Marvel Comics recently revealed that one of their superheroes, Ms. Marvel, would be getting a new spin. The newest character to don the name of Ms. Marvel is Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Muslim teenager from New Jersey. If this news has you curious about other female comic book protagonists, the UGL has compiled a list for your reading pleasure.
Ms. Marvel
Various authors and artists
The character of Ms. Marvel has been around quite a while – since the first issue of the Ms. Marvel comic in 1977, in fact. If you want to find out where it all began for her and what kinds of adventures old-timey superheroes had, pick this one up!
Batwoman: Elegy
Greg Rucka, J.H. Williams III, Dave Stewart, Todd Klein
Batwoman also made her debut as a character quite a long time ago – 1959! – but she disappeared for a while when she was deemed ‘non-essential’ to Batman storylines. This series has her re-envisioned as a central character, battling a demented version of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It also explains her tragic back story.
Batgirl
Gail Simone, Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes, inker ; Ulises Arreola, Dave Sharpe
You can never have enough bat-themed superheroes. Out of all of them, the UGL might be a little bit biased in favor of Batgirl, aka Barbara Gordon, since her day job is being a librarian. We think librarians are pretty super, Batgirl especially so.
Pride and Prejudice
Nancy Butler, Hugo Petrus, Alejandro Torres, and Dave Shapre; adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
There are comic books that aren’t about superheroes, and they have cool female protagonists, too! Jane Austen’s classic novel is now a graphic novel – we have Sense and Sensibility in comic form, too, if you’re up for a double whammy of Regency romance.
Gunnerkrigg Court
Tom Siddell
Schoolgirl BFFs taking on supernatural phenomenon in a spooky boarding school setting – what’s not to like? Gunnerkrigg Court originally started as a webcomic – this volumes collects the strips that follow Antimony, the main character, through her first year at the school.
Eye of the Majestic Creature
Leslie Stein
For more slice-of-life type stories (but still with a dash of whimsy), you can try this collection of semi-autobiographical comics about a young woman dealing with her family, strangers, anthropomorphic friends, and life in general.
For more comics featuring girls and women as characters, try searching in the library catalog for “Young women – Comic books, strips, etc.” or ” Women – Comic books, strips, etc.” and selecting “Subject” from the drop-down menu. To browse a more general selection of comics, try the UGL’s graphic novel Pinterest board. If you have a favorite female comic book character that we haven’t mentioned, tell us about her in the comments, or on Twitter or Facebook! And if we don’t already have any comics that feature her, please recommend them to us!
