Heroes and Hot Messes

Characters like Harley Quinn & She Hulk are no different than Peacemaker or Deadpool —only their gender

(Caution, mild spoilers ahead.)

Though I don’t consider myself a huge comic book fan, I do follow the genre a bit. As a child in the 1970s and 1980s, my two favorite superheroes were Wonder Woman and Superman. I loved both their backstories and their characters. When I was a kid, Wonder Woman was one of the only female superheroes who was her own, stand-alone character, without “girl” tacked on to the end of a male superhero’s name, like Batgirl or Supergirl. Besides, Wonder Woman is a badass.

I’ve enjoyed watching the genre evolve and expand, and now, some of my favorite superheros are the complicated ones, some of whom drift into the realm of antihero, because let’s face it, goody-goody heroes can be a little one-dimensional. While this development in superheroes with complicated personal lives has been wildly successful for male antiheroes, many straight dudes just cannot seem to deal with the concept of a messy female hero/antihero.

When She Hulk came to the end of a great first season, reactions were pretty evenly divided. Either you loved it or you hated it…