1964-1965

Today we go through 1964 and 1965 sans the Scarlet Witch as I already have approximately 5,000 words on her and there will absolutely be more when her series comes out, so as always please check out the Lady Comic Book History Podcast.

Starting with Dream Girl, she comes from the planet Naltor where nearly all the inhabitants possess precognitive abilities. Now this is obviously DC because she was not only apart of the Legion of Heroes but also the Legion of Substitute Heroes still a stupid group name but whatever. She served as Legion leader being only the second woman to do so, she led the team against Darkseid, her sister the White Witch was also a part of the Legion of Superheroes, her mother was the leader of her planet and we don’t know who her father is. Dream Girl’s claim to fame is her mastery of Naltorian science, her intelligence placed her in an elite group among the Legioineers her scientific prowess was surpassed only by Brainiac 5 and the original Invisible Kid and she was the strongest in non-powered hand to hand combat. But as is expected at this point in DC characters there are reboots and contradictions so here we go, after Zero-hour the entire team was rebooted and it was claimed that Nura was the first to be born with pre-cognitive abilities in 7 generations, yet this claim was contradicted in another post zero-hour storyline. In this timeline she wasn;t a legioneer but she was Star Boy’s girlfriend because apparently to the writers of DC everytime there is a reboot it means fuck the female characters over more and more. She also apparently developed a weakness in the form of narcolepsy, falling unconscious whenever she had a vision. In the 2005 reboot she dies but becomes a spirit with the ability to appear to anyone in their dreams or day dreams. This was until the spirit Nura started coming to Brainiac 5 in his dreams and in an attempt to enact revenge on the legionnaires Projectra uses her powers to use Brainiac 5 to attack Nura the next time she comes to him, when she does he blinds her both taking her physical and pre-cognitive sight sooo she is disabled and depowered….just to be clear with each reboot the character gets worse. And ya know what this has happened with a few DC characters, I think the men in the 50s and 60s were happily married and getting laid regularly and when it came time to reboot this characters the men taking over have significant social impairments and are 30 and 40 year old virgins so we’re just taking out all this pent up aggression of “why don’t women like me” on fictional women and it's gross. Dream Girl is pretty relevant in the Infinite Crisis storyline as her restored self, in this incarnation of the character Dream Girl’s powers are linked to the realm of dreaming ruled by Dream of the Endless it is later revealed that Dream Girl passed her prophetic knowledge to Thom Kallor. She also played in the Lightning Saga storyline where she was one of the legionnaires sent to the 21st century to capture the essence of Bart Allen in a lightning rod before his death. Dream Girl falls in and out of storylines but is among the women that deserved better when their characters were redone.

Next up we have Sif, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Sif made her first appearance in Journey into Mystery issue #102 in March of 1964 she was a supporting character for Thor so she was also a predominate character in the pages of The Mighty Thor beginning with issue #136 in January of 1967. She made several guest appearances among the pages of titles The Avengers, Fantastic Four, The New Mutants, Silver Surfer, and Thunderstrike. In June of 2010 Sif starred in a self titled one shot written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Ryan Stegman this one shot deals with the aftermath of Loki taking control of her body while her consciousness was being forced into the frame of an elderly dying woman. Journey into Mystery’s issue #646 in November of 2012 was the marking for a shift in focus from Loki to Sif written by Kathryn Immonen and Valerio Schiti the series ran for 10 more issues before it was cancelled. Now I’ve done quite a few episodes now, and titles are constantly changing and being rebooted or cancelled or retitled but you’ll surely notice by now that there is a trend of when the focus shifts from a male’s story to a female’s story all of a sudden the publication isn’t worth the time, money, or energy anymore and they cancel it...You can’t possibly convince me that Journey into Mystery was pulling in enough money as a solo title that you noticed any change in sales when you started letting Sif tell her story. Sif is an amazing warrior, the best female fighter in Asgard and I’d love to see more solo stuff with her. I mean actually what I’d like to see is Sif come back into the MCU and have her and Valkyrie rule and fight together as they fall in love…

Back to DC we have Zatanna created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson Zatanna’s first appearance was in the 4th issue of Hawkman in November of 1964. She is the daughter of magician Giovanni Zatara who was a part of the Golden Age comic books. She makes her living as a stage illusionist prior to discovering her real magic abilities which she happened upon while investigating her father’s disappearance. She is, of course, scantily clad for exactly no reason at all and her first main story arc was focused around finding her father. She was also featured as a backup character in Adventure Comics and Supergirl from 1971-1973 she gains her Justice League membership in Justice League of America issue #161 in December of 1978. Zatanna’s origin gets some expansion with the 10 page short story in DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 in November to DEcember of 1980 as it revealed new details about her mother and how her quest to find her father began. During her time with the Justice League her powers are diminished (suprise surprise) so that she can only control the four elements she starred in a backup feature in World’s Finest Comics issue #274-278 and the limitations on her powers is reversed in issue #277 in March of 1982. In her post-crisis existence she appears in the Books of Magic limited series written by Neil Gaiman. In 2005 Zatanna had her own 4 issue limited series as part of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers event. Zatanna makes her way in and out of the Justice League over the years, really only joining up with the team when there is a Big Bad to fight it was retconned once or twice that she and Batman had a really strong friendship though it was always verbalized and never actually shown so that should tell you just how much effort DC puts into these origin retcons (for those of you that can’t pick up on my sarcasm it's none, they clearly put no effort at all into these and it's exhausting like if you're not going to flesh it out completely why do it at all) so that concludes the ladies of 1964.