SOOPED UP

Given that Superman was the de facto mascot of DC Comics, it was almost de rigeur to see the hero's powers bestowed temporarily on characters not only in the Superman books but in any title with some degree of SF-content, such as BLACKHAWK and SPACE RANGER. The latter two sported covers where a distaff support-character gained such temporary super-powers (Lady Blackhawk for the one, some secretary-chick for the other). But aside from the mainstays of the Superman titles themselves, Batwoman seems to be the only distaff support-character who sported super-powers two times, both in WORLD'S FINEST. I guess one could regard this as a Superman title given its raison d'etre of continually teaming the Man of Steel and the Big Bat, but Batwoman was an emigre from the Batman books. At the time of both adventures, the editor on the Bat-books and WF alike was Jack Schiff, so some Bat-related bleed-through was to be expected. (Later Mort Weisinger, King of his Castle of Superman-books, would assume the WF editorship as well.)

Batwoman's first super-adventure, from WF #90 (Sept-Oct 57), shows us that the first thing a woman does when she gets super-powers is to spy on the boys' club to find all their important stuff. Of course, in a later era she might have been checking out another kind of stuff but not in 1957.

The second super-tale, from WF #117 (May 1961), puts Batwoman in a slightly more combative role as she clashes with the Big S. (Their "battle" is pretty much a one-panel duplication of the cover image. DC wasn't big on fight-scenes in '61.) But

anyone who might've hoped that Batwoman was striking a blow against Superdickery would be doomed to disappointment, as she only fights the hero because she's fallen under the control of Lex Luthor.

Incidentally, though this has nothing to do with superheroine themes, I submit that the weird-ass creature sharing the cover with the heroes may well be the single silliest-looking monster in the history of Silver Age DC. It's perhaps even sillier to learn that "Golanth," as the creature is named, is not a living thing but was actually given this improbable design by the aforementioned Luthor, which might make one wonder what the mad scientist had been smoking that day.

VALE OF ILLUSION

This isn't quite the same as my adventure-heroine postings, but the pic is interesting in that it shows Vicky Vale gloating to herself about how she's uncovered the secret of Batman's ID and how she's going to expose him for the sake of a scoop. This despite the Bat's value to crime prevention, his having saved her life a few times, etc.

Vicky may've been designed as Batman's version of Lois Lane, but somehow I thought the creators gave her an almost *sadistic* air when it came to her indirect torments of Batman, far beyond any of Lois Lane's shenanigans.

THE FEMININE WILL PART II

Usually, due to the strength disparities between male and female homo sapiens, the catfight is the primary method by which modern entertainment illustrates the feminine will to power. While I've shown several examples on this blog of fantasy-situations in which women triumph over men-- sometimes with erotic overtones, sometimes not so much-- the womano-a-womano battle is one that automatically seems to perk up erotic interest. Male audiences seem to be particularly attuned to the excitatory appeal of the catfight, but there seems to be (from what one can judge on the Internet) a sizeable female audience also interested in the phenomenon from an erotic standpoint. On one messageboard devoted to the subject, a purportedly-female poster even disparaged the tendency of TV shows like XENA to show the heroine defeating men and women alike. Apparently when the poster saw a female heroine kick male butt, this automatically destroyed the poster's ability to credence that a female opponent could give Xena any trouble.

This need for credibility in a female/female fight may account for the widespread appeal of the catfight, at least a little better than Jerry Seinfeld's more famous "maybe they'll kiss" explanation. After all, Jerry, if all you want is a lesbian encounter, why do you need the catfight at all? It's not like lesbo action is hard to find.


I'm led to the conclusion, then, that whereas the fight-fantasy in which a female triumphs over a bigger and stronger-looking male, which I examined here, is one more openly defiant of consensual reality, in that "the normal rules of weight and mass" do not apply. The catfight scenario might then be seen as more prone to stick to said reality, resulting in a fictional world where women can only exercise the "will to power" against other women.

TAMING THE BEASTMASTER

From 1961's ADVENTURES OF THE JAGUAR #3, here's the first appearance of "the Sea Circe from Space" Kree-Nal, who as seen here is trying to transform/enslave the hero a la the mythological Circe. By the story's end he sends her back to the sea's depths (where her people, a race of aquatic aliens, ended up when their spacecraft crashed there). However, she falls in love with the Jaguar and in all the rest of her appearances she becomes a sporadically-seen ally.

CAT SCRATCH FEVER: THE SEQUEL

Of considerably greater durability than Harvey Comics' Black Cat is DC Comics' Catwoman. I don't judge a character's mythic presence solely by the character's prominence in culture (pop or otherwise) but if I did Catwoman would be a prime contender, as television and films made her one of the few comics-characters that a majority of Americans know.

The cover of DETECTIVE COMICS #122 is an odd one given that it hails from 1947, a time when fan-histories consider that DC had pretty much distanced itself from its wild-and-wooly pulp past and was beginning to skew toward corporate predictability. And yet here's Catwoman on the cover, clawing the hell out of Robin's shoulder as the Big Bat rushes to the rescue. I'm sure that the contents of the book were strictly G-rated by the standards of anyone save Doctor Wertham, and yet it is fairly violent for a DC cover of that time. Perhaps DC's editors were tempted to push the envelope by some of the more lurid crime comics of the period?

Still, this does seem like the sort of cover Wertham would have included in SEDUCTION had he seen it, particularly since as I recall Catwoman was the only villainess he took the trouble to cite by name, though he drew attention not to her claws but to her Sadean whip.

CAT SCRATCH FEVER

I've already done one WONDER WOMAN entry, but just as deserving of coverage is one of the few other costumed heroines (not counting jungle girls) to have enjoyed a long success in a starring feature: THE BLACK CAT.

I didn't grow up reading these, and the source of their long-running appeal has always been a bit of a mystery to me. There's some cheesecake appeal, but a lot of other books offered more. The stories are enjoyably light and breezy; the art is pleasant but workmanlike, not even as good as 40s Infantino, much less Simon and Kirby.

It's possible that judo-training sessions like the one seen here had something to do with the Cat's long-lived popularity. Not that many superhero books, no matter what gender their protagonist was, featured these little "how-to" tips (which incidentally earned the book some of the Wrath of Wertham). Possibly Harvey Comics lucked onto a sales-making gimmick here that other publishers just didn't want to bother with, as most of them preferred to use heroines as back-up features in multi-character anthologies.)

BEATING THE BOYS

Since I did a post on the original "Bat-Girl" I thought I ought to have one for her auntie too.

Original Batwoman's appearance is interesting on a number of levels. It's been alleged (though never proven) that she was introduced to be a regular romantic interest for Batman in order to allay Wertham-esque complaints about the unhealthy relationship of Bruce Wayne and his young ward. About five years later Bat-Girl was introduced as a little friend for Robin and the foursome were all but double-dating before then-editor Jack Schiff was taken off the Bat-books and new editor Julie Schwartz considered the Bat-babes to oblivion.

To be sure, Original Batwoman was kind of a wimp most of the time, though you can't tell it from this cover, where the Dynamic Duo seem positively unmanned by the threat of female superiority. Of course more feminine influence in a superhero book wouldn't have quelled Werthamite complaints in itself, in that Wertham arguably disapproved of female crimefighters even more than he did of proto-gay male crimefighters.

I rather liked how Grant Morrison briefly revived this Batwoman in a BATMAN flashback and endowed her with a certain sassiness in line with the above cover.