When a friend offered to loan me The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen: Awesome Female Characters From Comic Book History, my response was “Heck, yeah!” After all, Wonder Woman was featured prominently on the cover.
It wasn’t what I expected. But I still thought it was wonderful.
It was, perhaps, unfair for me to expect this to be a book about female superheroes. Author Hope Nicholson said in the introduction that the book would be a decade-by-decade exploration of “the weirdest, coolest, most of-their-time female characters in comics — for better or for worse.” And that’s pretty much what she delivered. But from the title and the cover, I had decided I’d be encountering more women like Wonder Woman — heroic figures. Instead, I was introduced to women in all their complexity. Some sounded like great role models; others… not so much.
The author definitely picked some weird women for her book. I recognized few of the characters she featured beyond the iconic figures she picked for each decade (and even a couple of those were new to me). Some of the “superwomen” she mentioned only appeared in one or two issues of a comic. Many are hard to find now, though there are still plenty of accessible books out there.
The women are products of their decades. The ’30s gave us strong female characters, but some originated in men’s pulp magazines, so they weren’t always fully clothed. On the other hand, I was a little depressed by the chapter on the ’50s. The representatives of the decade, like “Lucy the Real Gone Gal” and “Man Huntin’ Minnie of Delta Pu,” seemed shallow compared to the women who came before them. Nicholson still managed to see something good in each of them. Lucy, for instance, was a “spoiled girl whose focus is on the latest fashions and the cutest boys.” Despite that, Nicholson seemed to enjoy her, writing, “it’s pretty refreshing to see a teenager acting like a real teenager, full of hormones and misplaced rage.” The author did her best with what was available, and she certainly unearthed some interesting characters.
I didn’t always understand why Nicholson picked the characters she included in the book. Why did she choose two characters from the Elfquest universe but only one of the X-Men? And why, of all the X-Men, did she pick Dazzler? I also keenly felt the absence of some recent characters, such as Adrienne Ashe from Princeless and Alana from Saga. Nicholson gave a nod to Saga in her introduction to the current decade, but no characters from the series were included.
Many characters and comics didn’t appeal to me as I read about them. Some came across as poor role models, like Lucy. Others seemed to exist primarily as vehicles for porn. But when I finished the book, I still had a long list of comics I wanted to read. Since I finished Nicholson’s volume, I’ve read Rose (a Bone prequel), a volume of iZombie, and a volume of Squirrel Girl. I found all of them enjoyable — even iZombie, and I swear I really am not into zombies.
Despite my criticisms, I was impressed by the sheer number of unusual female characters Nicholson managed to dig up. She clearly knows her stuff. And while this isn’t the sort of book in which I’d expect poetic descriptions, it’s well-written. Every once in a while Nicholson delivers an absolutely beautiful bit of writing, such as when she described the women Johnnie Christmas created for Firebug: “their weight lies on their bones as it would in real life.”
If you enjoy comics or are interested in how women have been portrayed in pop culture over time, I highly recommend The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen. You’ll almost certainly close the book with a list of comics you’ll want to track down.