Sidekicks - Teen and Female

Stan Lee's memory is faulty, as usual. He had nothing to do with creating Captain America, and Bucky was already in place by the time he first saw the series. And at the other end, he wasn't doing much hands-on editing anymore by the time Kitty Pryde came along.

But when he was active, I recall he got a complaint in the letter column about that treatment being applied to Invisible Girl (it was years before they allowed most superhero women to grow up). Shortly afterward, he augmented her super power to put her more on a par with the guys.

But yeah, the subject of endangering children by making them superhero sidekicks has been mentioned -- in recent decades, at least. In the old days, they took a much more freewheeling attitude toward that kind of stuff. Maybe because superhero work was treated as fun and games. Offhand, I can think of only a handful of examples of superheroes being sidelined by injuries -- and one of them was Bucky himself, during the late '40s when he was replaced by Golden Girl. And I can only recall two superhero deaths in the '40s -- The Comet and 711.

Rick Veitch did a graphic novel, during the '90s I believe, that dealt with the way his "heroes" chewed up sidekick after sidekick.

Thanks for posting this. I'm sure a lot of people have thoughts about it.

Quack, Don

Haranguer;

Your point about "kid" sidekicks is well taken; however, Kitty Pryde and the New Mutants are somewhat a different story. In issue no. 1 (as I recall,) the "senior" X-Men team is missing in action, but Xavier still feels the need to continue his mission to help mutants, so he creates the New Mutants, not intending for them to be a "mission" team.

As I recall, Kitty was originally put with the regular team, and was angry when Xavier put her with the New Mutants, whom she contemptuously referred to as the "X-Babies," even though 2 or 3 of them were older than her. The resentment was returned.

It's true Xavier didn't intend for the youngsters to be a "mission team," but of course they became one, and one of their members was even killed in action. He was probably a convenient orphan, as I don't recall parents popping up and threatening to sue Xavier and/or throw him in jail. It's amazing how the comics have always been loaded with orphans whose parents are both dead and who have absolutely no relatives at all to take them in. In real life, such cases are relatively rare. Most real-life "orphans" are kids who have been abandoned; their parents are mostly addicts and criminals, and their other relatives are either no better, too poor to take them in, or just don't care.

Regarding the female super-heroes, it's interesting that as the women's movement progressed and their roles and powers got larger, their outfits got smaller. In other words, they became bigger sex objects while spouting the usual feminist rhetoric about being treated as equals.

Another good example would be Captain Marvel. We have Billy Batson, an orphan thrown out by his cruel uncle, who, after gaining super powers, is somehow able to hold down a job, rent an apartment, supposedly attend school, all without having social services (or equivalent a tad bit suspicious).

didn't some recent "big red cheese" stories have Billy using Captain Marvel to get an apartment, and, etc., while still using the powers Shazam gave him to be a "superhero"? 

You guys must be talking about some latter-day retcon. Billy Batson was an orphan, period, with no family in evidence at all, before Mary turned up. Social services?  This was the '40s, remember? Not only was child "welfare" less nosy and intrusive -- people didn't expect so much "reality" in their funnybooks. There were enough true stories about orphaned siblings taking care of each other to keep anyone from thinking too hard about the likes of Billy Batson. With government less inclined to butt in and keep people from handling their own problems, there was a lot more scope for heroism of that sort in the world.

Was that better? Considering what I hear about children forced into foster care these days, I think it probably was. People's lives are seldom improved when government authorities take over.

Remember, back in those days, people weren't horrified by the thought of children working, so it was possible for kids to earn a living, like Billy did. Of course, few of them had cushy dream jobs like Billy's, but then, most grown-ups have dreary, unpleasant jobs too. Life is easy that way only in comic books.

There was also less official interference in finding a place to live.

Yeah, Billy Batson lived implausibly well for a kid on his own. But it wasn't wildly, fantastically impossible, like it would be today.

Quack, Don

Separate reply for a separate topic. Yes, Kitty was originally part of X-Men proper, before the New Mutants started. And there was some flak about the unsuitability of Professor X's educational institution, until her father was mentally manipulated. That was one of the early manifestations of the "Dark Phoenix" storyline, as I recall. Still, it's a good example of parent involvement in the whole "child endangerment" issue, even if it did get resolved rather conveniently.

And MH, a case can be made that a female superhero's increased sexuality is consistent with her increased empowerment. She's no longer bound by social norms, but can express herself forcefully in all aspects of her being. Of course, this is "self" expression as seen through the eyes of horny adolescent males, a category that includes a lot of comic book creative professionals whatever their ages, but the two areas of empowerment are not incompatible.

But we still see rampant disrespect for women, even superhero women, in comic books. They get killed off, de-powered and suchlike far out of proportion to their male counterparts. I noted this in my article on Sun Girl.

Quack, Don

Separate reply for a separate topic. Yes, Kitty was originally part of X-Men proper, before the New Mutants started. And there was some flak about the unsuitability of Professor X's educational institution, until her father was mentally manipulated. That was one of the early manifestations of the "Dark Phoenix" storyline, as I recall. Still, it's a good example of parent involvement in the whole "child endangerment" issue, even if it did get resolved rather conveniently.

And MH, a case can be made that a female superhero's increased sexuality is consistent with her increased empowerment. She's no longer bound by social norms, but can express herself forcefully in all aspects of her being. Of course, this is "self" expression as seen through the eyes of horny adolescent males, a category that includes a lot of comic book creative professionals whatever their ages, but the two areas of empowerment are not incompatible.

But we still see rampant disrespect for women, even superhero women, in comic books. They get killed off, de-powered and suchlike far out of proportion to their male counterparts. I noted this in my article on Sun Girl.

Quack, Don

I would figure that 99.9% of all the pseudo-enlightened claptrap comics professionals and fans spout in interviews and blogs
about the treatment of female characters is an unabashed dodge of the issue that (with the exception of Gail Simone and maybe two or three others) next to no one dealing in the comics industry has even a beginning of a notion of how women and teenagers (and, hell, individuals) act, behave, think, and et. al. in reality. I personally hate it when comics companies start pushing diversity down your throat because none of them have any clue what the hell that concept even means. "Let's see if we can get every color in the rainbow included in this title-- and not just on the costumes, ha ha!" and all of that fun disconnected insanity. Ah, but you can't have it with cash cows and the reason those characters are cash cows is because we all know and love 'em and go pay to see their movies with a line around the block even though it's the same damn story with different costumes plugged in.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily what I think should/will happen, but tell me this isn't more in sync with reality:
Tim Drake's father finds out he's Robin. Tim, a minor, is made to stop. "Oh, but he can sneak out. Bruce Wayne sneaks around being Batman." Yeah, but Tim is maybe 15 and Bruce is 35-40. A parent can make his child stop doing something. They just have to do it. "How?" Jack Drake threatens to expose Bruce Wayne and sue him into oblivion. You can't honestly believe there wouldn't be a thousand socially conscious/concerned prosecutors and officials lining up to crucify him over this no matter who Bruce dresses up as at night. Never even mind the villains or the Pandora's Box Jack would open when your cooler heads like, say, Two-Face or the Riddler quickly realized that Tim is Robin and brought hell raining down.
That would be a story worth reading. Thing is, they did something like that with Spider-Man not even two years ago and they already had him wish it all away like spandex fetish Dorothy Gale. 
So... what you're asking for is real storytelling. We're just not going to have it in mainstream comics.
Moreover, at thirty-something, Power Girl should be Power Woman. It's fine if Hawkgirl wants to call herself that. The modern one is maybe twenty-two say. On a semi-realistic timeline, PG is not twenty-two. She's not even twenty-five. And she's the modern-day leader of the most revered group in the DCU. (not that you would ever know that if you picked up a recent issue of that jumbled "Kingdom Come" overpass construction area of a book) Maybe it's time for PG to modify her costume a little to transition from smartass blonde bimbo cheerleader who delusions of feminism to respectable chairwoman and world stage figurehead.
But nooooooooo... who am I kidding? Have I not heard of "One More Day"?
Comics are getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media and the public at large. That attention grows every time another "Iron Man" hits and comic vendors start pushing Free Comics Day to draw in those new readers. They'd really better hope those new readers are stupid and don't mind plunking down $3.50 an issue for things that never develop or go anywhere beyond "Degrassi: The Matrix Years."
Man, is it ever a good thing the concepts allow you to have your own universe in your head. Imagination, ironically, is the industry's only saving grace.

Oh, I was going to mention too: You know who the majors really have a problem with? The teenagers who grow up.

Kitty Pryde-- the everyman/girl symbol of the X-Men under Claremont. The reason why Jubilee (and, by extension, Generation X and the New Mutants) exist. The first new teenager to join the X-group since Jean and Bobby. Hell, there was even a crappy movie (with an Australian Wolverine) called "Pryde of the X-Men" that was intended to cement her as the perspective character of a series that never developed. She was the driving factor behind the X-Men arcade game that everyone I knew grew up nearly praying to in Pizza Huts from here to Chili. Then she becomes Shadowcat and joins up with Excalibur. Okay, sure. That's her studying abroad deal. Fine. Then what? Then she takes up with one of the most despicable characters ever introduced into the Marvel canon. Sure. Girls that age do that sort of thing too. Then what? Then she turns up in "Astonishing X-Men", maybe 25 or 26, and she's presented as the cool teacher that all the kids can get along with/talk to/have fantasies about. Fine. Getting close to a complete reversal to 1978 here, but fine. Then comes Colossus.
Guess what? Kitty might as well have Marty McFlyed from 1980 for all the interim time was worth.

Dick Grayson-- Robin. I'm not going to needlessly belabor the importance of that. Forty years passes and he becomes Nightwing. Again, significant. For about ten years. Now everyone writes him/thinks of him as either DC's Daredevil or "When's he going to become Batman?" completely invalidating the need for that character.

And I'm not even going to go into the insanity behind the fact that the Wolfman/Perez Titans can't stay five feet from each other or get over their 28-year-old mid-life crisis need to still be referred to as Titans instead of, you know, doing something different.
Oh, but the fans cried like disturbed babies when Arsenal became Red Arrow. Isn't he supposed to replace Ollie? Was it original? No. Did it seem like he was aware of the fact he's nearly thirty? Yeah. Did it seem more grounded than every damn ridiculous thing that's happened to that lovable cipher Troia? Sure did.

Good work, DC. Keep shootin for the stars.