The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Female Superhero

'Rosie the Riveter' recruitment poster

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned war to kickstart the imagination. Stories are spun of valour and treachery, of drama and even comedy. But the story of the Second World War is reflected in more than just the pages of history. 

The US stayed out of it for a year until one fateful day in 1940 when the country was dragged into a largely European war. With hordes of American men being shipped off to fight,  factories were suddenly left seeking workers, especially those in the all important munitions industry. An ambitious move was made to recruit women, resulting in women building everything from ships to cars to bombs. 

Suddenly women were independent and empowered. Fashions changed and in came shoulder pads and tailored trousers. The film industry also shifted gears, producing movies with strong women’s characters often at the centre of the films; from sassy working women to femme fatales. 

And girls began reading more comic books than boys.

Miss Fury

Enter Marla Drake, who fought crime in a catsuit as her alter ego Miss Fury. Created by (June) Tarpe Mills in 1942, a design graduate of the Pratt Institute and a fashion designer by profession. Miss Fury wasn’t just the first female superhero but also the first superhero created by a woman. Tarpe Mills came under some flack for unashamedly objectifying women which didn't seem to have bothered her one bit. Not surprisingly, Miss Fury’s adversaries were dastardly Nazis who were trounced in every edition. 

Little did Miss Fury know that her real adversary, the one who would eventually take away her glory as a female superhero was going to be a fellow American.

Dr. Marston

DC Comics sensing the change in tide introduced Wonder Woman just six months after Miss Fury. The creator of Wonder Woman was Dr. William Moulton Marston, a noted psychologist with three degrees from the prestigious Harvard University. Until his foray into the comic world he was best known for inventing the lie detector test and a rather unconventional personal life – a polyamourous home and children with a legal wife as well as a common-law wife (who he masqueraded as his 'brother's widow'). 

About his creation Dr. Marston said: ‘Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe should rule the world.’ He named his heroine Diana Prince (after the divine huntress) and made her an Amazonian who left her kingdom to fight intolerance and injustice in ‘America, the last citadel of democracy and of equal rights for women’. Dr. Marston’s legal wife was a lawyer and via his common-law wife he had family connections with the legendary Margaret Sanger who advocated better birth control and sex education for women.

Wonder Woman took on Nazis, evil demi-gods and supervillains alike with intelligence and some superhero gadgets. She was an instant hit. As Marston said: ‘Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power’. Regarding her appeal to men: ‘Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves!’.

In 1945 the war ended and the men started coming back home. Within a few years, women slid back into their roles as wives and mothers, keeping the home fires burning. Fashions changed to reflect their new roles, feminine dresses with pinched in waists and neatly coiffed hair.  On the screen, the archetypes vacillated from the sweet, angelic and always supportive wife to the blonde bimbos. 

Goodbye confident. Hello coy. And girls moved from comic books to Barbie dolls.

When women conformed to adopt identities attached to the men in their lives, it is not surprising that the only female superheroes of note created in the 1950s were also weaker reflections of their male counterparts – Supergirl and Batwoman. There was a new war to fight. One that even threatened to put superheroes out of business. The war against Communism. Championed with great fervour by Senator McCarthy and everyone was suspect. 

In 1954, a psychiatrist called Fredric Wertham, testified in front of a Senate committee that he believed that comics were corrupting children and took special offence to Wonder Woman who he accused of ‘a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity’ and that ‘women in these stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities’ (values ironically dear to Communism and therefore anathema) - all evidently too much for his fragile ego. Governed by the rather amusingly named Comics Code Authority, superheroes became conservative and subdued. Wonder Woman all but vanished. Miss Fury went out of print in 1951.

Wonder Woman’s avowedly feminist creator Dr. Marston was unfortunately not there to defend his creation as he had passed away by then. Wonder Woman persisted in near obscurity until a revival in the late 60s, coinciding with the feminist movement of that time. Gloria Steinman championed her return, even putting her on the on the cover of Ms. Magazine in 1972, the same year as Roe vs. Wade the landmark law that legalized abortion. This was repeated in 2012 for the magazine’s 20^th year anniversary. Dr. Marston would have approved.

The mid 60s to much of the 70s witnessed a rejuvenation of the comic book industry, with superhero teams with the female superhero fighting crime alongside her male team members in X Men and Fantastic Four. Jean Grey evolved from Marvel Girl to Ms. Marvel to the present day Captain Marvel.  Invisible Girl aka Sue Storm seamlessly balanced a family life with her day job as a superheroine. Even Superman managed to regain his place with an iconic film series. 

It wasn’t until the new millennium that comics and superheroes valiantly rescued by Hollywood, experienced a rejuvenation. Superman, Batman, X-Men, The Avengers and Fantastic Four have reclaimed their rightful place in the public spotlight. 

Jean Grey, The Black Widow and Invisible Girl owe their resurrection to celluloid. In the comic world, too there are shifts of seismic proportions. Ms. Marvel (originally created as a super powered Gloria Steinem) got promoted to Captain Marvel. A new Ms. Marvel was introduced - the Pakistani Kamila Khan. There is a female version of Thor too, though polarising seems to be outselling her male counterpart. 

Traditionally, solo starring female superhero movies have not had the same impact at the box office. With a new avatar and not one but two movies out - an appearance in Batman Vs. Superman in 2016 as well as a movie of her own in 2017, perhaps Wonder Woman will change the tide. 

And guess what girls are reading comic books again. 

Here's to you, Dr. Marston. 

Hey Have We Met Before?

There is a fine line between imitation and inspiration. But a line there is for sure. It could be a new logo or a new campaign with the most fleeting of recall of another and cries of foul abound. The furor over a TV commercial or print usually dies a natural death when the TVC goes off air or the print is refreshed. But logos have an infinitely longer life. And therefore become much more contentious.

So what happens when you get a brief to design a new logo? You start with the conceptual then move on to the elements and colours that are a natural fit with the brand’s equity. Then starts the process of actual design. There are several options made, with a spin behind each. Presented, shortlisted, feedback incorporated et cetera. This fine-tuning and shortlisting continues till the winner is chosen. It can be a long and arduous process, one which is only partly objective.

But how do you ensure that your logo is completely unique? And is that even possible?

Here’s a story of some startlingly similar logos.

This is…CNN. No wait, it’s FDA. Nope, it’s Sega.

One is a US government organization formed in 1906. The second is a Japanese video game development company which started in 1940. The third is arguably the most famous cable news network (hence the truly imaginative name) which first aired in 1980. All three brands take pride in a respectable pedigree and belong to wholly different categories. That is until you come to their visual identity. And you’d think they were siblings lost in the mela at Kumbh.

On scouring the internet, it is discovered that the Sega logo was designed in 1975. Which makes perfect sense. The style has a very 70’s nonchalant, lazy vibe about it. The stripes resemble the classic Adidas stripes, which graced the most popular running shoes for both professional and recreation athletes in the 60’s and 70’s. At the same time, one could credibly claim that the logo is a classic example of Japanese minimalism. There is a mystery behind the Sega logo – some have erroneously claimed that the logo is the work of Naoto Oshima and Yuji Naka, the duo behind Sega's mascot Sonic. Highly unlikely since they were ten and eleven years old in the mid '70's. 

Other sources some claim it was the work of the company founder David Rosen, a former GI stationed in Japan after the war. Since Sega’s history is somewhat obscure we will probably never know. All that is known is that Rosen married a Japanese girl, set up a company that exported Japanese art to the USA, merged his company with Goraku Busan a manufacturer of jukeboxes and slot machines to form Service Games known more popularly as SEGA.

The CNN logo on the other hand was designed in 1980 and reportedly took all of 48 hours from design to approval. According to Toni Dwyer of Communication Trends Inc, the firm that worked with CNN prior to its launch, ‘In the eleventh hour, it occurred to someone that they needed a logo…We had about 24 or 48 hours to turn around and present a logo…There were several forms of the logo they weren't exactly wild about, there was one we thought would play the best, we tried to keep it simple…It was designed with money in mind, so we tried to keep it one colour.’

Terry McGuirk a former CEO at CNN says it resembled a cable running through forming the three letters of the brand name and was the one liked most by Ted Turner. The logo itself was designed by Anthony Guy Bost, a professor at the University of Auburn for a much negotiated sum of $2,800 (or $2,400 by some accounts). Since Mr. Bost has now departed this world we will never know the reality. But suffice to say, when a client gives a designer a day to come up with logo options, don’t expect earth-shattering creativity.  

There is no background available on the FDA logo at least not in the obvious places. What is interesting to note is the complete lack of controversy about the logos. There may well have been speculation thirty odd years ago, but without the omnipresent internet and a few obscure marketing / advertising manuals serving as sound boxes, the debate if any was possibly short-lived. The three identities have since thrived in their own right. Ironically it is the most recent (and possibly the most likely imitator) that has the most recall. Proof that what you do with the brand is what gives your visual identity life. And not the other way around.

With the design world becoming increasingly crowded, there will certainly be a cross-pollination of ideas. So to cry foul every time we see two logos with some similarity is silly. 

Run a search of the net and you will find dopplegangers abound, perfectly respectable ones too. 

The Mini Cooper and Bentley. Swiat Zdrowia and Unilever. Sun Microsystems and Columbia Sportswear. Gucci and Chanel. Smart and Stark. Scottish Arts Council and Quark.

More recently the Airbnb logo came under scrutiny. An intrepid designer found similarities between the Airbnb 'Belo' logo and a logo designed for a Japanese drive in called Azuma in 1975 by Akisato Ueda. The logo was spotted by an intrepid Redditor F. R Starmer in a book called Trademarks and Symbols of the World: The Alphabet in Design published by Yasaburo Kuwayama in 1988. 

Airbnb on the other hand is a company founded in 2008. The current logo was unveiled in 2014 and took the London and San Fransisco based Design Studio a year to complete, during which time four designers visited 13 cities across four continents to absorb and comprehend the Airbnb experience. Below is their rationale behind the design:

Some will arguably raise eyebrows for the logos being too close to comfort. However the site Design Taxi dismisses this scepticism. While it may not suggest that Airbnb copied Ueda's design, it is interesting to see that 'even hours and months of design can produce a result that has already been seen before'.

In many cases, it is mere coincidence or at best inspiration with value addition. What is undeniable is that these are all logos with their own unique personality, representative of a unique brand experience. That is what matters. To seek inspiration is fine, it’s human, it is real. But to take that inspiration and make it well and truly your own, that requires imagination and vision.

Photographs courtesy Wiki Commons and Google public domain.

A version of this article was previously published in Aurora Magazine in 2013.