YEAR 1998: FAITH

In a general sense Faith is to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Callisto is to Xena.  However, the approach of the two teleseries to the idea of the "negative counterpart" couldn't be more different.

In XENA, Callisto makes her appearance within the teleseries' first season, while Faith doesn't show up until the third season of BUFFY-- though, to be sure, the show's first season was short, being that it was a midseason replacement. 

Nevertheless, Callisto is conceived as a rebuke to Xena's attempt to make restitution for her past acts; she's a victim who chooses to turn villain in order to undo Xena's attempts at heroism.  Faith is more like the "cool girl" who undermines Buffy's position as the center of her homebuddies' attention.

That said, by not being as thematically opposed to the series-heroine, Faith proves more malleable, going back and forth from hero to villain to hero again, and serves a major plot-function for the series as a whole by demonstrating that more than one Slayer can exist at a given time, as against the received Slayer mythology. 

But perhaps her best quality is that the actress Eliza Dushku looked way better kicking vampire ass than Sarah Michelle Gellar did.  Wikipedia reports that Dushku was offered a shot at a Faith teleseries, and that she passed on the concept.  Given the reception of her later teleserials TRU CALLING and DOLLHOUSE, this might not have been the best decision.

YEAR 1997: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

The 1992 BUFFY film remains important purely as a dry run for the more ambitious teleseries.  Had Joss Whedon and his company not managed to find a new direction for the series-- merging horror, adventure, and enough motormouthed, self-referential dialogue to make Quentin Tarantino gag-- the film might scarcely be remembered any better than the Cyndi Lauper vehicle VIBES.

I noted in my XENA essay that I didn't think the "vampire slayer" mythos was quite as ambitious as the "warrior princess" concept.  Nevertheless, both teleserials excelled in terms of portraying a relatively unexplored field: the dark side of the heroic femme formidable. Evil "femmes fatales" were as common as dirt in the history of pop culture, but heroines in the adventure tradition generally had to be simon-pure "good girls." Xena and Buffy were both noble souls who occasionally allowed rage or egotism to master them, as pop-fiction readers regularly saw with male heroes ranging from Batman to Mike Hammer.

The most intriguing aspect of Joss Whedon's mythos was that it was fundamentally atheistic despite the presence of multifarous demons.  However, Whedon rarely explored this theme in depth in BUFFY as he would in ANGEL.  Still, BUFFY was important in terms of Whedon forging his method of the brooding-loner-with-a-posse-of-faithful-friends-- not to mention the mass appeal of BUFFY's "take back the night" feminist theme.

YEAR 1996: CALLISTO

 

Within the first year of the teleseries XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS, the producers came up with a yin to Xena's yang: Callisto, vengeance-driven warrior-maiden.

In so doing Callisto's creators followed a pattern not unlike those seen with classic comics-heroes.  If Superman's power is brain, give him a mortal enemy who's all brain.  If Batman's tightly wound, give him a lunatic clown as a nemesis.

In part Callisto-- referred to as "the psycho Barbie" by some pundits-- follows the Batman pattern. Because Xena's entire raison d'etre revolves around doing good in restitution for her past evil acts, Callisto makes the perfect counterpoint given that she's a victim of one of those evil acts, but one who refuses to grant Xena any forgiveness. 

And in addition to being just as skilled in "Greek kung-fu" as is the heroine, she's Joker-crazy as against Xena's sober-sided toughness.

Unlike the Joker, the producers apparently wanted Callisto to complete a decisive character-arc, rather than being a routine sparring-partner.  This proved a wise decision, resulting in a strong dramatic sequence-- ironically not on XENA but on the companion-show HERCULES-- in which Callisto has a time-traveling experience which roughly puts her in Xena's sandals, so to speak.

Further, Callisto finally does achieve an appropriate revenge upon her enemy, but in keeping with the philosophical sensibilities of the writers, it brings her no satisfaction. Having reached that apogee, the character only appeared a few more times in an altered form (as a kind of angelic presence) before the series concluded.

YEAR 1995: XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS

Buffy the Vampire Slayer got out of the gate first and maintained popular in comic books some time after the demise of her television series.  Despite that, Xena-- who premiered on an episode of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS before gaining her own series the same year-- is arguably the more ambitious femme formidable.

To say "ambitious" is not to portray the teleseries as something artsy and high-falutin'.  XENA the series borrowed from a variety of popular sources-- sword-and-sandal movies, Hong Kong kung-fu films, dungeons-and-dragons and even westerns. Nevertheless, the writers were gutsy enough to simulatenously swipe from highbrow works like Greek epic and the Bible or from philosophers like Schopenhauer, resulting in a unique blend of the "high" and "low" that BUFFY can't quite match.

The theme of the warrior trying to turn his/her deadly skills to good ends is a favorite American theme, but the creators of XENA upped the ante.  XENA episodes often concern the necessity for characters to "let go" of the lust for hate or vengeance -- and not only the villains.  Both Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle frequently have to practice what they preach, and they don't always do so successfully.  The Schopenhauerean ideal of relinquishing the will plays better than it lives.

Not to mention that in addition to all this philosophical complexity, Xena also had better fight-choreography than Buffy--

AND--

A better all-musical episode.  

YEAR 1994: KAHLAN AMNELL

I haven't featured many characters as yet from the genre of prose fantasy, but I would remiss not to mention one of the better ones of the 1990s, Kahlan Amnell from Terry Goodkind's SWORD OF TRUTH series.

However, for the time being, this will have to be something of a placeholder, since I confess I've only read the first in Goodkind's multi-book series.  I can provide no overall perspective as to how the character of Kahlan develops over the course of the series.  Like many fantasy-fans I've seen the LEGEND OF THE SEEKER teleseries, but as this changes up the events of the books, this can hardly be a resource.

I might go out on a limb and say that Kahlan is notable for being an equal partner to the male hero in the course of the series, and that her particular power as a "Mother Confessor" is integral to Goodkind's take on magical power in his fantasy-sphere.

To top it off, I quote from the Sword of Truth Wiki:

"Outside of the Sword of Truth universe, Terry Goodkind reports that Kahlan was the first character he thought of, and that her iconic scene running from the D'Haran quad sparked the entire series."

YEAR 1993: LOIS LANE

From the late 1960s on, the comic book Lois Lane had become noticably tougher, often if not consistently capable of taking out gunmen with karate chops.  But the Lois Lane seen in both live-action and animated television shows was nearly incapable of self-defense.  The Margot Kidder Lois of the big-budget SUPERMAN films displayed a modicum of "street savvy" and gutsiness, but she didn't seem like the sort of reporter who could mix it up with a batch of gun-wielding thugs.

Though 1993's LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN often played Lois for comic effect, the writers gave her greater efficacy in compensation.  Portrayed as the child of an army brat, Teri Hatcher's Lois had a genuine appreciation for the martial arts, as displayed in the Season 2 episode "Chi of Steel."  Though she still didn't mow down small armies of thugs, she was frequently seen trading karate chops with assassins or punching out the henchman of the Villain of the Week.

YEAR 1992: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Year 1992 should probably get the honorary title of "the Year of the Woman Superhero."  It's not that Buffy was the best superhero, or even the best of her horror-oriented subgenre.  But in contrast to the live-action flops of SUPERGIRL and SHEENA (both 1984), BUFFY the film was at least a modest success-- which led to the 1997 teleseries.

So what about the original film?  Scripter Joss Whedon has said many times that the director wanted it to be more of a comedy than Whedon did.  Without my seeing the original Whedon script, I can't judge whether it looks like the director made massive changes.  The final shooting script is extremely loose, though, and only rarely does the potential of the concept come across. 

It's neither a very funny nor very thrilling film, though Kirsty Swanson (unlike male lead Luke Perry) at least plays the concept relatively straight.  In the history of the femmes formidables, BUFFY the movie is essentially an interesting footnote.