Designated Sidekick

“Wonderland” is a 2D adventure MMORPG based on several ancient South American and Pacific Island cultures; the mysterious Mayans, the huge stone statues of Easter Island and much more combine to form unique quests filled with fascinating elements that our players will experience throughout the game.

I’m struggling to see how a selection of fairly cliche looking anime characters match up with Easter Island, Mayans and South America. Sure, there’s a small Pacific Island called Japan, but really, what gives with the character set for the proposed storyline of the game?   Seriously, WTF?

Source: WikipediaI figured I’d do an occasional run on my favourite comic book characters who don’t always see a huge amount of headline space.

Starting the series, is War Machine.  I’ll be watching Iron Man 2 in the hope that War Machine gets a decent role.

Who: War Machine (James Rupert Rhodes)

House: Marvel Comics
Moment: In the animated Iron Man series, James Rhodes was struggling with claustrophobia and still showed up to work the Iron Man / War machine suits.  Plus, as an African American pilot, and offsider for Tony Stark, he was given the WarMachine which was the heavy firepower armour.  Sure, the spin off series of the WarMachine comic suffered cross-over-itis, and the usual “Replace Armour with Alien” emergency plot device, but still, War Machine is in my list as a favourite, and he’s a reason for me to hang out for Iron Man 2: The Quickening.

Dear Patriarchy

I remember when you were young, hip and subtle. This? Not so subtle.

Given the rest of Quantum Mechanix posters are heavily stylized, and this is the only photo realistic one in the set, and the only one in the set to feature a female figure, it don’t take much to get the other message being sent here. Women are bad, Battlestar Galactica told me so. This is from an official merchandiser for the Battlestar Galactica series as well, so it’s quality assured Patriarchy Produce.
What’s also missing from the poster set is the recognition of the existence of Kara Starbuck. You want to tell me that the ace hotshot pilot in the fleet isn’t a recruiting mechanism worthy of their own poster? Especially as merchandise to sell to the fanbase of the TV series?

DS

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?