#JSA art

[jasposeyblog]

The first in my Starman series with the artist

My commission of Ted Knight Starman sketch card by @calslayton

[dailydccomics]

Wonder Woman by Dan Mora

[lunar-sams]

this was funnier in my head

[kartsie]

Black Canary and her trusty sidekick

[jkparkin]

JSA #9 (DC, July 2025) variant cover by Jorge Corona

[soranatus]

So damn it all, Hawkgirl is going to kick some serious ass!

[browsethestacks]

Alan Scott

Art by Nick Robles

[ungoliantschilde]

JSA # 9, by Tony Harris.

[cremeriie]

city of stars 🌆💫

ft. winter wear variant

[smashpages]

New History of the DC Universe #1 (DC, June 2025) variant cover by Ryan Sook

[jasposeyblog]

My commission of Hawkman by JP Buzio

[dailydccomics]

Black History Month variant covers by Ryan Benjamin

[vertigoartgore]

Starman's Jack Knight 2024 commission by artist Tony Harris.

[jack-of-starss]

Stargirl 💫

[tawked]

tbh I feel like almost all problems with "civilian girlfriend" superhero characters would be resolved by simply having the civilian girlfriend become an active part of the superhero's superheroing, ala Dian Belmont.

She's been an independent detective who's perspective on cases leads to their resolution as often as anybody else's, she's been Sandman's get-away driver and in-the-field assistant, she's been an informant using her access to places he can't reach ie. the district attorney's office, and she even uses Wesley's kit to investigate independently of him toward the end of Sandman Mystery Theatre.

Sandman Mystery Theatre #62

To be totally real with you, I dislike maybe 90% of fem superhero love interest stories (while liking most of these characters, let me be clear) pre-2005 or so, because they so often use women to present a conflict between the comfortable domestic life the male superhero could have, and the call to superheroism. But that conflict feels suuuper arbitrary to me when you remember that women can like

do stuff lol.

This is really apparent when you consider that the majority of m/m and f/f love interests that began appearing in the mid-2000s make both characters extremely active, with most m/m pairings usually being superhero/superhero, while f/f pairings usually feature a more active feminist play on pre-existing m/f or queered familiar friend dynamics. Kate Kane's girlfriends are a hardboiled cop (kind of a Jim Gordon, do you see the vision?) and The Question respectivey, so we have superhero / action archetype and superhero / superhero. I don't think this is a queerness thing so much as modern writers realizing that characters are more interesting when they do stuff, instead of complaining about the characters who are allowed to do stuff doing that stuff, and because queerness was basically illegal until 2005 or so writers were allowed to innovate and introduce new characters instead of sticking with the old.

But a lot of historied m/f relationships in comics have the baggage of a sexist history weighing them down, imo, in this weird repetition of "I can't let Woman know about my secret life..." concept. It's hard to really innovate on that formula when the formula by design usually doesn't allow women to be pro-active in these stories, they need to be kept separate from the action or imperiled by the action for the superhero to both rescue and maintain his secret life status quo. I think that's why the Batman love interests we remember and care about are the supervillain femme fatales like Catwoman and Talia al Ghul, and not like... Shondra Kinsolving or, as much as I love her for being the actual progressive who calls out Bruce to his face lol, Vicki Vale - the villainesses are by design characters who are allowed to engage in the action of the genre.

I think 100% of the reason Lois Lane is such an iconic character and why she immediately transcended this, is that she was often presented as an extremely pro-active badass. She was a careerist at a time when careerist women were not portrayed (even Girl Investigators were usually written as getting their one big scoop and retiring to marry some dickhead at the office), she was an open humanist who often wasn't written as weak or stupid for having feelings, and most importantly, she was always right there in the shit. Sure yes okay, she'd be distressed into damselry a lot, especially in the 1930s - 1960s, but y'know,

Fleischer's Superman, 1941, one of the best Loises.

she was allowed to do things like run toward danger and shoot at aggressors at a time when most women in comics were kinda not at all that.

I think, and I mean this super politely, that's kinda why PS5 Spider-Man's Mary Jane (one of my fav characters in the genre actually) is sooort of just Lois Lane but on a more down-to-earth Marvel "we need to pay the goddamn bills Peter" scale, while Ultimate Spider-Man or Reimi Spider-Man's Mary Janes are, well, not that really lol (I also really like Reimi MJ, her whole arc with her struggling acting career is top).

And you can't even pull that Mary Jane was a kid in Ultimate and therefore entitled to be boring because Peter was dating Kitty Pryde at one point, because Bendis has a problem and needs to be stopped. So, it's not like more pro-active fem love interests weren't around. Those stories just weren't being given to 90% of the women and girls in that run and he had to borrow a girl who by design is always doing intersting shit because she's already a superhero.

Y'know what I mean?

I don't really like modern comics all that much but I gotta admit that women being written as "part of the team" and not "the obstruction I need to dodge so I can do superhero shit" is one of the best things modern comics have going on.

[jkparkin]

JSA #10 (DC, August 2025) variant cover by Jorge Corona