Thursday, January 22, 2015

You've Come A Long Way, Carol Ferris!

Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris are having a double date with Tom Kalmaku and his girlfriend Terga:

Hey, wait a minute. What did that editor's note say?

Whew, that was close. It's good to know that Carol is only "nominally" Hal's boss, but not really in charge!! And that, "actually, and mainly," she exists only to be his love interest.

Thank you for that important reassurance, chauvinist editor's note! I was afraid that the women of 1961 were getting a bit uppity!

From Green Lantern #7 (1961)
at

4 comments:

  1. SallyPJanuary 22, 2015 at 8:54 AM

    Um...yeah. We can't have Carol going around being uppity, now can we?

    ReplyDelete
  2. BillJanuary 22, 2015 at 9:34 AM

    Oh man, "Pieface". This is a double serving of Green Lantern douchey-ness

    ReplyDelete
  3. George ChambersJanuary 22, 2015 at 9:18 PM

    Uh, wait - they said they were "enjoying" Terga and Pieface? Is that as creepy as it sounds?

    ReplyDelete
  4. SinaJanuary 24, 2015 at 2:28 PM

    That said, it's been correctly pointed out elsewhere that the ladies of early DC 60's were quite reasonably empowered and ahead of their time, especially wen compared against the later Marvel girlfriends...which almost definitely the females at Marvel were nothing but "the hero's girlfriend, acquaintance", etc.

    A full list escapes me (being a non-DC zombie, myself) but you have Lois Lane as Clark's senior on the editorial staff, Carol Ferris here as the actual *owner* and boss of the airline company Hal belongs to, Sue Dibny as Ralph's equal partner in detectivering, Iris West as Barry's eventual lawfully-married wife (a rarity in comics in general) and Shayera Hall as the already-existing and equal-partnered wife of Carter, etc. etc.

    Tbh, I can see the case being made for these strong women as characters, but I also wonder how much of this is more along the lines of fantastic escapism on the part of the editors/creators initially involved in the first place, as in "Ha ha, wouldn't it be absolutely *FUNNY* if a *WOMAN* were in charge of an airline company?", "Yeah, like *THAT'LL* ever happen!", "What the heck, it's a comic book...crazy things are *SUPPOSED* to happen and be accepted as reality, let's go with it!" :P

    ReplyDelete