The world of superheroes and comic book characters have been dominated by the stereotypical powerful white male savior. The most popular and mainstream characters include Spider-Man, Captain America, and Superman; all white males who “save the day.” What about the women and women of color that save the day? It is clear that many of these heroes are overshadowed by the white savior put on a pedestal in the superhero genre. This inequality is largely due to the objectification, tokenism, and fridging to female superheroes in popular comic franchises like Marvel and DC. I want to take a moment to look at some of the strong and empowering women, especially women of color, in superhero media, and the powers their characters represent.
Ms. Marvel, also known as Kamala Khan, is a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager from Jersey City, NJ. You may recall her from her most recent show that aired on Disney+ in 2022 entitled Ms. Marvel, though her powers differ between the comics and the show.
In the Marvel Comics, Khan’s shapeshifting powers are derived from Terrigan Mist. In the Disney+ show, Ms. Marvel gains her powers from a bangle that belonged to her great-grandfather. Her powers in the show are slightly different than in the comics; instead of changing her physical form, she generates a crystal energy that she manipulates to make different weapons and objects. Her powers in the show are directly linked to her family’s ancestry.
Kamala is a perfect representation of teenage girl struggles, as well as the surrounding topics of culture and self-identity. She struggles with balancing her need to identify with her peers, and her strong connection to her Pakistani ancestry. Rather than being created solely as a token character for the MCU, her intersectional identities are the core of her character, and make her the powerful and relatable superhero she is.
Mantis, a Vietnamese alien, is known for possessing such powerful levels of empathy, or pathokinesis, that she is able to manipulate emotions and even make people fall asleep. Mantis is one of my favorite superheroes, as she represents the strength in sensitivity and emotional sensibility. She was isolated greatly growing up because of her evil father, which leads to her lacking social skills and originating from another planet. Despite her differences, Mantis is able to use her strong empathetic powers to help those around her.
In a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Mantis touches her friend Drax, who is mourning the loss of his family, and she immediately breaks down crying alongside him. She uses her abilities to manipulate his emotions and make him feel at peace. She was also using her powers on her father, Ego, to help him sleep at night. She uses her powers to help those around her, and feel for what they experience. Mantis is a great character and superhero that represents the importance of empathy and the diverse struggles she encounters being “different” than others.
On a more current topic, The Boys and Gen V have been big sources of superhero media. Personally, one of my favorite characters from the franchise is Sister Sage. She first appears in season 4 of “The Boys,” with her power of being the smartest person in the entire world. Her brain grows rapidly everyday and she knows pretty much everything.
However, she discusses her many struggles with her power as a Black woman. She even states in the show that she knows the cure of cancer and tried to tell doctors when her grandmother was dying of stage 3 leukemia, yet no one believed her. When she was recruited by Homelander, the main antagonist of The Boys, he tried to use her as a tool to success. However, he stopped listening to her advice because once again, she is a Black woman whose brains get overlooked by societal discrimination.
Another inspirational female superhero of color from The Boys is Marie Moreau. She is a college student at Godolken University where she hopes to become a hero, and one day the first Black woman in “The Seven.” As a child, Marie was sent to an institute called “Red River” after accidentally killing her parents because of her powers. As a result, she spent her whole life in foster care and was never adopted.
Marie’s dream of being a part of “The Seven” changes when she realizes that she needs to help the people around her at the university. Marie is a strong, compassionate, and relatable superhero figure. She possesses one of the strongest abilities in The Boys, as she’s able to heal people and also destroy them in the blink of an eye. She is also revealed to be one of the “chosen ones,” leading to her own identity crisis finding out she was conceived in a lab under “Project Odessa,” the same organization lead by Vought that created the notorious Homelander.
Marie struggles with moral and ethical dilemmas as she wants to be a hero, but doesn’t agree with the system surrounding it. She is extremely resilient and hard-working; even though she grew up as an orphan, she got into college and became a helpful hand to many at the university by using her powers for good rather than evil.
Supergirl, also known as Kara Zor-El or Kara Danvers, follows a story of a girl whose home planet, Krypton, was destroyed. She was 13 years old when she was sent to Earth to save her own life and look after her cousin, Clark Kent. She possesses the same powers as Superman, such as super strength, invulnerability, speed, flight, heat vision, x-ray, and superhuman stamina.
As an immigrant on Earth, she struggles with cultural acceptance, and grapples with her own superpowers while trying to live a normal life. In the Marvel Comics, Kara tries her best to fit in with the people of Earth but struggles with culture shock from only knowing her family’s culture of Krypton. When she initially crashed on Earth, she was met with hostility and aggression from those on Earth, and she couldn’t understand their language.
Despite her differences, Supergirl has used her powers to save many lives. She saves her cousin Superman many times, including the Crisis on Infinite Earths where she fights Anti-Monitor, a villain who possesses extreme powers, and saves Clark’s life after he was knocked unconscious from Anti-Monitor. In the Batman Comics, Supergirl uses her heat vision to save Bruce from freezing in space, and saves his own life.
Her character is a great portrayal of what immigrants experience in the real world, and depicts how she uses her differences, and her powers, to use her own strength from her culture and heritage.
Next time you think of Marvel, DC, or another comic superhero universe, think of all the women and people of color that are overlooked due to the socially accepted “standard” superheroes such as Iron-Man and Captain America. How can we as consumers take a closer look at the strength of the female superheroes we see in mainstream media? I believe this takes effort to look past what the media wants us to see when we think of “superheroes,” and look at the power and representation within women and women of color in superhero media.