A Character that Annoyed the Hell Out of Me

I haven't read any of the new WildCATS. I intend to, as I enjoyed the previous three volumes of stories. Even if it looks like a good portion of them are out of Wildstorm continuity now. (Which I rather expected, honestly, especially with the whole general oddness of the later stories, when you had Hadrian with Void's powers as a company CEO with benign World Domination Plans, it was probably a bit much. Even if it was pretty unique as a story.)

The original WildCATS though was pretty fun. I'd initially read snippets of it as a kid and enjoyed it, so I was thrilled as an adult to have the opportunity to read the original run in almost entirety.

I was surprised by how much I liked it. The Kherubim/Daemonite stuff was a little silly but in a cheesy comic book way that I could dig. And I liked most of the characters. Hadrian/Spartan's my favorite, they can blow him up every damn issue and it never stops being entertaining to me. And the subtle emotional stuff they managed with him was appealing to me. As well as the humor.

Funniest part of the damn comic was when there was two Spartan androids running around, one with the personality of Yohn Kolt (or however you spell that) that hated the thought of being the blueprint for an Android and the other being the usual Hadrian 7, who'd oh so quietly fuck with him.

The others tended to be appealing too. Grifter was exactly what Gambit was supposed to be, but never delivered under the schtick. Zealot had a bad habit of being the series's Wolverine, turning up everywhere, gratuitous past stories, but tended to be entertaining when she wasn't the subject of idiotic love triangles. Emp was charmingly Machiavellian. Maul was cute and geeky, and so on and so forth.

But there was one character that I *could not* and *can not* stand.


Voodoo.

Holy hell do I hate this character.

In fact, at the tender age of pre-teen however-the-fuck-old-I-was when I started reading issues of this comic, this walking, talking cliche was the first character to *ever* earn my abject hatred.



First, let's look at her pre-WildCATS identity. She was a stripper. Pardon me, she was an "exotic dancer". Now for the record, I have nothing against this job or the women who do this job. It's not a job I would want, but it's not grounds for me to hate or even dislike a character. I'll admit, it does make me look closer at the character. It can be very poorly done.

In Voodoo's case it was *very* poorly done. Basically it was an excuse to have her appear at the beginning in skimpy costumes and gyrating. The occupation was never used beyond that to any sort of substance.

The character was very sweet and largely innocent. The pure heart of the group, basically. The only one who cried when the Spartan Android blew himself up (the first time anyway). Now there's nothing wrong with this either, but in combination with the whole stripper thing, you start to get an irritating combination. She's a sweet, little girl personality that's also there to be objectified! But she's not cynical, oh no! She's still innocent and emotionally untouched. Add in abuse in a backstory (or implied, I forget precisely), and I start to grit my teeth.

She's "special", somehow a hybrid descendent of both Daemonite and Kherubim ancestry. She can see Daemonite possession. This is an interesting idea, but in practice I find the more "special" a character is in terms of ancestry/powers, the less she is in terms of personality.

Here's a tip to all the writers out there, if your character needs to be "one of a kind" or notably "special" to be an interesting character, (like for example, she has to be Superman's cousin, and implied to be even *more* powerful than him, traumatized from isolation in a space capsule, able to bypass a demi-godling's control of an Olympian Lasso, et cetera) you might be dealing with a weak character...not that I'm implying anything of course.

Not to mention this mixed heritage ends up only causing Voodoo more trouble and angst when they reach the planet of the Kherubim and she finds herself shoved into one of the slums. It was an interesting storyline, but weakened because *naturally* fucking-Voodoo was the one in trouble.

Voodoo was constantly the damsel in distress. Moreover, she was constantly the injured one. If a team member had to be carried from the rubble, decourously draped in the arms of another character, it was her. ALWAYS. Now I understand the appeal of decorously draped unconscious characters sometimes, and angst and hurt-comfort, but if it's the same victim EVERY TIME, it gets old. Just *die* already.

She was regularly the tortured character in insane gratuitous ways. From being imprisoned in the slums of the Kherubim world, to having her mind raped, to having her legs *ripped* *off* at some point...

Not to mention, she was utterly useless in battle. Where mixed heritage gave Maul the ability to increase size/decrease intelligence and thus make him a risky powerhouse in battle, her powers were passive. That's not her fault, of course, but she couldn't do anything *else*. Grifter had no powers at all, being human, and he still managed to kick ass. She was the weakest fighter, had the lamest power (in a fighting sense), and hell, she didn't even have the technological expertise to make up for being utterly useless in a fight. Her sole purpose was to say, "That one's the bad guy!!!" and get injured and moon after the android while Maul moons after her.

Well, to be fair, every once in a there was a plotline of Voodoo trying to learn to be a better fighter from Zealot or someone else. It'd never *really* last and soon enough she'd be the delicate flower of the team again. Bleh.

That and she managed to piss me off more by crushing on the android (who really was the vastly more interesting character of the two), because of course the pretty, useless one should be paired with the leader. He even had feelings for her back.

Not that we were ever shown why/how these feelings developed. Not that we ever really had any build up to make the relationship a plausible option (and I tend to *like* human-android relationships, they've got interesting drama.).

Voodoo also suffers from the literary device in which the hot girl is "the prize" to be won. The winner would be the geeky but pure hearted Maul of course. The problem is one of many geek-gets-the-hot-girl storylines though. The relationship is defined basically in terms of him only. He's the one pining from afar. She doesn't notice/appreciate him. Ultimately he wins her heart.

My problem isn't that he's a geek or that she's hot. People are attracted to each other for many reasons after all. My problem is that in these sorts of stories, the hot girl is turned into this glorified Other. She's like...this unattainable, beautiful being that's portrayed as closer to some out of reach alien or goddess than a person. Her humanity is stripped from her, and we're never really given the chance to truly understand her perspective on all this.

I suppose in general, my problem with the character is that she's in general not written as a human to me (and I'm not referring to species here). She's always seemed like a string of cliches. She annoys the hell out of me. I suppose there's always the hope that she's written better in the new series.

Anyone here read the new WildCATS series that can tell me if they finally figured out to write her, or if she remains a waste of ink and paper, would be greatly appreciated. :-)

(I stole the top picture of Voodoo from here.)