Diversity is making DC Comics great again

“Never trust a man with a microphone.”

That’s the maxim that runs through DC Comics’ breakaway hit Bombshells. The comic, inspired by a line of collectible statues, centers on Vargas-girl versions of DC’s iconic female superheroes; it’s set during World War II. The obvious, immediate ills of this world are bad guys like Hitler and his Nazis and dastardly supervillains. But the superheroines are also fighting another bad guy: a disembodied sexist voice with a loud, amplified message:

“You don’t get to control your story when it gets presented by someone else,” Bombshells writer Marguerite Bennett tells me. She explains that the “announcer” is an exaggerated and satirical joke, but one that gets at a truth about female superheroes and women portrayed in comic books. “They’re [the female superheroes] doing their own thing, but they’re also aware of how they’re being cut and presented and marketed, and being turned into icons.”

While Bennett’s comments apply directly to the adventures in Bombshells, they could also be applied to editorial commitment toward diversity, a cultural shift, and what feels like, for the first time in many years, a resurgence at DC. The company’s Batman universe (Batman, Batgirl, and Harley Quinn in particular) has always been stellar. But some of its other titles tended to default to the same kind of protagonists (the company infamously whitewashed characters during Black History Month in 2014), a reliance on the same stories (see how many times The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns have been remixed and eulogized), and tertiary characters — mainly women — playing the same flat roles (e.g., Wonder Woman playing Superman’s girlfriend; Barbara Gordon being the Joker’s victim).

DC decided it needed to change.

Last February, the company announced the plan for new, different titles like Black Canary, Cyborg, Midnighter, and Bizarro. Before that news could cool, Catwoman had a storyline that revealed her bisexuality. Bennett and artist Marguerite Sauvage’s Bombshells is immensely popular. And Poison Ivy and Teen Titan Raven are getting their own individual books in 2016.

“At the end of the day, [diversity] was just critical for us,” co-publisher Jim Lee told me. “This is something that we’ve been working on for years. We acknowledged that it was an issue. We could be doing a better job of it, and this is the first step toward that eventual goal.”

Dan DiDio, Lee’s co-publisher, expanded on this idea. “We’ve seen a more diverse talent pool. You see more people coming in — more women joining — wanting to be involved in comics than ever before,” he said. “That’s a great thing; we can build out from there. We’re reaching out and identifying people who we think can really help bring new voices to our line and to our characters.”

There’s a magic and swagger at DC for the first time in a long time. Someone else has the mic. And the only people happier than DiDio and Lee might be DC’s readers.

The success of Bombshells would be a Cinderella story if Cinderella wore motorcycle boots. The initial idea was to build a comic book inspired by a line of popular collectible figurines. That germ of an idea has expanded into one of the brightest and funniest comics DC has to offer. The comic sold 60,000 copies in its debut print issue in August — a massive number for a digital-first comic.

“I am running until they stop me,” Bennett said. “We were warned originally, and at the end of every arc [that it could get canceled]. But No. 1 sold out 60,000 issues for a digital-first series, based off a line of collectibles. We sold 60,000 issues!”

Bennett and her main artist, Sauvage, have created a story that’s effortlessly fun. One issue (No. 9) features dolphins fighting Nazis. Another features an emotional and at times pulpy love story between Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer. Wonder Woman has a penchant for addressing Steve Trevor by his full name, even in dire situations.

But Bombshells is also sweepingly subversive.

It all starts with taking the air out of its own premise. A comic book centered on the words “pinup versions” and “collectibles” sounds like the project of a lonely, randy man. But instead Bennett and Sauvage twist the ideas of “pinup” and “bombshell” to give the women their own agency.

In the book, “Bombshell” is the moniker of a covert superhero team headed by Amanda Waller (you know her from the Suicide Squad). Waller recruits the Bombshells, and it’s up to the heroes to enlist of their own free will.

“In a lot of cases, women are not in control of their own image,” Bennett said. “You are raised to serve a certain male gaze and standards of beauty that were not your own invention. I think a lot of the backlash as far as like, ‘Oh, girls and selfies, they’re so vain,’ is the fact that you’re taking control of your own image.”

Bennett has a point.

Women writers and artists like Bennett often face backlash for “pushing an agenda,” which is usually followed up by complaints that they’re ruining comics by not having women overtly sexualized in their stories. A similar backlash is also applied to nonwhite writers and nontraditional heroes.

But 60,000 issues has a way of drowning out those voices.

“I feel like there was a lot of resistance to that at first, but now people are like, ‘The books are here, you can see what they’re like, they’re great. Go forth and read,’” Bennett said. “I think people are starting to understand that this is not the destruction of Western civilization if you let girls in your goddamn clubhouse. ”

If you talk to fans about Genevieve Valentine’s run on Catwoman, you might want to choose your words carefully or risk inducing tears. Last month, it was announced that Valentine was leaving the title, provoking many threads (like this one with 55 responses) lamenting the loss.

Valentine’s run might be best known for Catwoman, a.k.a. Selina Kyle, coming out as bisexual. But it’s the other layers she’s added to the character — making Catwoman learn how to become a ruthless mob boss — that have made her turn on the comic the best since Ed Brubaker’s fantastic run from 2001 to 2004.

“This is going to sound really dark and terrible, but I was super excited when Mark Doyle, the Batgroup editor, came back to me and said it had been approved that Selena could order the death of her cousin Nick,” Valentine told me, barely controlling her laughter.

I had asked her what her favorite arc was, expecting to hear about the bisexual storyline. (It became national news.) But Valentine explains that her proudest moment was taking Catwoman to an emotional depth we hadn’t seen.

“Selena cannot be the mob boss for the next 10 years, we know, but [I wanted] to make it something where she won’t come out of it the same,” Valentine said. “She can’t just step back out of it the way she was.”

Catwoman, like a lot of DC’s women characters, is often defined by what mainstream audiences know. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, with Michelle Pfeiffer’s turn as Catwoman, cemented the character in the public imagination as an unstable sex kitten and Batman’s star-crossed lover. Iconic performances like Pfeiffer’s give characters clout and get them on the radar, but it’s hard to break them out of that mold. And Valentine did that.

“Valentine was the best writer Catwoman had in years,” Sue D., the writer behind the blog DC Women Kicking Ass, told me. DCWKA focuses on diversity in the comic book industry.

“Valentine evolved her, and not just by revealing her to be bisexual, but giving her something new to do in Gotham that was organically true to the character. I’m scratching my head as to why they would have all this goodness and let it walk away,” she said.

Though she’s stepping away from Catwoman in December (she was very secretive about how her run will end), Valentine isn’t walking away from DC. She’s going to be part of the writing team at Batman and Robin: Eternal — she’s an example of the talent DiDio is intent on keeping.

The same applies to the team behind Black Canary, writer Brenden Fletcher and artist Annie Wu. Like Valentine with Catwoman, Fletcher and Wu have remixed and breathed new life into Black Canary — a hero who tended to be pigeon-holed as Blake Lively in fishnets with an ultrasonic scream — by wrapping her story around the premise of Black Canary fronting a rock band. The comic — one of the ones announced in February — is on critics’ lists as one of DC’s standout titles.

“Annie Wu’s art has exactly the right feel for the character — tough, vibrant, and intense — and Fletcher is writing her true to her roots but with new shadings,” Sue D. told me. “I love his take on her as a young Ellen Ripley.”

From Bombshells to Catwoman and Black Canary, there’s this theme at DC right now of reinventing female characters to make them more than the men they’re in love with. Maybe that means making them more youthful (Black Canary), or taking men out of the equation (Bombshells), or maybe turning them into bosses (Catwoman).

“As someone who stopped reading comics when she was about 13, because she got the distinct feeling that they were not for her, I think the fact that DC is making an effort to tell these stories, to find these people who want to tell different stories, to be looking at a diversity of characters and styles — it’s really exciting,” Valentine said.

But Valentine is quick to point out that this sense of camaraderie doesn’t necessarily mean everything is all hugs, kisses, and hair-braiding for these characters. She asserts that Catwoman would still kick Black Canary’s ass in a fight.

“Black Canary is the better martial artist,” she says, laughing. “But Catwoman would play dirty. Tell that to Brenden [Fletcher].”

As good as these comic books are, and as much fans and critics love them, DC has to make money. While Bombshells has been a surprise hit, Black Canary (23,678 issues sold in September), Catwoman (21,507), and titles like Bizarro (15,183) and Midnighter (14,431) have unassertive sales numbers. In comparison, Batman No. 44 sold 114,409 in September. If quality and critical acclaim translated to sales, these numbers would be much better.

The comic book industry is fickle and fragile. Numbers like these can make fans worried about cancellation. But DiDio and Lee both seem to recognize they’re onto something special.

“I think it’s important for us to listen and to learn and basically to adjust and pivot,” Lee said, explaining that while those sales figures tell one story, the reader response at conventions has been overwhelming. “There is this emerging audience. Comics are changing. At the end of the day, if you’re going to remain competitive and grow and flourish, you have to be able to adapt and change and evolve.”

Sue D. started DC Women Kicking Ass five years ago because the landscape was sparse. Comics featuring female leads just didn’t exist. Now there’s actual opportunity for DC’s women to kick ass alongside Batman and Superman.

“It’s been really interesting to see DC start to realize what I’ve been saying for five years —that there is a bigger market than just the base of comic readers they sold to for years — and begin to think about their books differently,” Sue says. “I hope DC continues to realize the potential of expanding their readership and doesn’t revert to the old ways.”