MARVEL'S HEDONISTIC, BOHEMIAN WONDER WOMAN...SERSI THE TERRIBLE!

By Edgar Miraculous Dyer

(2021, October 22) 2nd Ed.

Comixeurs know that Marvel Comics (even in the Timely days), the self-styled House of Ideas, has always mixed an element of horror into the iconic DNA of its most beloved heroes.

From the Frankenstein-inspired elements in Captain America to the more obvious flashes of horror in the original Human Torch, the amazing Spider-Man, incredible Hulk, invincible Iron Man and uncanny X-Men - even the supernatural possession of Dr. Donald Blake, by the mighty, Viking sky god, Thor - this is and always has been Marvel's secret sauce. This is the Marvel brand...

And even the publisher's greatest superheroines would not escape it.

One need look no further, than Sersi the Terrible! Half-naked in the apocalyptic green of Eden, Sersi is a cosmic sorceress and member of Marvel's The Eternals (now, titular stars of a proper, live-action superhero flick) - who really is and always has been ..Marvel's answer to publishing rival DC Comics' Wonder Woman.

I don't know how Angelina Jolie travelled, back in time, to pose for Jack Kirby's Eternals #3, but... (Jack Kirby art)

This is right about where Lynda Carter's people would cut to that rousing, jazz gospel theme song of hers! (Jack Kirby art)

Sexy, intellectual, superior, heroic--in her Bohemianism, Sersi is as free and powerful, as any feminist heroine. (Walt Simonson art)

Artist, wealthy socialite and philanthropist, immortal, molecule-bending space goddess...superheroine - Sersi, driven by the insatiable curiosity of biblical Eve, ..left her futuristic utopia, hidden in the mountains of ancient Greece, to wander the corridors of history, among us puny humans ..and the heroes of our legends! With Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, Odysseus on his Odyssey, Merlin and Arthur at Camelot, Mighty Thor at the Vikings' Siege of Paris...with Captain America in World War II, ..Sersi was there, seeking fortune, arcane knowledge and forbidden pleasures! Doing as she pleased, when it got women condemned as 'witches' or just 'bad'...

And gods help you, if you got in her way!

Want to KNOW WONDER WOMAN, the way I know Wonder Woman? You've got to get ALL THE WAY down to the... STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES!

As characterized by some of the last century's most well-meaning chauvinist thinkers - Teddy Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Kanigher - good, faithful women had no use for occult secrets and self-gratification! Only witches and feminists dabbled in such things, we were told, ..and Sersi, in narrative and the scornful paradigm of the West, is most willfully, a witch. A sexy, badass monster, like Count Dracula...

This, again, is the Marvel brand.

So, Sersi, in the indulgence of her hedonism and Bohemianism - ideas that her creator, Jack Kirby, was positively electrified by, at the time - is also the ultimate feminist of Marvel's superheroines, ..even moreso, than Captain Marvel (Ms. Marvel, at the time). In the mid-Seventies, when Sersi begins challenging our moral and political norms, 'chauvinist pig' was a nickname, feminists reserved for the most misogynistic of Jack Kirby's male contemporaries. 'King' Kirby, as we comixeurs call the man, even today, kept his finger in the winds of politics and pop culture, ..and, to our delight, his freedom-loving Sersi manifests from this. An artistically, intellectually, morally free and self-realized wonder-woman, ..in the mid-Seventies?

Oh, the horror, brothers. Science fiction, at the very least!

In the years following her debut, in The Eternals #3, we would see her punch monsters out of the sky and eye-beam space gods, straight through Manhattan skyscrapers, for threatening her freedom ..or harming someone, she loved. In the early days, she might turn you into a concrete gargoyle...

Or a pig.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

I love that Sersi begins her superheroic career, with the monicker, ..Sersi the Terrible. Marvel has always mixed an element of horror into the DNA of its most iconic heroes.

That epitaph, 'the Terrible' - that she is free as any male monarch of history, to be terrible and powerful - is a defiant, Bohemian, feminist act! Boldly and scantily clad in green danger of Eden, Sersi the Terrible, while certainly possessing the power to save or destroy us, doesn't have to save us, ..but, she is a hero; so, she does. Sersi the Terrible of 1976 doesn't have to ask any man, how he feels about that. Sersi the Terrible is free as any man of the modern age, to do exactly as she pleases, and has the money to do it, very well. 'Savage She-Hulk' and 'Mysterious Spider-Woman' sound considerably tamer and almost sophomoric, next to 'The Terrible', ..I think.

Sersi the Terrible. Oh, Jack Kirby - we don't call you the 'King' of comics, for nothing, do we?

Bareass Friday, at the Avengers Mansion! "AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE, ..IN SERSI'S TERRIBLE HOT TUB!" Woo'woo! (John Byrne art)

In 1976, as much as Wonder Woman championed our most celebrated notions of Western democracy on American television, represented by the American flag on her uniform, Sersi was Kirby's cosmic Eve, ..an avatar for the individual liberty, creativity and apocalyptic curiosity, historically celebrated ..in men. Today, like DC Comics' Immortal Amazon, she is a half-naked personification of freedom, without which democracy is nothing. While Sersi's greatest crime against Western patriarchy might be her fearsome curiosity - supposedly, one more thing, good, faithful women should have no use for - feminism and democracy are definitely in there, ..Sersi's narrative.

In that sense, Sersi, Captain America and Wonder Woman really are fighting for the same thing. Think about it, true believer!

The Sersi of Marvel's Ultimates era and of the new comics and live-action Eternals film is a creature of the New Age - she's all about Zen grace, Earth-love and consciousness transformation. How sad, for those of us, who remember Marvel's most truly Bohemian and embryonically feminist Wonder Woman, if the newest custodians of her meta-myth do not seem to appreciate...

What made her so marvelously terrible. And fun.

Look alive, Kangaliers!

Edgar Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio), the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill and the Board of Directors for both Total Care Services, Inc. and YMCA Capital View.