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The Best Gender-Swapped Comic Book Characters

Skirts and ridiculously tight costumes don't stop these characters from kicking butt

By Alysha DePernaPublished 7 years ago 7 min read
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Every once in a while, comic book characters are in for a serious makeover, whether it’s because sales are dragging, or there's been a fundamental change in the comic book universe that requires men to be ladies (it happens) or just simply because someone got bored and drew Batman with boobs.

Luckily, with comic books being set in a realm of fantasy where literally anything can happen, the appearance of characters changing genders, either by passing the torch to a new person, or literally by being transformed from a man into a woman, isn’t that farfetched. Some of these switches are only temporary and the original character simply goes on to reclaim their title, but some of these transitions wind up being way more permanent.

Thor

During a battle against Malakith (who is much more threatening in the comics than he was in Thor: The Dark World), Thor is defeated, and even loses an arm, Star Wars-style. However, it’s not long before a mysterious woman begins wielding the legendary hammer, Mjolnir. Thor, in awe of her skill and overall badassery, gives her his blessing to use his name and weapon. Meanwhile, the former God of Thunder continues to fight, using his surname, Odinson.

Spoiler Alert: down the line, the new female Thor is revealed to be none other than Jane Foster. Dubbing herself “Thor, Goddess of Thunder,” Foster goes on to join The Avengers and fight, not as a replacement for Thor, but simply as Thor.

Jane has actually been Thor in the comics for a couple of years now, and there are no signs that she’ll relinquish the title any time soon.

Spider-Woman

Spider-Woman, otherwise known as Jessica Drew, was essentially created by Stan Lee to make sure that no other company trademarked the name before Marvel did (it always comes down to business, folks). Because of this, she was originally only supposed to be a one-note character in a single issue, but the comic did so well that they kept her on.

Co-creator Archie Goodman revealed that she was also originally going to be a spider who evolved into a human, but ultimately altered her path to have her own father inject her with spider serum after Drew gets uranium poisoning. Afterward, she’s put in a genetic accelerator and woken up years later with no memory of her past and powers similar to Spider-Man’s. Since then, she’s been an Avenger, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a double agent for Hydra. So much for that one-note character plan.

Lady Deadpool

In playing with Marvel’s ability to do essentially whatever they want with whatever characters they want, they chose to use the backdrop of an alternate reality to portray wise-cracking assassin Deadpool as a woman. In the comics Earth-3010, Wanda Wilson becomes what is known as Lady Deadpool (clever, I know).

She ends up joining the rebels who are sick of the U.S. government’s fascist laws to fight against the so-called Loyalists and eventually becomes part of a group called The Deadpool Corp. It’s during this story arc that she meets the male Deadpol and goes head-to-head with Captain America.

Ultimate Vision

The character of Vision is definitely a unique one portrayed with varying storylines in both the Marvel comics and the MCU films. Essentially, Vision is an android originally conceived by Ultron to be used as his personal weapon against the Avengers, but who later switches sides and becomes a member of the heroic team instead.

As a twist awaiting readers, debuting in the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, a female Vision was introduced as a robot from outer space sent to Earth 100 years ago to warn humanity of the imminent danger presented by Galactus, and then aids Marvel’s heroes in warding off the intergalactic villain.

While many consider the simple change to a gynoid something of a cop out, I’ll let this one slide because Ultimate Vision benefits from being significantly different from her male counterpart.

Lady Punisher

The female sidekick to the Marvel character the Punisher, Lynn Michaels is a police officer turned vigilante who helps take down both a rapist and a man named Mr. Sandeen who leads an organization that likes to kidnap people and draw blood from them to use for their own nefarious purposes.

Later, after The Punisher appears to have been killed (don’t worry; he gets better), Michaels takes the reins. Not surprisingly, also adopting a cliché, over-sexualized version of Castle’s classic costume. While she has no special powers per say, Michaels is excellent at unarmed combat thanks to her years of being a police officer.

After Frank Castle returns, Michaels decides to leave the life of a murderous vigilante behind. Eventually, she takes a dangerous undercover job at S.H.I.E.L.D., working to take down Jigsaw’s organization from within.

Supergirl

Kara Zor-El, otherwise known as Supergirl, was created in 1959 by writer Otto Binder as a female counterpart to Superman himself. Over time, Supergirl has gone through many retellings, initially meant to be Superman’s cousin with intentions of looking after Clark Kent as he grew up. Things in the original comics went haywire and that storyline got completely flipped upside down with Kara actually arriving after her cousin is all grown up and already fighting off the baddies.

Since then, there have been many versions of Supergirl, all of which wore skirts that would make “leaping tall buildings in a single bound” more than a little awkward. DC finally gave her short pants a couple years back. Thank God.

Robin

Undoubtedly the most famous Robin, as well as the first, was Dick Grayson, immortalized by Burt Ward in the 1960s Batman TV show and Chris O’Donnell in the Schumacher films. Since then, there have been a handful of other version including a few of the Boy Wonders that weren’t even boys at all.

The most famous of which is Carrie Kelley, who aided a middle-aged Batman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. In the sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, she is Catgirl, remaining a fierce ally of Batman, and she even returns in the recent Dark Knight III: The Master Race.

Captain Marvel

As quite possibly the most famous gender swap in Marvel Comics, a superhero expert would even be relatively hard-pressed to find a casual fan who knew that Captain Marvel was originally a man, as well as an alien. The number of characters who have used the name Captain Marvel is downright ridiculous: Mar-Vell was the first, but he had numerous successors, Genis-Vell, Phyla-Vell, Khn’nr, and, of course, the DC icon now known as Shazam, but that’s a whole other story we’re not going to get into right now.

In the recent comic book Captain Marvel: #1, gives up her name and assumes the title of Captain 2012, in tribute to the late Mar-Vell.

With Captain Marvel’s upcoming place in the MCU, the legacy and prestige of the character is stronger than ever, as well as an excellent way for Marvel to compete with DC’s Wonder Woman.

She-Hulk

After the success of the 70's show The Incredible Hulk, Stan Lee was struck with the fear that the creators would randomly bring in a female version of Bruce Banner, so he jumped the gun and created one himself: Jennifer Walters, the quiet cousin of Bruce Banner who works as a lawyer.

In typical Marvel fashion, she turns into the She-Hulk when Banner is forced to giver her a blood transfusion. The radiation in his blood makes her Hulk out, but unlike her cousin, she’s able to eventually gain the intelligence of her human form while in a green rage.

While significantly less backstory and actual logical purpose, the She-Hulk does hold her own. And again, you can’t fault her for that moniker of hers.

Iron Man/Iron Heart

If you’re a fan of comics, or the MCU or superheroes in general, than you’ve undoubtedly heard about the newest addition to the Marvel team.

Riri Williams, not unlike the version of Spider-Man that we see in Captain America: Civil War, Riri is a teenage genius. She ends up creating her own super suit (in this case a working version of the Iron Man armor) and fights bad guys in her free time. She quickly catches the attention of Tony Stark, who sponsors her as a full-fledged superhero.

In the comics, Tony Stark is currently taking a break from the whole superhero business, leaving Williams in charge. While I can easily assume everyone would have preferred that she adopt the nickname Iron Maiden, the writers ultimately decided to dub her Ironheart, and she will formally begin her own solo adventures in Invincible Iron Man #1, set to debut this November.

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About the Creator

Alysha DePerna

Book nerd and lover of all things cheese flavored. Highly skilled at Google and considers coffee medicinal.

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