Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel Comics

This lively history from comics writer Stohl (Captain Marvel) highlights women’s contributions to Marvel Comics from the 1960s through the present. In the publisher’s early days, women usually started out as assistants before branching out into creative roles, Stohl writes, explaining how Irene Vartanoff assisted editor-in-chief Roy Thomas before taking on editorial duties for reprints, even as she remained locked out of the most prestigious writing and penciling positions. Recounting recent efforts to correct Marvel’s checkered history with female superheroes, Stohl describes how Kelly Sue DeConnick reimagined Captain Marvel in the early 2010s by giving her a less revealing costume and more robust backstory drawn from DeConnick’s own childhood as a military brat. Elsewhere, Stohl covers Marvel’s efforts to publish more comics featuring and written by people from diverse backgrounds by discussing how comic book editor Sana Amanat and novelist G. Willow Wilson created the Muslim character Ms. Marvel and how YA author Maurene Goo developed the web-slinging Korean American hero Silk. The emphasis on the past 20 years leaves the previous decades somewhat underexplored, but engrossing interstitial oral history chapters illuminate the challenges and rewards women faced in the office, including sparring with sexist coworkers and finding camaraderie with female colleagues. This loving tribute to Marvel’s unsung heroines will please comics fans. Photos. (June)