Awhile back, before I’d finished reading all of it, I did a post about DC Bombshells on my old blog. I started going through it again last month, kind of for Pride, but I didn’t finish until today, which is why this post is technically late to the Pride party.
I was rereading online, and I just saw a comment on the last issue of Bombshells United that sort of baffled me. Granted, Bombshells United, unlike the first series, got cancelled less than 40 issues in — the first series is 100 issues — and I do love it, but the abrupt/early cancellation does show. I don’t blame Marguerite Bennett for this: she introduced a lot of things hoping she’d be able to play with them and ultimately wasn’t given that opportunity so she did what she could to wrap it up in a reasonable way. The only thing that baffles me about comments regarding that is the fact that the commenters apparently don’t know how cancellations work. That’s not what I’m getting into.
The comment was basically that the revisionist history portrayed in the Bombshells universe felt sort of disrespectful, presumably because creating an alternate timeline where superheroes and magic helped to avert large global crises makes light of the fact that crises happened. Or something. I respectfully disagree, and here’s why: the entire point of Bombshells (other than telling a fairly cohesive story based on novelty art) is imagining a better world. Not a perfect world, but one where different voices are heard and different people take power and as a result, different things happen.
The actor Mark Webber (I know him and will always see him as Stephen Stills) recently wrote in an Instagram caption, “I believe it’s crucial we help shift [wealthy men in power’s] consciousness, we need to soften & open their hearts to the way the world really is, colorful, fluid, open & loving… I believe a divine feminine energy will heal the world. I believe queer & non-binary energy will heal the world. I believe heterosexual males need to support this energy… Healing starts within. The worlds [sic] more fun with an open & loving heart, humility is the foundation for real peace & joy, not money & domination.” There was a fair bit more to it, and it was obviously tied into current events and the world as it stands, but I feel like it’s kind of the thesis statement of Bombshells, too. Maybe if more women and queer people and marginalized folx were in power, things would have turned out differently.
I don’t think this is meant to be disrespectful to the people that were affected by the real tragedies of WWII that were revised or in part/whole averted in Bombshells (the treatment of Jewish people, especially in concentration camps and designated ghettos; the horrors dealt with by soldiers; the terrors faced by citizens of countries like Russia and Spain; the internment of Japanese-American citizens; the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; etcetera). I think it’s meant to say “look, humankind, we could have done a lot better, let’s imagine a world where we did and it had a lasting, positive effect on global society” and in saying that it’s also sort of saying “look, humankind, we could do a lot better, let’s imagine a world where we do and it has a lasting, positive effect on global society.” We in real life don’t have superpowers or magic or aliens or anything to help achieve this, but we can do it. A lot of Bombshells is about the effect that larger-than-life inspirations have on those of us down on the ground and how those of us can help just as much, if not more.
Full story here.