A-Force Presents Highlights Marvel’s New Wave of Female Heroes

The pages of comic books have not always the safest of spaces for female characters or fans, but lately, there is hope. The past few years have shown impressive strides toward gender equality in those books that go zap, biff, and pow. While indie comics titles like Bitch Planet continue to break boundaries in a previously male-dominated industry, mainstream superhero stalwart Marvel has been gradually, almost quietly, creating  new space for female superheroes. While this level of representation doesn’t exist in superhero films—yet—the pages of Marvel comics have recently been better, and getting better. For evidence, look no further than A-Force Presents, a new graphic novel series aimed at highlighting the fact that women can be kickass heroes, too.
If its news to you that Thor was recently recast as a woman, Captain Marvel is now Carol Danvers, and Ms. Marvel is a Muslim girl from New Jersey named Kamala Khan, well, you’re not exactly a bad person, but you have missed out on a few of of Marvel’s great feminist strides of the past few years.

In fairness, some of this progressiveness is par for the course: “Girl (super) power” might be in good shape in the pages of Marvel these days, but the comics stalwart has shown at least a bit of a precedent for it. While Wolverine led the film version of X-Men: Days of Future Past,waaaaay back in 1981 the comic book incarnation actually focused on the young Kitty Pyrde. Also during that era of the X-Men, Storm was in charge of the good mutants, while Mystique was in charge of the “brotherhood” of evil ones.
A-Force Presents is part of an effort to draw in new readers, and recognition of the fact that young women are the fastest-growing segment of the comic book audience. It ties in to a a new storyline featuring an all-female Avengers lineup, but it’s also just a great grab-bag of single-issue adventures. It won’t be a comprehensive look She-Hulk and the new Thor, but it will offer a quick entry point for those readers who maybe aren’t yet buying single issues.

Even though the A-Force Presents anthology series is technically “just” collecting single issues, the venture might do more to spread word of the good work Marvel has been doing in the days of just recently passed. If we’re ever going to get more big-budget, stand-alone movies about female superheroes (though a Carol Danvers Captain Marvel film is slotted for 2018, and Wonder Woman is also on the way from D.C.), it won’t hurt if their popularity starts with the comics themselves. And what’s most refreshing (and important) about these characters—specifically Kamala “Ms. Marvel” Khan— is that they’re not just “girls who kick ass,” but also real, nuanced people, who, despite their zany alter-egos, possess secret identities that are all too human. And to show support for that is reason enough to buy A-Force Presents right there.
A-Force Presents, Vol. 1 will release September 28.