The reason that Storm is ‘racialised’ is that if someone was going to describe Storm one of the first things they would say is that she’s black. Being black becomes a major part of stories she is in, in a way that say being white isn’t an important part of Jean Grey’s character. This isn’t necessarily a criticism as it is essentially impossible for a American story to be ‘race-blind’ without just ignoring race, as whiteness is so normalised in American discourse. The problem that I think Sam is talking about (without putting words in his mouth) is that when the writers decided to make a black character they ended up with some contrived Egyptian thief African Princess, rather than a character that relates in anyway to the large majority of black people in America who just grew up in a normal family like the large majority of white people in America. When you average (read white) American writer decides to write a white character (or more likely doesn’t decide to make them any other race and they end up white by default) they don’t generally become some exotic European nobility (although that probably describes Scarlet Witch pretty well). You could reply that comics are allowed to be contrived and that there’s nothing wrong with having one black African princess and you’d be right, IF Marvel had a large number of other black characters with more normal lives. When answering the criticism that Marvel didn’t have many black characters, I don’t know that Storm was quite what they had in mind.

The idea was to come up with the five characters who were intended to be feminist icons that fell farthest from the mark, so I left Jessica Jones off because the entire point of her character has always been that she was a mess. Manhunter, I’ll admit, I just don’t know anything about. I’ve only ever seen her in Birds of Prey, and she never did anything especially shameful there. She may be a good fit for the list if you read her series.

As for Wonder Woman, you make a good point that she’s come a long way from her origins, but you can’t overlook the fact that in the days of Rosie the Riveter, she was getting tied up and spanked a lot; and that when they tried to make her “more feminsit” in the ’70s, they did it by taking her powers away. She’s much better nowadays, but it still bothers me that she’s the most prominent female superhero, yet nine out of ten non-comic book readers are more likely to remember the invisible jet and the “in her satin tights” line from her theme song than one of her actual powers. Among comic book fans – and this may say more about the sites I visit than the character herself – the only time she seems to come up in discussion is when someone complains that she’s only considered one of DC’s “trinity” as a token female. In other words, it’s not so much that the character doesn’t deserve respect as much as the fact that she roundly fails to engender any that makes her a subpar feminist icon.

(And I don’t know when the last time she lost her powers from getting her wrists bound together was, but it was only a few years ago that it happened to another Amazon – Batman did it by sticking one’s wrists together with a magnetic Batarang – so presumably it still holds).

Where’s Manhunter and Jessica Drew? These are contemporary characters created to be empowered women, but they just end up being charactictures (Manhunter has all the personality of a Terminator and Jessica Jones abandonded her entire character at the end of her series to have a lobotomy and became a wife and mother, SKRULL).

I can almost hear it now…”Start the Fantasti-Car Reed! We’ve got a game to catch!” GROAN

No seriously. *

*To be honest, not your mom. I was just going to post the best entries I got from a list inspired by one at Cracked.com up here. And I will. Unless your mom wants to be the prize. Ask her for me.