The 1940s may have been the Golden Age of comic books, but we are living in the Golden Age of geeks. In the last five years, we have seen 24 — 24! — superhero movies hit the big screen. And Marvel and DC have five more in production for release this year. When A-list actors are breaking in line for a shot to play Captain America, and fanboys and fangirls are getting, er, action everywhere you look, I think it’s finally time to ask the question: Where is our female superhero movie?

Some of you will hold up a Catwoman or Elektra DVD and say, “Here is your female superhero movie!”

To which I will say, “Get that crap out of my face before I Hulk right out on you!” (What? My last name is Hogan.)

Catwoman and Elektra are half the reason we don’t have more female superhero films. Both movies bombed at the box office in 2004 and 2005, respectively, which caused studio execs to draw the conclusion that women heroes won’t play with a paying audience.

But the problem with Catwoman and Elektra wasn’t that the stars were women; the problem with Catwoman and Elektra is that they were terrible movies.

Batman movies don’t sell because Batman is a man.

Chris Nolan’s Batman reboot is one of the most celebrated superhero franchises in history because it is the perfect storm of great acting and directing, neat gadgets, an energetic score, authentic themes, killer SFX, complex moral quandaries, and stellar scripts.

Again, I say: stellar scripts!

You can’t hang the failures of Catwoman and Elektra on Halle Berry or Jennifer Garner. They could only be as good as the material they were given — and the only material they were given was spandex.

And that brings us the other half of the reason we still don’t have a good female superhero movie: Apparently, no one knows what to do with breasts when they get anywhere near a cape.

In hero movies, women either embrace their sexuality, which makes them villains; or they are completely desexualized, so that they don’t accidentally scare any small children.

For an example of the former, see Michelle Feiffer’s Catwoman, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey/Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson’s Silken Floss and Eva Mendes’ Sand Saref. In one case, a man’s brain actually exploded because of his proximity to the sexy.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a femme fatale as much as the next person (Jessica Rabbit, call me!), but does it have to happen every time a woman in a hero movie wants to get laid?

For the second thing, well, I’m looking at you, Sam Raimi, and your pitiful excuse for Mary Jane Watson. I get that she was supposed to be a hybrid Watson/Gwen Stacy, but Stacy was in the third movie. Even so, all Mary Jane managed to do was frown and shriek and remember that one good time she kissed Spider-Man upside-down in the rain.

You see the problem? Sexy women are scary! Unsexy women are boring! But none of that matters because Catwoman and Elektra only made ten dollars between the two of them!

Still, I think there’s hope. People continue to happily drop ten bucks a pop to watch superhero movies. So, I’ve got five tips for studio execs and screenwriters if they really want to make a good female superhero movie:

1) Call Gail Simone and Greg Rucka. What they have done with Wonder Woman and Batwoman is the best thing to happen to women in comics in, well, ever. Their heroines are strong and complicated and smart and lovable and sexy. Under Simone’s pen, even Wonder Woman has started exploring her sexual side.

2) Embrace the standalone heroine. Both Elektra and Catwoman were sidekicks. There are plenty of female comic book characters who have held their own titles successfully for decades. Read the books! You’ll see!

3) If you’re too scared to launch an entire movie dedicated to a woman, at least test the waters by writing a strong female character into an already successful franchise. The things a Nolan script could do with Talia al Ghul (or even Catwoman) make me shiver with delight.

4) Don’t stunt-cast. No Alicia Silverstone. No Uma Thurman. Find your Heath Ledger and your Christian Bale.

5) Fish Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman script out of the trash. I hear he’s looking for a job. And no one writes empowered women like him.

Now, light the Catwoman and Elektra DVD bonfire, and let’s get this party started! It’s time for the female superhero movie!

(Author’s Note: I am going to write this WHOLE piece without EVER using the phrase “catfight.” Check it out.)

Welcome back, gorehounds, to the latest installment of Deadliest Fantasy Warrior, wherin we match up two ferocious warriors in a battle to the death to see who will emerge victorious! Kinda like that Spike TV show. If that show were as cool as we are. Which it isn’t.

Throughout the centuries, female warriors have channeled certain types of animals when engaging in battle, even as far back as the Ancient Egyptians, which featured a warrior goddess known as Sekhmet, who was part woman, part lioness. Here in this country, there have been two women of note who have assumed the mantle of the cat, and both women referred to themselves by the same rather unimaginative moniker: Catwoman.

In 1992, there were reports in Gotham City of a woman who was taking to the rooftops and causing all sorts of mayhem while dressed in a black rubber cat costume. Some sources linked her to Batman, the city’s resident hero, who similarly takes to the night in a black rubber costume, this one inspired by a bat.

Here to speak with us today is Cristi Wellington, who had a rather uncomfortably close relationship with Catwoman when she was abducted by the feline criminal and her partner-in-crime, Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin. For the past seventeen years, Cristi has made it her life’s work to learn more about this fascinating criminal.

“Well, when I was kidnapped, it was back in my modeling days. I was the Ice Princess, which basically meant I got to push a button and light up the big Gotham City Christmas Tree. It sounds easy, but it was really hard work! I had to wear a corset and heels, and do you know how difficult it is to use your fine motor skills in that kind of outfit?”

No. No, I do not. But as for Catwoman…

“Oh, right. Well, after the incident, this reporter lady named Vicki Vale and I teamed up to do some investigative journalism. We researched everything we could find on Catwoman. For one thing, we’re pretty sure her real name was Selina Kyle, and she used to work as a secretary for some big suit guy. But here’s the thing: some homeless guy was in an alley when he heard this huge crash, and saw this woman matching Selina Kyle’s description fall out of a skyscraper window, like she was pushed! He said that she fell and looked dead for a minute, but then all these cats showed up and started making out with her and stuff, and she came back to life! Isn’t that weird?”

Weird it is, but amazingly, this story is corroborated by our next guest, Ophelia Powers, who hails from a city similar in style to Gotham City, but isn’t actually Gotham, and –

I’m sorry, Ms. Powers, did anyone tell you you look just like the mom on Six Feet Under?

“Oh, yes, dear, I have been told that before,” she says.

Right, moving on. The Catwoman in your city…she was a different woman?

“Indeed she was,” Ophelia tells us. “Catwomen have been around since the beginning of time. They are chosen by the goddess Bast to be her emissaries and her disciples, and are gifted with great powers by cats, Bast’s earthly vessels, at the time of their death, just like what Ms. Wellington told you of this Selina Kyle person.”

Wow, that sounds so contrived. Nothing ruins a good supernatural mystery like explaining it, huh? Anyway, what was the real identity of the Catwoman in your city?

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge to you the identity of our Catwoman, but suffice it to say she was a remarkable woman. I remember back when I first met Patience –”

So her name was Patience?

“Oh, crap.”

All right, ladies, the backstory is very interesting, but we have a focus here. This is, after all, a hypothetical trial of combat. So, what can you tell me about their individual fighting styles?

“Well,” Cristi says, “Selina Kyle was a brutal fighter. She attacked everyone, criminal, victim, and hero alike. In fact, we even have some footage here.”

“As you can see, she could take down a man in seconds, and she was slightly, um…let’s say unstable? To be nice? As she got more experience fighting, she got better at it, and once she added a whip to her arsenal, forget it. Lethal.”

“As is the way with all the disciples of Bast,” Ophelia interjects, “which you can see from this surveillance footage.”

Hmm. That looks a lot like capoeira, the Brazilian martial art.

“Oh, goodness, that’s certainly beyond my area of expertise, child. It’s an example of the ferocity of all women who have been endowed with the spirit of Bast.”

No, but it’s exactly the moves of capoeira. Bast was an Egyptian goddess, right? It just doesn’t seem all that accurate or even make much sense –

“It’s the power of Bast!!”

Fine. We feed the information into our battle simulation computer, which takes into account that while the Catwoman whose first name was Patience did manage to best many opponents at once, her dance-like acrobatics could become unwieldy, awkward, and not too effective, not to mention she never once drew blood. Selina Kyle, on the other hand, was pure rage in female form, turning her body into a backflipping time bomb, and slicing the hell out of anyone who got in her way. The results showed her winning the fight 89% of the time.

“Well, really,” Ms. Powers states, “how can a person pit one disciple of Bast against another?”

“This has nothing to do with freakin’ Bast!” Cristi shouts. “Stop ruining Catwoman!”

Battle #5: Catwoman (Selina Kyle) vs. Catwoman (Patience Philips)

Winner: Catwoman (Selina Kyle)

Join us next time for DEADLY FANTASY WARRIOR!

Okay, one thing I’ve learned in an exhaustive search of sexy ladies is that while many people fetishize the women of sci-fi (Aeon Flux, Trinity, Barbarella, etc), fantasy women are not considered equal in the allure department.

Sure, there are the metal-bikini-clad ladies of Boris Vallejo’s paintings, but when you look at fullly realized fantasy stories, truly sexy women are not really that common.  But that’s not to say they don’t exist…

This is a list of seven sexy fantasy characters who have appeared in film and television and realized by a real-life actress – no cartoons or literary heroines. It’s a truly academic study, so be sure to take notes. There’ll be a quiz.

7. Akasha

The late Aaliyah was a surprising choice for many people when she was cast as the immortal, ancient Vampire Queen, Akasha, for the film version of Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned. But doubts were put to rest when she made her grand entrance and almost sizzled through the screen. Though the film itself is widely considered lacking (and that’s being kind), her erotic performance is considerably more significant seeing as it was also her last film before her untimely death.

6. Faith Lehane

When Faith burst into Sunnydale on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she took a lot of the wind out of Buffy’s sails by being funnier, sexier, and more violent than the other Slayer in town, even going so far as deflowering Buffy’s good buddy Xander. Faith was known for her flamboyant wardrobe, and with her descent into evil came more tight leather pants. Anyone complaining?

5. Catwoman

I won’t make a nine lives joke (you’re welcome), but this is a character who has gone through many incarnations, most of which are not fantastical at all. But in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, the script envisioned Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) as a mousy secretary who is magically brought back to life by cats and turned into a stunningly sexy, sensual psychobabe with her sights set on the similarly S&M-garbed Batman. (The less said about the Halle Berry film, the better.)

4. Elizabeth Swan

Being overtly sexual doesn’t necessarily make one sexy. Often what we don’t see is what sets our imaginations (and hormones) ablaze, and who better to exemplify this than the unbelievably gorgeous Keira Knightly in her role as the spunky, heroic Elizabeth Swan in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. What other woman would enrapture the likes of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom with such ease?

3. Selene

When ads for Underworld first appeared, many wrote it off as just another Matrix rip-off that happened to focus on vampires and werewolves, with Kate Beckinsale’s Selene stepping in as a poor man’s Trinity. In a way, they were right. But if they didn’t stick around for the sequel, they missed a scorching love scene where we learn what comes between Selene and her leathers – nothing – and discover that she truly is one of the hottest supernatural women around.

2. Princess Leia

Hey, remember those body-hiding white robes from A New Hope? Neither do I.

1. Legolas

It takes a lot to keep up with two men and never mess up your hair, but when Legolas went off on a journey with Aragorn and Gimli to save two kidnapped hobbits, she truck a blow for feminism everywhere. Throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy, she jumped, slashed, and shot her arrows through a vast array of baddies without ever breaking a nail, earning her the number one spot on our sexiest women of fantasy.

Just kidding. Presenting our real number one, as if it’s any surprise…

1. Tie - Xena and Gabrielle

For six seasons, we watched these women go through a myriad of adventures and scandalously racy outfits on Xena: Warrior Princess, and the question of which one is hotter has never been settled. And so, the number one spot is a tie between the two ladies who made history in this ground-breaking show.

Looking to get a, uh, closer look at any of these sexy ladies (or buy any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

It used to be that when one thought of stock characters in film and TV fantasy, several archetypes came to mind: a noble hero, an amusing sidekick, a wise old man, a monstrous villain, and, of course, the damsel in distress.

In short, men acted while women watched.

If a woman had any power of her own, this was likely due to her being a wicked sorceress, because if a woman is independent, then it certainly means she must be evil. For centuries, this was the accepted paradigm.

But then something happened.

Most contemporary fantasy fans know the story: in 1995, Xena: The Warrior Princess jump-kicked onto the airwaves, featuring a lead heroine armed with a razor-sharp Aerobie and a biting wit, sword-fighting and ululating her way across our television screens each week. Xena was a new breed of fantasy heroine. An anti-damsel-in-distress, Xena was unequivocally tougher than most of the men with whom she engaged in battle, and indeed often rescued less able men from danger, subverting the old gender roles. For a genre packed to the gills with helpless maidens, she was a breath of fresh air.

Two years later, another iconic fantasy heroine staked out some new ground. Buffy the Vampire Slayer reintroduced the world to Buffy Summers, first seen in the flop 1992 film of the same name. Armed with an arsenal of medieval weapons and a collection of puns of debatable merit, Buffy hacked and slashed through hundreds of creepy crawlies throughout the course of the series, with nary a hair out of place.

Both shows ended their runs in the early 2000’s, but their popularity remains, as evidenced by their legion of fans and annual conventions held in their honor. But it is in their influence on female characters in contemporary fantasy that one can see how the legacies of Buffy and Xena truly endure.

And that influence is vast. When one takes a look back at some classic fantasy films, one can find a slew of weak, flaccid women who exist for no other purpose than to be rescued and to titillate the male viewers. Take, for instance, the exquisitely beautiful but woefully foolish Lili (Mia Sara) in Ridley Scott’s 1985 film Legend. She sure looked great standing next to that unicorn, but ultimately her character was little more than a plot device to spur her companion Jack (a pre-thetan Tom Cruise) into action.

Harry Hamlin was a dashing Perseus in Clash of the Titans, while his bride-to-be Andromeda (Judi Bowker) mostly sat on the sidelines until the final act, when she was set to be sacrificed to the Kraken, a sea monster. Fortunately Perseus saved the day by swooping in on a winged steed. (You really can’t ask for a better entrance.)

We all know The Princess Bride is a grand romantic swashbuckling adventure, but was it really so great for Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright Penn)?  Throughout the film she gets captured, recaptured, force-married, and ultimately rescued by her handsome Westley (Cary Elwes). Surely she was itching to take part in some of the movie’s infamous swordfights.

Antiquated, pre-feminist ideas of women perpetuate these movies. And they were made in the 80’s! Fortunately for female characters and the men who love them everywhere, the advent of a world post-Xena and Buffy promised a new beginning.

And it has begun. Nowadays, women do get their shots in, almost as a rule. Name a fantasy movie made since the late 90’s, and chances are it has a strong female lead.

Who can forget the gravity-ignoring aerial antics of Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Jen (Ziyi Zhang) from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Twice these characters dueled one-on-one with no men in sight. Both women prove themselves to be fighters at the top of their game, besting almost all of the men they come into contact with.

The re-imagined Catwoman, universally panned though it was, featured a new take on the character (played by a mannequin that bore a striking resemblance to Halle Berry) and endowed her with some seriously brutal capoeira skills, which makes you wonder how Eartha Kitt managed to pull off all that cat-crime just by being sexy.

The X-Men movies are filled with strong women unafraid of throwing down even with the likes of Wolverine, such as Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and Deathstrike (Kelly Hu). Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) led a charge to retake her castle in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and held her own in a gladiator pit in Attack of the Clones.

Keira Knightly gets honors for playing two fierce ladies: Elizabeth Swan in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and a seriously buffed-up version of Guinevere in 2004’s King Arthur.

Another double-header is Kate Beckinsale. She kicked some serious fang as Selene in the Underworld movies, and it was fun to watch her at least try it shock some life into the corpse that was Van Helsing.

And then there’s the big mama of all genre pictures. In December 2001, a tiny, low-budget indy film called Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring upped the bar for not only fantasy films, but movies in general. Adapted from one of the most beloved books of the 20th century and THE seminal fantasy story against which all other fantasy stories are judged, Rings sharply divided its audience by its handling of a particular character. In the book, the elf Arwen appears briefly in the house of Elrond, and has hardly enough time to register with readers before she is gone, only to return at the conclusion of the story, some 1000 pages later. For the movie, they didn’t just reinvent the character, they actually gave her something to do.

In the text that J.R.R. Tolkien put down, at one point the endangered hobbit Frodo is rescued by an elf named Glorfindel, who takes him to safety. Afterwards, Glorfindel disappears and is never seen again. Wanting the audience to grasp her significance in the greater scheme of the story, the filmmakers decided to have Arwen sub in for Glorfindel, providing a hero moment for the elf, even allowing her to draw her sword and challenge a host of demonic wraiths all on her own. (In another adaptation, a cartoon by Ralph Bakshi, it is Legolas who performs this rescue. Somewhere in adaptation purgatory, Glorfindel is shaking an angry fist.)

It should be noted that also featured in the Rings trilogy is the shield-maiden Eowyn, who in the final film really opens a can, killing both the pterodactyl-like Fell Beast and the powerful Witch-King. But this was no post-feminist story-tweaking: it’s right there in the book. Perhaps Tolkien, with all of his creative vision, had an inkling of the world to come.

Women have come a long way towards equality in the fantasy genre, but there are still miles to go. Numerous as the examples of strong females may be, there still persists the image of the damsel in distress, and how many of the characters listed above did their fighting while dressed in ridiculously revealing outfits? Here’s hoping the trends laid down by Buffy and Xena only continue to grow. Let’s let women kick ass and not be forced to do it in an outfit that requires any double-sided tape. We’re all looking at you, Red Sonja remake…