![]() ![]() After distinguishing herself over many adventures, Katma was assigned to train rookie Lantern John Stewart, and they fell in love and eventually got married. Later, it was revealed that Katma was from Korugar, the same planet as longtime GL villain Sinestro, and in fact led a rebellion to overthrow his tyrannical rule of their home planet, which so impressed the Guardians that they made her the new GL of that sector of space. Ladies, you can’t have it all! No, but real talk: Hal is garbage, but this is a ’60s story about how this woman is too good at her job to give it up to get married, which is kind of amazing? Katma Tui: too badass for the Silver Age. ![]() Katma Tui originally appeared in a ’60s story where she contemplates giving up her ring to marry the man she loves, until Hal shows up and tricks her into keeping the ring and giving up the dude instead. The fact that she’s still kicking, not just as a love interest but as a hero in her own right, is a testament to the strong, dynamic character she’s been from the start. When I look at Carol, I see an incredibly progressive character-a female CEO who understands workplace sexual harassment! in 1959!-who was created that way completely by accident, and I see decades of male writers trying to undo the power and intelligence she was initially bequeathed by endlessly dragging her through the mud. Forcibly transformed into Star Sapphire, a man-hating supervillain who also wants to marry Hal Jordan for some reason? Been there! Somehow creates an evil male persona called the Predator who magically impregnates her with a baby that is then taken away by the actual devil? Bought the T-shirt! You could fill an entire book-or several-analyzing the ways that Carol’s suffering over the decades has been specifically misogynistic, specifically designed to humiliate and violate a strong-willed career woman the way her agency has been continually thwarted and presented as a twisted, psychosexual obsession with Hal, the way she’s been used to conflate love and sex and rape in truly alarming ways that a therapist would have a field day with. Name a horrible trope and she’s suffered through it. Look, here’s the thing: reading Carol’s history is like Misogyny in Comics: Ultimate Edition. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. Here are a few of my favorites, in order of introduction: And the less said about the 2000s-era Star Sapphire costume, the better.ĭespite this, there have been a number of seriously great female ring bearers over the decades. ![]() The 1988 murder of Green Lantern Katma Tui, also killed in a kitchen to make a point to a male Lantern, is another particularly egregious example. It was a Green Lantern comic that spawned the term “women in refrigerators,” coined by Gail Simone to describe the trope of women being killed or otherwise grievously harmed in order to cause angst for male characters, when Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend Alex was dismembered by a supervillain and left in Kyle’s refrigerator for him to find. ![]() Though there are officially seven Earth-based Green Lantern leads in the main DCU-Alan and six official Corps members-only one of them is a woman, and it took 74 of those 80 years for her to get a ring. Now, the GL mythos is a sprawling and complicated one and host to some very good stories, but it has not always been kind to women. This summer marks the 80th anniversary of Green Lantern-that is, if you’re counting from the debut of the OG Lantern, Alan Scott. Follow her on Twitter at All posts by Jessica Plummer She loves running, knitting, and thinking about superheroes, and knows an unnecessary amount of things about Donald Duck. Her day job is in books, her side hustle is in books, and she writes books on the side (including a short story in Sword Stone Table from Vintage). Jessica Plummer has lived her whole life in New York City, but she prefers to think of it as Metropolis. ![]()
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