Marvel What?

There’s a flashback in NextWave to a moment where Captain America literally orders Monica Rambeau to cook him dinner.  It’s a goofy, irreverent tweak at the way that Marvel’s female characters were portrayed in the Silver and Bronze ages, where they were almost always played as The Girl, involved in a romance with a teammate (or a triangle between several teammates) and the voice of domesticity on their teams.

You’d think it would be a step forward for the women of the Marvel U to have their own all-girl team book.  In fact, looking strictly at the surface, that’s a little empowering, yeah?  But wait, this is the same publisher that did this, so let’s not be too hasty.  Marvel Divas is a book about four superheroines who are apparently boy-crazy and love shoes.  And it’s both written and drawn by men.  Which doesn’t bother me.  What does bother me is that the author, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (best known for his broody, supernatural swashbuckling over in the short-lived Nightcrawler series from a few years back), pitched the book to Marvel as “a lot of hot fun,”  and apparently Marvel was all, “hot fun sounds great!”  What about some hot character development and less of a straight Sex and the City lift?

What?

Listen, I’ll be over here re-reading Ultra.