Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Super-assertive Cool Female Black Protagonists in Comics

In his recent review of Mark Haven Britt's Full Color, Tom Spurgeon remarks:
...one can count the number of super-assertive cool female black protagonists in comics history on one healthy foot and another foot ravaged by frostbite...

I took this as a challenge, and came up with:

Help me out: Who am I missing?

8 comments:

Johnny Bacardi said...

One which comes to mind is that new (well, I'm sure she's not so new now) Crimson Avenger from JSA...

Michael Strauss said...

Ororo Munroe? I mean before she was demoted to Mrs. Black Panther status.

Michael C. said...

Two that came to mind pretty quickly for me are Vixen over in Justice League, and XS from the Legion. I don't know if I'd call XS super-assertive, but she's close.

Anonymous said...

XS was pretty much the opposite of super-assertive, but from the same iteration of the Legion we have Kid Quantum II, who fits the bill pretty well.

Simon (formerly Johnny Sorrow) said...

You can also add two (2!) armored heroes from the DCU, Skyrocket and Steel (Natasha Irons).

How about that?

Dave Carter said...

Okay, I'll agree with Skyrocket, as she was the leader of Power Company--I'd like to see Busiek bring her back Superman--and Natasha Irons was one of the key protagonists in 52 recently.

Storm (Ororo Monroe) yes, depending on who is writing her at the time.

Kid Quantum II & the new Crimson Avenger were imho secondary team players, rarely protagonists.

Vixen is borderline for me; too often she's just a second banana, but I think she's had a feature storyline or two.

Johanna said...

Amanda, of Jimmie Robinson's Amanda and Gunn. She was a bounty hunter with a talking gun.

You'd probably have an easier time counting major black female characters who weren't wise-crackingly assertive.

bigcathead said...

What about Michonne from The Walking Dead?