Back Issue # 167 June 2026 (magazine review)
This ‘Back Issue’ is sub-titled ‘Girls, Women And Ladies’, using examples of female characters with that in their names. Obviously, they are only examples and I’m only familiar with three of the seven on the cover. I presume at some stage we are going to have an issue devoted to characters whose codenames don’t declare which sex they are.
The first is Irma Ardeen, Saturn Girl of the Legion Of Super-Heroes, as writer Philip Schweier goes over her future history. Objectively, she has to be one few characters whose costume started off as an enclosing uniform and stripped down to a swimsuit. Granted with those invisible spacesuits they wear, she could be overheating. I think the only thing missed out on she’s one of the few legionnaires to have a DC Direct Action Figure. Oddly, I appear to be focusing on things Schweier missed out, like how many times she was the LSH leader but I am a Legion fan.
Writer Ed Lute looks at Marvel’s unbeatable Squirrel Girl. I only really knew of her because Bill Murray mentioned he created her when it popped up on his email signature. She was more an accidental creation to fit in a story battle between Iron Man and Dr. Doom. The fact that Murray got Steve Ditko to do the story as a one-off but got later forgotten but revived by other creators developed her standing in the Marel Universe and a change in her appearance.
Now, I don’t follow Manga material. Even when it was first introduced in the 1980s, apart from a look at Miller’ ‘Ronin’, the awareness of the length of stories would have meant a big investment. Even so, writer Robert Greenberger fills me in on ‘Mai, The Psychic Girl’, who came after my time reading comicbooks, a teen with telepathic and telekinetic powers.
Steven Wilber interviews writer Tom DeFalco and artists Ron Frenz and Patrick Olliffee about the creation of Mayday Parker aka Spider-Girl, an alternative reality product of Peter and Mary-Jane Parker and her own adventures. Unlike her father, she sees her job as reforming villains, second-generation villains grant you. There’s still a matter of where and when do these people step away from their lives to have families and follow in their tradition.
Writer Alissa Marmol-Cernat’s look at the 1950s Phantom Lady and her progress through the decades re-enforces my own pulling of the reprints that Roy Thomas instigated. Quite how no one realised she was also Sandra Knight when she was mostly unmasked beats me. Even so, with only her black light projector, she had to have something if only to survive so long or keeping everything inside her costume.
‘Tank Girl’ appeared as I was moving out of comicbooks in the 1990s. Writer Stephen Friedt’s examination of her history at least confirms I wouldn’t have been a fan. You either love (?!) or hate her anarchic ways I guess.
Lastly, the history of Sue Storm then Richards then Invisible Girl and then Invisible Woman by writer Jarrod Buttery shows how she developed over the years. I think the only scene he missed out on was her explaining that she’d been taught judo by her husband in a fight. It’s a shame we never saw that particular training or how she could throw him in his stretchy shape. Even so, I do agree with him, as her being Marvel’s first lady.
For an all female issue, this one is loaded in more than one way. I would be inclined to do more of these from time to time because it also gives an opportunity to put various team members under the spotlight and evaluate their usefulness to them. As with Sue Richards, her value went up over the years and her power developed accordingly.
GF Willmetts
June 2026
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: $10.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6904. Direct from them, you can get it for $10.95 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_54&products_id=1888&zenid=kpn051qn4m9idnjuc2gr900ba5
