H is for …Hawkgirl

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Hawkgirl won my heart during her stint on Justice League Unlimited.

Shayera Hol of the planet Thanagar is a complicated woman. She was sent to Earth as a spy and advance scout for a planned invasion by her people. She infiltrated the Justice League, fighting alongside the other heroes as Hawkgirl.

Hawkgirl is a "hit first" sort of woman. She loves a problem that can be solved with a solid swing of her electric mace. She's not a touchy-feely sort of woman, her feelings for Green Lantern John Stewart not withstanding. Her sense of humor is biting.

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When she is revealed, and unmasked (shocker: that IS a mask--I wasn't sure if it was her face or not), she becomes the heart of whole second story about the nature of loyalty, betrayal of forgiveness. Yep, complicated. And awesome.

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

G is for …Gamora

Of all the green women in science fiction and fantasy, my current favorite is Gamora of the recent Guardians of the Galaxy film.

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Gamora was adopted by Thanos, an evil blue warlord, who killed many, including Gamora's own family and raised Gamora to be an assassin. Sent by Thanos to retrieve a relic called "The Orb," Gamora falls in with Quill, Groot, Rocket Racoon and Drax, who became The Guardians of the Galaxy.

I admired Gamora in the film for her determination to do the right thing, despite having suffered much. Of all the gradations of "hero" among that ragtag group, she had the clearest moral compass. She was an amazing fighter, too. The hand-to-hand combat scene between Gamora and her "sister" Nebula was athletic and emotional and wonderful. She and Quill saved each other, so Gamora was anything but a victim character.

The movie was so much fun! I hope they bring all the characters back for future Marvel movies, but especially Gamora.

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

F is for…Flash Gordon

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The first time I saw Flash Gordon was with my Dad. We both have a taste for cheese: on our sandwiches, and in our movies, and this movie delivers a nice cheese platter. It's one of those movies I like to watch once every couple of years, along with Bladerunner, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Quiet Man. It pleases the little girl's heart that still skips along in my chest after all these years.

Flash is an old character, starting with a comic strip in the 1930s, and moving to the big screen serial, and then to television. I've seen some of all of those, but the Flash Gordon I love is from the 1980s movie starring Sam J. Jones. It hit so many of the pulp tropes that are near and dear to my heart.

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You've got an American hero, fighting his way through an alien world (in this case, literally alien). He's a very pulp version of American hero, who wins by strength of will and heart over villains who are about control through force. You've got a heroine who can hold her own against the villain and the hero, and look amazing while she does it. You've got a creepy villain out to destroy it all! You've got wonderfully cheesy costumes. And such scenery chewing dialogue!

And don't forget the song. If Freddy Mercury was involved, then you know it's got style :-)

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

E is for…Elastigirl

I participate in the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop every first Wednesday of the month (click here to get to a list of participants or sign up yourself). This month also happens to be the AtoZ (details below) blogging challenge, where I'm writing about the theme of superheroes. Since my heroine of choice for today is Helen Parr, I'm thinking about flexibility and how important that quality is for writers. 

Writing is a lonely task, but also one that requires a lot of playing well with others. And playing well with others, well, that requires flexibility. Life happens. Promises are broken (thoughtlessly or not). Deals fall through. Visions fail to pan out. Surprises (good and bad) jump out. It can be quite the emotional roller coaster. As I finish my first year as a published author, my struggle is knowing when to bend and when to stand firm. I want to be neither a pushover, nor a stick in the mud. 

And for that, who better to look to as a role model than Elastigirl?

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Elastigirl, or Helen Parr, of The Incredibles is one of my favorite female superheroes of all time. She's a rarity: over twenty, happily married, with children, and still absolutely skilled and dangerous. She's a woman who would give up using her superpowers for the people she loves, and a woman who would start using them again for the very same reasons. 

Helen is both literally and metaphorically flexible, recognizing far more easily than her husband that

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there isn't really one way to do this thing, whether the thing is raising children or fighting villains. Sure, she loved being a superhero, and being the even rarer breed of a female superhero. But when it was clear that wasn't an option, she adjusted and made her own happiness in her new life as a mom and homemaker. She's the epitome of the "grow where you are planted" mindset. 

And when life calls for heroism, she brings it on full bore. 

What I love most about Helen is her personality. She knows who she is, who she loves, and what she wants. Sure, she has a temper, but her anger comes from her love. She's fierce in her passions. A woman after my own heart. 

There's a shortage of grown women superheroes out there. Thanks goodness for Helen Parr. 

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

D is for …Daredevil

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I first discovered Daredevil in the early 1990s. I was subscribing to some kind of comics service that would send me comics I picked, plus some random ones they picked for me. One of my surprises was Daredevil.

Matt Murdock hits a lot of my favorite comic-book hero beats. He's poor, a regular guy. I'm not so interested by the billionaire types; they get it too easy in the logistics department. Murdock works for a living.

Like my own character, Jessica Roark, Daredevil found that his powers were, at first, a disability he had to learn to manage rather than a boon. Not only did he lose his sight, the amplification of his other senses threatened to drive him mad with everything he could now hear and smell. Though it's typically covered in a quick montage, his journey to control and superhero status was a long one. 

He's also human, and fallible. He makes mis-steps, and suffers consequences for them. His personal life does not go on glibly. He hurts and loses people he loves. There's a lot of redemption happening in the Daredevil universe.

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I rediscovered the character in his recent iteration on Netflix. The show really updated the comics nicely while still keeping the heart of the characters and the gritty feeling of Hell's Kitchen. The women characters, especially, benefitted from the update and Foggy got some depth beyond "old friend" and "shlubby sidekick" status. I'm hopeful that the show will continue to surprise and please me. 

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

C is for…Cyborg

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Cyborg is another character I found through my children. I watched the 2003 Teen Titans series with my older daughter when she was a small fry. The theme song is forever stuck in my head. We still have a lot of them on disk and break them out when we need a pick-me-up.

The show was a lot of fun for both of us, and part of what I appreciated about it was the complete lack of darkness and angst. Sure, the heroes fought (bad guys and each other), but they didn't delve into the deep, dark recesses of the soul. Even Raven, the resident grump, was much lighter than similar characters on other shows. 

Cyborg especially had some serious joie-de-vivre on this show. He loved being a Teen Titan and took friendship seriously, but knew how to have a good time. He and Beast Boy bonded over pizza and videogames, but he took the female characters at face value, too. I always felt like Cyborg would be a good friend to have. 

And who could forget his Boo-yah!

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories:

B is for…Buffy!

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This is about the television series. We're going to pretend the movie was never made.

I can't remember if I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it was first on television. In the later 90s, I was living in Nome, Alaska, and was a bit disconnected from popular culture and television. What I do remember, is watching it a few years later with my older daughter when she was about five (and several times since).  We both loved it. Heck, she even had a credits dance to the Nerf Herder song.

I think what I loved (and still love) about Buffy, the character, was the way she messed with my

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expectations. She was little and pretty. She'd been a cheerleader. In my own judgy way, I'd expect her to shallow and uninteresting. But she had a calling, a calling that made her life dark and messy, full of weapons, stealth, and secrets. The show didn't hesitate to explore the toll the work took on the young woman: how it affected her relationships, her social life, her finances, and her soul. 

Buffy also had a fully realized supporting cast: The Scoobies. It's a reminder to me as I write my own superhero stories, that the people who surround your heroine are vital to the life's blood of the story. Their presence or absence, their expectations, support and disappointment, the pressure and conflict they provide: all the juicy stuff of story. 

I'm still a Buffy fan today. I've read some of the comics. I have the musical memorized. Buffy is definitely a hero who stuck with me. 

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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.

Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories: