was always Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress. Writers then added Lady Blackhawk, and a rotating roster of other female characters.

I love talking about the Lady Liberators because they were created in 1970 by men to essentially mock the feminist movement because they were convinced that their audience was men and they didn’t have to care about anybody else. Roy Thomas was the braindead moron behind this sexist dipshit trip. He wrote Valkyrie as a character that gained her power after experiencing sexism from men, Clint lectures the ladies on the dangers of feminism and Scarlet Witch is depicted as the kind of feminism men want to associate themselves with, the submissive kind. Whenever a team of all men writes a team of all women simply assume that it's garbage.

The Female Furies were created in 1972 and they were brought back in 2018. They were all joined together to serve Darkseid. The original members of the team were Bernadeth, Big Barda, Lashina, Mad Harriet and Stompa. But the revival added several villains and anti-heroes to the list of members that served the team, some of them brainwashed into it.

Now obviously these are not all of the female teams that exist however these are arguably the most relevant ones. Some of these teams are still brought up and some are long forgotten but all are worth talking about for a number of reasons. This discussion will be expanded in the Lady comic Book History book of course.