How the Invisible Woman Penetrated the Glass Ceiling…

Invisible Woman Penetrates the Glass Ceiling by Geek Woman

Comics and graphic novels are a wellspring of talent. They reveal in their pages those that are to become the next innovators of the entertainment industry. Rolling back from the independent movie scene, artists of the future with low and no budgets create visions in ink on 2D pages. Some of them eventually will have a relation to other media, and then particularly into video games. Animation, comics, and games have become all tied in together in the entertainment industry. Comics have been the resource of many game and movie hits in the past few years.

It is rare to see successful female lead characters in comics. The great ones like Wonder Woman, Elektra and Promethia haven’t made it successfully to video games yet. Plenty of the male Marvel comics heros have had video games that featured them. Those beloved Marvel Heros made the natural migration from one medium to the next over and over again. It is those games that are referred to in the punch line of jokes about how bad games made from comics are. Perhaps the female characters were spared this particular pixilated agony after all…

In 1940 a guy who was an educational consultant for Detective Comics, which is now better known as DC Comics, had the brilliant idea that ‘maybe there should be a woman super hero too?’. Charles Moulton was the creator of the systolic blood-pressure test, which also lead to the creation of the polygraph lie detector test. For some reason because of his discoveries, Marston was said to be convinced that women were more honest and reliable than men. During his life time Marston was the champion for the causes of women.

In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston said: <blockquote>”Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power, Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”<blockquote>

In December 1941, Wonder Woman’s debut was in All Star Comics #8. Six months later she appeared in her own self-titled book in the Summer of 1942. The rest is history. In addition to her invisible plane there are still invisible hurdles for Super Women figures in American comics and video games.

The Justice League is a super hero support group with Wonder Woman, consisting of DC’s top super-heroes. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. They made up a super group that first appeared first in 1960 in issue #28 of The Brave and The Bold, and has since been the subject of numerous comic books. It has also inspired several animated TV shows, including the Cartoon Network’s Justice League Unlimited and the 1970’s and 80s series the Super Friends. The comic was also the subject of several games. Recently there was a canceled Midway Justice League title this past year.

Another man who is a champion of women’s causes and girl power today is Joss Weadon. The creator and director of girl fan favs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Serenity is slated to direct a movie interpretation of Wonder Woman. It is likely to lead to a game title as well.

Until recently things were bleak for the transfer of comics to games. But then Spider-Man 2 came along. This title among so many that have expanded upon the sandbox style of game-play familiarized by the Grand Theft Auto series. Your Spidey can go swinging around Manhattan on webs using an engine that was designed just for him. He can crawl up the side of huge skyscrapers, and even ride on some helicopters. You can play as long as you want doing mini missions such as stopping car-jackers, and saving pedestrians. Visiting checkpoints advances the story. In general that game seems to be getting decent reviews and possibly breaks the super hero game curse.

In the summer of 2000 Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2introduced a female lead character u play as Julie. She is a defender of the future. In her tight vinyl outfit with a huge, um … selection of weapons. This action adventure title combined exploring for secrets and other gadgets hidden throughout the game with fighting mayhem with melee and ranged shooting. She even had energy bows, pistols, shotguns and an axe.

The graphic novel called “Melting Pot” was published by Tundra Publishing Ltd. in 1990 and it was was supposed to be released for the Dreamcast, PC and Macintosh. The Dreamcast version was cancelled. Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot and Simon Bisley created F.A.K.K.². In 1993 Kevin Eastman began developing a female heroine, but shelved her. He met B-Movie Star Julie Strain, while working with her the character of Julie, a.k.a. F.A.K.K.² became developed. The screenplay of F.A.K.K.² and the world of the Melting Pot evolved together. She was a sexy leading lady, and she existed upon a modified version of the Quake III engine.

Elektra the warrior woman who was the girlfriend of Daredevil became popular earlier this year in her own movie. In it Elektra survives a near-death experience then she becomes a mercenary assassin. She has a spiritual crisis and ends up protecting her targets. In the internal struggle to understand her own nature she saves a single father and his young daughter. Elektra is challenged by a group of super martial arts assassins. She could easily be like they are and ends up finding her own path instead. The movie was inspiring. The Elektra game was scrapped regardless. Until this December the Elektra online http://www.elektramovie.com/game/ game was the closest thing to this female comics heroine got to in a game. Then her own movie based game seemed to be scrapped when Marvel Nemesis : Rise of the Imperfects came out. The image of am Elektra -like character is in the game all the characters seem to play the same. It was released across almost every platform but it did not do well. It got bad reviews and seemed to suffer from mediocrity and didn’t translate the warmth and vibrance of the comics to the game.

There are a few exceptions. Some games have been loosely based on cartoon fem fatales, while others evolved from more supernatural sources. If super women are your thing you can enjoy maximum character creation bliss in either of the excellent MMOG’s City of Villians or City of Heros. While there you can create any type of character you want with virtually limitless choices. For the younger set of girls the new MMORPG from Disney called Toontown Online is inspired by the enormous Disney cartoon properties. The new game proposes to be a safe game-play environment for kids. It has an ESRB rating of “E”.

There were a few instances of pretty good games made with the Xena Warrior Princess franchise. I played the PS One version and loved it. Xena did not arise from comics though. She is an amalgam of the events and historical accounts by the Greek historian Diodorus about Zenobia of Palmyra, Hephastia and others. Xena was mainly a muse conjured by her screen writers.

In preparation for playing the new Aeon Flux game I watched the DVD box set of the old MTV animated series as well as two movies. I just saw ”Girlfight” written and directed by Karyn Kusama who also was the odd choice for directing Aeon Flux. Girlfight was a well crafted little movie. It was hard and gritty and real. Total opposite of a Hollywood - slick factory made movie. It even has some brave dialog. There are messages in the movie that are delivered via little posters that are hand made and taped up. The paper is torn and old, the magic markers that made the posters were dried out. They even ran out of space on the paper sometimes and had to squeeze the words in. There was great deal of attention on the rugged details of this movie. Even though the story itself was essentially a romance. It had a few original twists. It was a quintessential girl power flick. But the directing was clunky and technically flawed.

Boxing isn’t exactly action, like Aeon Flux action. Aeon Flux has a fighting style that is a little beyond even Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’s Kung Fu and circus high wire work banged together. Aeon could practically fly. She would wall bounce and acrobatically dance fight. In Girlfight the “action” isn’t very active so Kusama’s sluggish style is misplaced in the Aeon Flux movie. Her myopic vision for the movie hinders the scope of Aeon’s capabilities in the game. Instead of being the stiletto slim animated Aeon Flux she’s an interpretation of her as Charlize Theron. The director mistakenly assumes that a woman of an assassin’s capabilities would need to have the physicality of a marathon swimmer. I found that the role was mis cast and mis played. An unknown athlete rather than a big name actress would have suited the dual role better. A woman with a slender body and proficiency in gymnastics as qualifications for the role of Aeon Flux certainly could have been found. I am sure there are plenty of packages from aspiring gothy looking lanky models that agents have no idea what to do with sitting in file drawers somewhere. My guess there is a woman on the planet that is a ringer for Aeon Flux, too bad no one bothered to look for her. Instead she was portrayed like the Maitrix’s husky star Trinity. One game that was more faithful to the animated material was Ghost in the Shell and it has a more preferable artstyle.

As a game though Aeon Flux isn’t that bad. The game-play is better than Ghost in the Shell. It does have several annoyances though. First of all the jumping should be effortless and fluid. It is difficult to align some of the freakier wall jumps. Repetitive attempts are needed in some places and that gets monotonous when you don’t get it just right. There is no way to select and target enemies. I suppose this is intended to make it a harder game and more like the fatalistic aspect of the Aeon Flux universe where you have an anti heroine. She gets shot, she dies, she sleeps with the enemy, she has regrets, and bad memories plague her. The story-line in the game attempts to organize and rationalize what was a psychedelic miasma shown slightly out of focus when it was the animated series.

Other issues with the camera being at weird angles to some of the acrobatic jumps is another thing that feels buggy and uncomfortable. In the Spiderman and even the latest Prince of Persia games did this a little better. Because of these difficulties it is a very challenging game. I haven’t heard anyone complaining yet that it was too short or boring. It is a game based on a movie that was based on a comic. Despite the unseemliness of its pedigree it is a fairly good game. Unfortunately the 2D world still in many ways surpasses what even the biggest budget can do in the 3D world. The animated series Aeon flux was great because it had an obscure stylization to it and it existed in an alternate reality. Having a live action movie made out of it grounded the imaginative genius of it in its’ original form.

Sue Storm can raise shields, project energy waves, and turn invisible. And indeed for most of the Fantastic Four Game The Invisible Woman is invisible. You don’t get the option of choosing which character you play the game with. You don’t get to see your favourite character through the game. Then there are ridiculous mini games that are no fun and don’t make sense. Even though there was some progress made and some “almosts” came out we are still waiting for that really great girl game.

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How the Invisible Woman Penetrated the Glass Ceiling…

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