Girls Gone Geek

My stylist is so fired.

Nothing raises our hackles quite like hearing someone say Wonder Woman is lame. (Hello, Megan Fox.) For example, one of V’s friends (we’ll call him The Antagonist) takes great joy in claiming, among other things, that Bobby Drake could kick her ass, and that the princess would “look real pretty in a pink tutu, carrying a little purse with a little dog.”

We did not handle that well. Words were exchanged via Facebook.

It was even worse once we figured out the context. The Antagonist had already read Blackest Night #6, in which Wonder Woman was transformed into a member of the Star Sapphire Corps. OK, technically the Star Sapphires wield violet light, but the costume’s color was close enough to pink for it to sting. Say what you want about Wonder Woman’s usual getup, but there is a certain dignity (depending on who is drawing her) to her red, white and blue uniform and golden breastplate. The Star Sapphire look is equal parts Dollar Tree and Strip Club. No offense to Carol Ferris, but only Starfire has a trashier costume — and she’s an alien, so she gets a pass.

Wonder Woman as a love-powered being? That’s awesome. But somewhere, The Antagonist is having a good laugh.

Bills, Bills, Bills!

When she isn’t channeling animal powers to fight crime with the Justice League, Vixen — aka Mari Jiwe McCabe — rolls as an international fashion model. So why does her costume look like one of Tina Knowles’ rejected sketches from the 1999 Destiny’s Child Tour?

Of course, there’s no shortage of fashion crimes against female comic book characters (Star Sapphire’s stripper-inspired getup comes to mind), but there’s something especially jacked up about Vixen’s situation. The woman is a runway model, and she’s in a mustard-colored bodysuit with a butterfly collar and an animal tooth belt? For real? Liya Kedebe or Gisele wouldn’t be caught dead in that madness.

Maybe this seems like a quibble, but a superhero or villain’s costume is, for better or worse, his or her calling card. Vixen is by far the most prominent black female superhero on DC’s roster, but her spectacularly unimaginative yet tacky costume suggests that she’s nothing special — just another random chick in Spandex. As Manhunter and Catwoman’s costumes demonstrate, even a simple bodysuit can make a powerful (and sexy) design statement.

Some enterprising person at DC ought to get Lifetime on the phone and pitch a Vixen costume redesign challenge for the next “Project Runway” season. While they’re at it, they might want to offer up Star Sapphire, too, because that fuchsia shit is just crazy.