DC Bombshells: Professional Femslash
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| Title: | DC Bombshells: Professional Femslash |
| Creator: | Olivia Riley |
| Date(s): | November 16, 2018 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | DC Bombshells |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | DC Bombshells: Professional Femslash |
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DC Bombshells: Professional Femslash is an article by Olivia Riley on the blurring line between canon and fanfiction, using DC Bombshells as it's main example.
Excerpts
Bombshells follows a female triumvirate of heroes, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl, as they join forces with a group of other female heroes to fight the Nazis in a supernatural, re-imagined World War II. All the main characters in this series are women, and nearly every one of them is queer.This is a very fannish move; queering beloved characters and giving them agency and complex backstories where they’d previously been ignored and down-trodden in white, straight, male-centered canon. Adding to Bombshells’ fanwork-like appearance is its nature as a digital-first comic: as with most fanworks, Bombshells exists first (if not exclusively) online, making it physically and financially accessible to diverse audiences. Additionally, Bombshells is like a fanfiction AU, an alternate universe, setting familiar characters in unfamiliar settings (in this case, putting modern heroines in WWII).
So, can we understand a comic like Bombshells to be a form of fanfiction, specifically, a form of femslash?
Bombshells fits neatly into this history, with its queer woman author, community of passionate women fans, and massively queer cast of diverse characters. And, by understanding Bombshells as a form of femslash, we can begin to see the places that fan and professional practices impact each other, for better and for worse.
However, Bombshells’ transformative energies seem to fade when faced with the whiteness and ablebodiedness of comic canon.It’s not until almost twenty issues into the series that a woman of color even appears on one of the Bombshells’ covers (and that’s in a subordinate, background position), and it’s not until issue #58 that a woman of color is the central figure. This reflects fan problems with racism, in which reimagining Dean Winchester as bisexual is commonplace, but reimagining Hermione as black causes an uproar.