A Man With An Agenda

An utter surprise, and so utterly necessary. It's no secret that there's a bit of problem with how women have been treated in comic books, but I haven't seen anywhere else the objections, and their solutions, laid out as effectively as they are here.

Valente takes some inspiration from the Big Boy comic universes, but her creation takes on a life of its own. In interlocking stories, each member of the Hell Hath club, all wives and girlfriends of so-called superheroes and villains, tells her story and points out the expectations of their world towards them as women, and the failings of their male partners, led to their untimely deaths.

This book is a condemnation of the trope of the woman in the refrigerator, and a parody of the superhero genre. I don't have too many levels in comic nerd, but as a lover of the classics I was able to pick up on the source material for most of the characters here. This is an angry book, but its also bitterly funny and worth a read for any comic fan.