Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399900
below: In DC Super Hero Girls the characters balance secret identities with the awkward challenges of growing up. MY HERO! "Brown Hornet was a superhero, he was very proactive, but much like Adam West [of the 1960s Batman TV series], he seemed to have the perfect ability or the perfect device just for [every] occasion. If Batman needed to track a homing pigeon, he just happened to have the Bat Homing Pigeon Tracker in his belt, and Brown Hornet had kind of the same thing. I loved that the Brown Hornet was just out in space, superhero-ing, flying around, meeting aliens. That's way more interesting than a bunch of kids playing in a junk yard." – Lynell Forestall (Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Legion of Super Heroes) "Static had so many good sides to him, but then he was also a typical kid. He realized, 'I've got this power. I've got to help people whenever I can.' Plus I think sometimes he would get adventurous and say, 'I can take on that adventure, try to beat this bad guy,' and then, 'Oh, he's got more power than I thought.' Which is what teenagers do, don't they? They say, 'Yeah, I can jump that chasm,' but in the end they realize, 'Oh, I missed.'" – Swinton O. Scott III (Static Shock, Green Lantern: The Animated Series) FALL 2021 39 underneath Supergirl's head. Welcome to superheroes behaving badly. "There's what is unexpected from female characters, like a character being bad-tempered or a little bit clueless, but there's also the unexpected when you are going against what fans would like," says Faust, the show's creator. " We really messed with a handful of the characters, and it was exciting to have that kind of freedom." Faust's childhood love of the superhero genre and her feeling that female characters frequently ended up getting " the short end of the stick" is part of what drew her to shows like DC Super Hero Girls and The Powerpuff Girls, where she was a writer, supervising director, and storyboard artist. "I wanted to see the authentic experience of girls and women reflected in superhero stories, and also bring that experience of teenage girls to the table," she says. "How does a superhero study for exams? How does she get her driver's license? Wonder Woman can ride a horse like nobody's business, but she can't work a car because she doesn't know anything about machines." Just as fans had a long wait to see complex female superheroes, they also waited to see Black superheroes. Christopher Lehman, Professor of Ethnic Studies at St. Cloud University, points to the shape-shifting teen Astrea in the 1977 Filmation series Space Sentinels as one of the first animated Black superheroes. Husband and wife scientists Superstretch and Microwoman appeared not long after as part of Tarzan and the Super 7. Image courtesy of Warner Bros.