In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

What orphan in comics pulls at your heart-strings the most?

Anika

Apparently losing one’s parents is vital to superherodom. I made a list of the top ten orphans who pull on my heartstrings. And yes, I actually narrowed it down.

10. Hope Summers: lost sets of parents, grew up in an apocalyptic future, and can’t trust anyone except Cable. CABLE.

9. Bucky Barnes: a plucky WWII orphan who fights Nazis at age 15 and dies a hero’s death. Sort of. But post-plucky-Bucky pulls on my heartstrings even more.

8. Magneto: speaking of WWII orphans. He’s a Holocaust survivor. His parents are not.

7. Natasha Romanova: and then there’s the girl raised by a tripped out Soviet spy operation. And by raised I mean programmed to kill.

6. Gwen Stacey: meanwhile in NYC, Gwen is a motherless girl who loses her hero cop dad to supervillains and then becomes the poster child for Superhero Failure by ending up dead herself.

5. Peter Parker: orphaned as a baby, Peter lost his surrogate father due to his own mistake and he’s still trying to make up for it. Also the superhero in the above mentioned Superhero Failure. Still trying to make up for that, too.

4. Bruce Wayne: Bruce saw his parents gunned down and grew up to be a crime fighter. Dressed as a bat with super awesome technology. Which is totally logical. Batman is made of tragedy.

3. Tim Drake: the only thing more tragic than Batman is Robin and the one that tugs my heartstrings most is my baby Tim. I want to give him a hug just thinking about it.

2. Mindy McCready: all questionable moralities and relations aside, Mindy loved Big Daddy. I have a playlist made up of the music that plays in the movie scenes from Hit-Girl’s appearance to save Big Daddy and Kick Ass through “Bad Reputation” and it makes me tear up every time I play it. Every time.

1. Little Orphan Annie: is Little Orphan Annie.

Caroline

My instinct on this one was to name Scott Summers, aka Cyclops of the X-Men. Remember when he used to spend his breaks from school riding around in a cab so that he didn’t have to tell the other X-Men he didn’t have a home to go to?? After the character was introduced, his backstory got more and more Dickensian with every retcon. He after all spent a portion of his childhood in an orphanage run by Mr. Sinister. Then he escaped to be taken in by Jack Winters, an abusive thief who wanted to use him for his powers, before being kidnapped by a creepy psychic bald guy who wanted to recruit him into a superhuman militia. . .oh, wait, that was Professor Xavier. So that’s probably a good thing, mostly, or at least if it hadn’t happened he wouldn’t be in any X-Men comics.

But then I remembered that Cyclops probably doesn’t really count as an orphan, because it was eventually revealed that his father had not died in an airplane accident. No, he was abducted by aliens, and eventually became — like you do — a space pirate. So, not really an orphan, despite the stereotypically orphan-like childhood.

However. . .Corsair was killed in the Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire storyline a few years back. This is one of the few comic book deaths I am actually bitter about. Still, I think this sneaks Scott in under the technicality of being ‘an orphan.’

Jennifer

The death of Anya Corazon’s father in Spider-Girl #2, and the fallout in the subsequent issues, was one of the most realistic, heart-wrenching depictions of loss and grief that I’ve ever seen in a superhero comic. Anya had already lost her mother years earlier, but unlike most heroes, she had an exceptionally good relationship with her father, who had raised her ever since and supported her in every endeavor. He even knew about, and mostly condoned, her superhero activities. Luckily, Anya has a support network around her, including her friend Rocky and a surrogate family in the form of the Fantastic Four. But her father’s death is something that will probably always haunt her, and makes me whimper just to think about. Kudos to Paul Tobin for writing such an effective story.

Sigrid

… I have a lot of trouble remembering who is an orphan in current canon and who is not. Um.

Does Laura Kinney (X-23) count as an orphan? If so, she’s my favorite these days, and all credit to Marjorie Liu for taking an insane back-canon and making a real character out of it. Nice work, Ms. Liu.

So what about you? What orphan in comics pulls at your heart-strings the most?

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

If you could give one character a comic book series with the longevity of Superman or Batman, who would you choose?

Anika

I would choose not to.

I prefer a rotating spotlight. Everybody gets a moment and then they move to supporting status as someone else steps up. It's probably why I like team books best. So I choose more limited series, that are designed and announced as limited not turned into limited when they're cancelled 5 issues in. And as long as we are talking about my ideal I'd have all the action and plot take place in the team and event books and have these rotating limited series be about what they do when they are not fighting (or committing) crimes.

Caroline

I interpret this question as, “Who is a character that should always have a book, no matter what, and will be able to sustain relevance even as the world changes?” I have to go with Natasha Romanova, Marvel’s Black Widow. Natasha is a skilled spy, whose abilities are as adaptable as her loyalties. She has also (last time I checked?) been given the Nick Fury anti-aging treatment so that she both has an excuse for staying young and spry for the foreseeable future, and has a potential for flashback stories set in any era that rivals Wolverine’s or Winter Soldier’s.

In reality, Natasha has mostly been used as a supporting character, doesn’t have that many ‘iconic’ storylines (and those are mostly interactions in other characters’ books), and doesn’t even have a particularly well-developed personality. (Based on a Google image search, her best-known trait seems to be ‘doesn’t zip her top up all the way.’)

It would be great if we could have a Black Widow book that would stick around.

Jennifer

My interpretation of this question is a little different from Caroline’s. For me, “longevity” means that the character would have had a book from the 1930s consistently to the present day, and be at something like issue 900 at this point in time. The reason Superman and Batman are such huge cultural icons is that they’ve been around for so long, their adventures consistently on the shelves and replicated in other media. So if I could wave a magic wand and give someone else that status (or, at the very least, the status of a Silver Age-created solo hero like Spider-Man), who would I choose?

For me, the answer would have to be a character who would break the mold of the white men who (with very few exceptions) dominated the earliest ages of comics and crafted the restrictive cultural image of what a “superhero” should be. While my personal, fannish instinct points me toward She-Hulk as the breaker of this mold, I think a more significant choice would be Storm. She’s never had that many solo adventures, but her character is full of fascinating back story and intriguing narrative possibilities (particularly in terms of an expanded supporting cast), and I, personally, would love to live in a world where she found a natural place beside Superman and Batman, blew people away with countless tornadoes and lightning bolts, and served over the decades to change the hearts and minds of comic book readers.

If this is impossible, though, I’d settle for a more consistent and popular publication of Wonder Woman over the decades. It doesn’t hurt to dream.

Sigrid

Using Caroline’s definition, the character I want to always have a long-running title is Jessica Jones. Jess is currently on New Avengers, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to her in the year’s coming Avengers-related shake-ups. I don’t know whether she’ll be written by someone other than Brian Bendis. But I can think of a wide range of titles featuring Jessica Jones that I would find acceptable.

Jessica Jones as a private detective, continuing her investigative career
Jessica Jones as a bodyguard
Jessica Jones as a mother and partner, dealing with the craziness the superhero life brings
Jessica Jones as mentor and counselor to the next generation of heroes

Soap opera, slice-of-life, crime, superhero, or any blend of these things all sound good to me.

So what about you? If you could give one character a comic book series with the longevity of Superman or Batman, who would you choose?

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

If you were a supervillain, how would you take over the world?

Anika

Well as previous established my superpower is rooted in chaos, therefore my supervillainhood should also be rooted in chaos. So I imagine something like Fight Club. Project Mayhem (Mayhem, btw, is a pretty great supervillainess moniker). I’d be Tyler Durden, obviously.

But I’d dress like Marla Singer. Obviously.

Caroline

One of my favorite Cold War movies is The Manchurian Candidate, in which supervillain Angela Lansbury plots to help the Chinese take over America by hypnotizing her son with a giant deck of cards.

Or something like that. It’s been a while since I saw it.

The point is, I saw this movie back when every Microsoft software package came with two games, one of which was solitaire. And I said, “If you really could control people’s minds via a game of solitaire, Bill Gates would be doing pretty well.”

So, basically, my supervillain plan would involve world domination through mind control contributed by a highly popular game/app distributed for free on the Internet.

Not that I’m calling Bill Gates a supervillain. Not any worse of one than Angela Lansbury, anyway.

Jennifer

I’m not a natural leader. I don’t ooze with charisma. I’m not a scientist or an engineer or a skilled practitioner of anything useful for world domination. And I’m really far too polite and people-pleasing to engage in the necessary nastiness.

But what I do have is abundant loyalty and an uncanny ability to associate myself with wonderful, brilliant people (see: the other respondents to this post). So, really, if I wanted to take over the world, my plan would involve not supervillainy but miniondom. I would be an excellent toady. So the real question is, which of you ladies would like to have me as your villainous sidekick? I’ll make you tea!

Sigrid

At various points in my life I’ve devised different plans to turn evil and take over the world. I’ve contemplated the science route — going into physics or biology and developing a superweapon. I’ve briefly flirted with talking people into doing what I want. But these days I have a nearly foolproof plan for taking over the world.

I’m going to back my children in their mad bid for world domination.

So what about you? If you were a supervillain, how would you take over the world?

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

Who is your favorite non-canon couple in comics?

Anika

I thought Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) and Peter Parker (Spider-Man) going on a date was downright silly when it was first previewed. But they are legitimately my One True Pairing in all of comics.

So much so that I could provide an annotated gallery of panels that clearly show their relationship actually is canon. In which case my answer is Batman/Superman.

Caroline

Rikki Barnes (Nomad) and Anya Sofia Corazon (currently Spider-Girl).

When I read them together in the short-lived, much-lamented Young Allies series, and then heard that Anya was getting her own solo series, I was convinced they would end up as a couple. The friendship and affection between these two teenage heroes seemed natural as the basis for a budding same-sex relationship.

Alas, it was not to be, with Rikki being — dissolved into an energy mass who possibly never existed, during the Onslaught Unleashed miniseries. I don’t expect Rikki to stay dead (or gone, or dissolved, or whatever) so I do have hopes that she will return. Maybe one day, we’ll have a “Nomad and Spider-Girl Prom Issue.” Until then, I’ll just have to keep that one up in my imagination.

Jennifer

I’ve always had a soft spot for She-Hulk and Hawkeye. They’ve been flirting since the day they met (when Hawkeye was bitter that a girl who could beat him up was going to be on the Avengers instead of him), but despite a kiss or two and an admission of feelings during Dan Slott’s She-Hulk run, they’ve never actually dated. Don’t get me wrong – I love Hawkeye with Mockingbird, and She-Hulk has had a lot of great love interests over the years. But I’ve always wanted to see what would happen if Clint and Jen could give it a shot. It would be full of bickering and light violence, but it could be a ton of fun.

Sigrid

I am taking non-canon to mean the relationship that I perceive to be a romantic couple, despite no confirmation of this fact by the authorized writers of the comic. I have two; Barbara Gordon and Dinah Laurel Lance, and Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers.

Babs and Dinah:

Kitty and Rachel:

Neither of these couples have dated. Barbara and Dinah have had their heterosexuality reinforced many times in canon. Kitty is only canonically bisexual when Claremont is writing her, and Rachel is straight, for a value of straight which seems to include not really liking the men she sleeps with very much. There is no textual validation for my reading of these relationships as queer.

But, oh, Gentle Reader, look at those images.

So what about you? Who is your favorite non-canon couple in comics?

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

Who is a favorite character created after 2000?

Anika

I have so many answers to this question. There’s Anya Corazon and Kate Spencer and Juston Seyfert and Becky Ryan and Mindy McCready and Dani Cage. Yes, Dani Cage the baby — that baby girl’s gonna be somebody someday and she already has crazy amounts of character for being an inarticulate infant who’s been about 6 months old for the past 5 years. And that’s just off the top of my head and without mentioning anybody my cohorts do. So that thing about new characters not being as compelling or cared for as the ones who have been around for 50 years just isn’t applicable to me.

Plus I think Winter Soldier should count. Change is good, y’all. Change is GREAT.

Caroline

Before Matt Fraction began his current, definitive run of Invincible Iron Man, he wrote about Tony Stark as a supporting character in the short-lived but brilliant series The Order. Aside from Tony and Pepper Potts, the cast of the comic was made up of newly-invented characters. The conceit of The Order is that California’s local superhero team is made up of people who were given synthetic powers, but who had already distinguished themselves as heroes in real life. From the Angelina-esque actress and foster mother extraordinaire Veda, to Calamity, a double amputee who became a track star with the aid of prosthetic legs he invented, the members of the Order showed a side of heroism that comics often don’t explore.

The entire cast is fantastic, but I have a soft spot for Anthem, aka Henry Hellrung, the leader of that team. Henry is a ‘one-time actor’ who lost his career to alcohol abuse, then found a new calling in the addiction recovery movement. He also happens to have made his name playing Iron Man on TV, and to be Tony Stark’s sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I have to admit, this clever idea was what got me to check out The Order in the first place (Fraction gave an interview suggesting that The Order would consist of ‘Tony Stark’s party pals,’ which to this day I insist is the title of a series I would read.) I thought I was buying into an amusing joke in which Tony hired a virtual clone of himself to lead a superhero team. What The Order actually offers is much richer than that, though. The earnest, well-meaning Henry could hardly be more different than the human steamroller known as Tony Stark. That’s why it’s incredibly satisfying to witness the Order’s small victories, such as the time Henry talks Namor out of attacking San Francisco.

The Order doesn’t exactly end well for Henry — from the beginning, it’s hard to imagine how it can. But the character showed up, post The Order’s cancellation, in Invincible Iron Man. When we first see him, he’s in an AA meeting, praying, and that seems to fit. Here is a character who will always be looking for a way to do good, searching for yet another next right thing.

Jennifer

I’m stumbling into this post after finishing grad school seminar paper #2 and before finishing grad school seminar paper #3, so forgive the brevity. But Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways, created in 2003, are the best new superhero team in recent memory. And while I love all the characters on the team, it’s Gertrude Yorkes, the snarky, slightly chubby, anti-establishment feminist teen with purple hair and a pet dinosaur who takes the prize as one of the most realistic and different female superheroes of all time.

Gert is awesome, guys. And I’m still not quite over her death — or, for that matter, the death of Runaways as a book.

Sigrid

Oh, that’s dead easy. Jessica Jones.

Alias #1 came out in 2001. In that comic Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos introduced me to the profane, depressed, entirely adult life of Jessica Jones. I was instantly in love with this character.

Jess is a lot of things I love. She’s her own person, entirely human, not any sort of traditional image of femininity. She’s a parent, with a parent’s concerns in the insane world of the Avengers. She’s married, and the depiction of that marriage is as realistic as any I’ve seen in comics. There’s conflict and negotiation and a genuine respect between partners.

Jessica Jones is a redemption-arc character. She knows her breaking points, she knows how badly she can screw up. She walks a line each day of trying to get through without screwing things up even worse. Yet she’s still trying to make the world better. She’s making another try at this whole superhero-thing, and she’s trying to raise a kid.

Jess is not a bad mirror of who I would be, were I a superhero in the Marvel universe. Not one of the best, not really that good at anything in particular, but muddling along trying to be a decent human being anyway.

Also, she swears a lot. I love that about her.

So what about you? Who is a favorite character created after 2000?