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First Superheroes: rugged individuals who took law into own hands dispensing “frontier justice”. Refuge from Great Depression Passport to other worlds Scores of caped heroes: Scions of lost races Monarchs of mythical lands Scientists with transformative formulas - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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First Superheroes: rugged individuals who took law into own hands dispensing “frontier justice”
Refuge from Great Depression
Passport to other worlds
Scores of caped heroes:
Scions of lost races
Monarchs of mythical lands
Scientists with transformative
formulas
Adventurers with magical artifact
Tough guys defending ordinary
people
First female superheroesNot sexy nymphs in revealing costumes
The Woman in Red: scarlet coat, mask, skull cap
Fantomah: terrifying, skull-faced protectress of jungle
Madam Fatal: actually a man; adopts guise of old lady; first transvestite crime fighter
Red Tornado: burly, working class mother in long johns, cape, cooking pot on head
Common plot device:secret identity
Being true self
Forced into roles of well-mannered daughters or girlfriends
Secret life gave these women chance to be themselves
Cape & mask liberated women
Life type of life they dreamed of
Make the world a better place
Early Female Superheroes
The Debutantes
The Partners
The Victory Girls
The Glamour Girls
The Debutantes
Sorority of rich girls
Daughters of affluent families looking for excitement
Freed from life of entitled boredom
Thrill seekers with time & money, enjoying double life of danger & excitement while doing good
Strong, determined women living life they want
The Partners
Women better assistants to male heroes rather than working on won
Inducted into world of crime fighting by men who played fatherly role by sanctioning secret life for girlfriends
These heroines did not need to deceive loved ones
No inherent desire to do good: fighting crime proved love for boyfriend!
Not highly regarded by male readers: weal appendages to male heroes
Often portrayed as liabilities: routinely rescued by male partners
Always referred to as “girls” never “women”
Names never featured in comic’s title
Reflection of men & never top billing
Assured that female superheroes maintain presence in comics
The Victory Girls
Defenders of American democracy & values
Patriotic, red-blooded American ladies, wearing costumes, to fight the good fight
Part patriot, part pin-up
Proved everyone had role to play in war
Carry on activities in secret
Created to fight Hun, no role in post-war comic book world
The Glamour Girls
Gorgeous pinups whose job to fight crime & keep male readers visually entertained
Working class females whose world harder & grittier
Depicted as wallflowers that kept charisma bottled up
When let hair down, became ravishing creatures that made men drool
Thirst for justice
Donned mask or wig to help a man but did it in secret
Emphasis on love in stories dovetailed with rise of romance comics
New face & shape of female comic heroesBeautiful face could save world
Focus on looks over abilities
Age of fearless women living secret lives to live with same freedoms as men drawing to close
Comic heroines go back to being women
Daring women of late 30s & 40s vanishing from comic books
age of gods & heroes passed
Replaced by jungle queens in animal print bikinis: no secret lives, lived like wild nymphs, no special powers, didn’t need to be brilliant
Lone SurvivorBy mid-1950s, Wonder Woman on own
Rest of super heroines faded into memory
Comics Code Authority (1954) instituted to clean up excesses of industry
Children read stories with only wholesome depictions of women
Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. Suggestive and salacious
illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable. Females shall be drawn
realistically without exaggeration of any physical feature
New day in America: wracked with suspicion, censorship & conservative values
If women had aspirations to be more than they were, they would have to keep them a secret
Black Cat, Firestar, Photon & Hellcat
the story reads a lot like an episode of Sex in the City with a dash of a Lifetime movie
talk about their love problems & sex life to one another
As you can guess none of them are too lucky.
At the end of the issue, the comic touches on the realm of a Lifetime tearjerker when one of the super heroines reveals she has cancer
Super VixensFemale superheroes. Superheroines. Supervixens. Femme Fatales. Uber-vamps. Supertramps.
sexy, strong, in control, smart, and successful
won a die-hard fan following among women in the last decade
simplistic to dismiss contemporary comic books and their depictions of women as unrealistic or sexist
beauty is more than physical appearance, it always involves inner strength and moral fortitude
extremes of the superheroine as sex object aside, over the course of the last 50 years supervixens have—like real-life women—clawed their way from one-dimensionality to prominence