I love how excited Steph was when she all of a sudden had access to all these new gadgets as a member of Batman Incorporated since she was always perpetually broke and shooed away by the Bat Family in the past.
With as music-video style fetishy as that specific act is, it's surprising how much restraint editorial uses, not having the ladies of Marvel and DC rip and tear their shirts to pieces at the drop of a hat. I can think of at least two characters for whom that DEFINITELY feels like an in-character move, and the recent Superboy Prime arc definitely parodies "ripping a shirt apart as cheesecake" despite it not actually being all that common of a thing.
Then again, for as tame as it technically is, I remember Supergirl's first costume reveal on Superman the Animated Series feeling extremely exhibitionistic and suggestive, even as a kid. I wonder if that may have led to some sort of internal "no overtly sexualizing the shirt rip or the characters' superpowers" rule, because you know damn well Bruce Timm knew what he was doing. (He's Bruce Timm, after all.)
I’ve seen it called “the Buffy rule:” aggressive physical combat and traditionally masculine sexual assertiveness can only be given to the most conventionally feminine of female characters. The outliers are people like She-Hulk where it’s humorous, or Barda where it’s somewhat openly fetishistic.
that honestly would have made it better. Imagine her saying that with Babs on radio saying "thats not you anymore!!" and Steph replying "d'oh! right, right!"
It was so bizarre how they wouldn't let anyone do anything with Steph or Cass immediately after The New 52 launched, even if it was an Elseworlds story. They were really pushing their streamlined, Silver Age adjacent DC Universe hard.
I will never forget how the writer of Stephgirl, Bryan Q. Miller, tried to cheer up the fans in the wake of the New 52... by saying that Steph would be Nightwing... in the Smallville Comics... and then the editorial walked back on that and made Babs Nightwing instead.
The DiDio era was so terrible because he really did not have much respect for the post-Crisis world of DC Comics.
They were really pushing their streamlined, Silver Age adjacent DC Universe hard.
Except when they weren't. There was no rhyme or reason to the stuff that didn't work as a reboot besides GL and Batman making lots of money and Didio picking the parts of those he liked.
Yes I'm awear of it, I'm saying that at one point they stopped writing her like that and retconned this weird behavior with saying that she got kryptonite poisoning
None of that's canon now, thank goodness. Because she wouldn't have been a teenager any more (due to pre-Crisis continuity being restored for her) almost all civilian scenes from 2005 when she was rebooted through to the cancellation of her Rebirth book would've played out very differently. The fights might be canon still, but not her having multiple civilian names (Kara Danvers was only settled on in Rebirth, she uses Linda for people who knew her pre-Crisis and don't know she's Supergirl) or going to school.
That's now retconned. She'd have been in her early 20s now due to being that age when she died in Crisis, as her reboot has been retconned to being a resurrection via Darkseid.
Yes! I hate how sexualized Dick is. I hate how people only seem to care about his ass and him being pretty —but mostly his ass— when he's such a wonderful character, one of the most relatable and humane characters.
I love my boy and can't stand how DC runs with the "big ass" joke to the point they've had him be assaulted and even raped
I tried reading new52 nightwing and it wasn't great. I don't know if it was new52 being bad in general or just Nightwing. But Dick is such a good character in like everything else I've seen him in
Also, Kara probably wouldn't tear her clothes as often as she does in comics. She's not a multimillionaire and probably actually likes the clothes she owns.
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u/FinalWarsGoji Aug 29 '26
"WELL WHY NOT?!"