Girls, Power

DC and Warner Bros. announced the Fall 2015 launch of DC Super-Hero Girls yesterday — a line of media content and merchandising in partnership with Mattel targeted at girls aged 6 to 12.



Why am I so conflicted about this?

Actually, I know why; I just don’t have time to write enough about it right now. The short(ish) version: My nieces love the established superheroes they’ve been exposed to, male and female alike. DC simply doesn’t have sufficient material for pre-teens with a wide variety of developed* female characters in either publishing or licensed product. [*Not that kind of developed — I do appreciate the athletic body types and modest costuming here.] So the idea of a line aimed specifically at girls is a corrective that points out a root problem, which is what I would rather see addressed. I don’t mean that the main stuff is only for boys, either, because it isn’t quite that pat.


Related: Kids Meet • Activated • Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue

Here’s our first look at Melissa Benoist in costume for CBS’s upcoming Supergirl.


Photos: Bonnie Osborne / Warner Bros. Entertainment © 2015.

A friend was decrying the dark blue on Facebook and he’s not alone there. I don’t
mind it myself. Bruce Timm & Co. opted to go in that direction for the WB Superman animated series in 1996, harkening back to the earliest depictions in the comics as well as the 1940s Fleischer cartoon shorts, and I think darker colors in general tend to work better in live-action portrayals. The Flash has done all right with a mostly lighter superhero — in tone — wearing a darker red than we get on the page. (Of course, Man of Steel went dark too…)