Designated Sidekick

Two unknown guys and a moth
(Image via Wikipedia)

Lisa Fortuna mentions there’s no Wonder Woman cartoon, and it occurred to me, that I wasn’t immediately keen to see a Wonder Woman cartoon produced. Which, given my loyalty to ElectraWoman and DynaGirl, wasn’t entirely something that made sense to me.

I thought about it for a bit, and what struck me wasn’t that I didn’t want a Wonder Woman cartoon - I wanted there to be more than one go-to female lead for a Saturday morning cartoon. The DC male usual suspects list has expanded from the go-to team of Batman and Superman to include Green Arrow and Blue Beetle. So why just stick with a cartoon Amazon when there’s options for a go-to team from Zatanna, Black Canary, Huntress, Spoiler, Misfit, Barda, Supergirl, Raven, Starfire, Arrowette, Mia/Speedy(II) cartoon, Fire, Ice, or Barbara Gordon (either Batgirl or Oracle)

And then it struck me, that I could hear the auto-counterargument of “But nobody knows who [$female_character] is…” as the reflexive beat down. True, few outside of the comic book circles know Arrowette, Speedy, Fire, Ice et al… just like the way few outside of the game know this chap called Blue Beetle. I like the Blue Beetles (more Ted and Jamie, less so Dan) but outside of fandom, who’s really heard of the Blue Beetle? At least Green Arrow was on Smallville but so was Black Canary.

Beetle? His push will come from the cartoon. So I say it’s time to give the push to some less recognized female characters. I mean, imagine a set up of Brave and Bold II: Oracle, Black Canary and Zatanna.

How much literal, figurative and animated ass would this line up kick?