Where have the female superheroes gone?
Buffy is now relegated to comic form. David E. Kelly's Wonder Woman pilot didn't get picked up & was being picked apart by TV journos & bloggers while it was being made. Joss Whedon, who has proven he can write the female voice & do it well, tried to make a WW film for years before finally giving up & moving on to brighter pastures like "The Avengers" - a movie chock full of superheroes, only one of which is female (I think), Black Widow played by Scarlet Johansson & last seen in "Iron Man 2" doing little more than look sultry & have great hair. She doesn't seem to have an super powers either, other than being a highly skilled martial artists with a seemingly unlimited supply of gadgets (like a female Batman) but then this is the post-modern world of superheroes in which we live & maybe we don't want our heroes to be super anymore.
On TV, there are plenty of strong female characters (which is GREAT!), but other than the new ABC Family show about the girl with the catlike powers, Something Chloe King, there aren't any superheroes. There are women who can kick butt, no doubt; off the top of my head, there's Nikita & Alex from Nikita, Olivia on Fringe, Sarah on Chuck to name but a few. There are vampires all over the place in movies & TV, even lame sparkly ones but few of them could be called heroes & even fewer are female.
Perhaps the problem lies with the source, i.e. comic books? Aside from Wonder Woman most female superheroes tend to be merely the female counterparts to an established male superhero, like Batgirl, Supergirl & in their very names they are made inferior to the males by virtue of being mere "girls". There's no Batboy that I'm aware of, let's not bring Robin into this argument.
This is why we need Wonder Woman now more than ever. Buffy is over TV wise, I don't even want to think about the Joss-less movie they are attempting to put together right now. I'm not saying it's going to suck, but... yes, that is what I'm saying.
If we can't have Wonder Woman for whatever reason, we need another creative force out there to make up a new female superhero & bring her to the masses. Come on, Hollywood!
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