A passive comic book fan for many years, only recently have I become more active in my passion and following.  The Supergirls by Mike Madrid is one I picked up out of great curiosity as to where my favorite superheroines hailed from and how they have become the women they are today.

The book is separated into sections, easily giving the reader a time era as well as an artistic and cultural reference for each chapter.  Spanning from the 1940s straight through to a more modern perspective, The Supergirls is a fantastic journey into the characters’ psyches, social commentary, their costuming, history and even the forces behind their creation, development and evolution.

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I was introduced to heroines that I never knew existed and gained deeper insight into the ones I already held dear.  The strength of each character and the struggles they faced, both on and off the comic book pages, shines through in Mike Madrid’s tome.  He describes the characters’ appearances in comic books, both self titled and those they guested in, how those appearances both affected the characters and how the characters affected the stories in which they were placed.

I was amazed at how much some characters have changed over the years, in willpower, diversity in story content, relationships, goals and purpose, and even costume development.  The characters that we grew up with are different from the entities by the same names now and each come with a hidden crazy past that is not always explored in the more modern incarnations.

Like Supergirl for instance, I had no idea that in the 1970s Red Kryptonite brought out this heroine’s subconscious desires and by creating the bad self Satan Girl.  Of course, the great thing about The Supergirls is that not only does the author summarize these life events for our characters, to give us a decent background, he does so telling the bad with the good.  So not only do we find out that Supergirl let go of her super good girl personae, we learn that, as many things seem to have been in comic book history, her change is colored by a forced superficiality of purpose when her one hidden desire is unveiled as wanting to be the most popular girl in school.  Really?  Red Kryptonite and deepest desires revealed and all good girl alien Kara wants is to be popular?

These contrasts that are described throughout the book are what kept me reading when I had originally picked up the book in the hopes of inspiration from a variety of heroines.  When I was disappointed that my favorite characters were not always what I had envisioned, my fascination only grew because these women endure even through all the heartache, loss of purpose and adjustment of personality they have been forced to live through on the pages of comics throughout the decades.

While the ideas Mike touches on were disheartening, especially the points on Lois Lane (whose newest incarnation will be played by Amy Adams in Man of Steel) and Wonder Woman’s continuously forced obsessions with their male counterparts, lack of functional costume design for Storm and Psylocke and lack of independent goals of many heroines in the 1940s and 1950s, I found myself unable to put this book down and in the end was surprisingly inspired and hopeful.

The pasts for our heroines may not have been ideal and we may still have much growth to go through with them to truly be at peace with our superwomen, but it takes that hardship and enduring strength to give them character and the ability to push through.  Barbara Gordon as Oracle is an inspiration and a character whose coming into her own is also described by the author.  These are the tales of our superheroines and I thank Mike Madrid for taking such a real look at these women and only wish we had been treated to visuals of these characters’ growth throughout the book.  Read The Supergirls and tell me, who are your favorite comic book superheroines and how have they grown?

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