One Girl In The Justice League is an essay by Tansy Rayner Roberts that first appeared in The Book Smugglers’ Quarterly Quarterly Almanac in September 2016. One Girl In The Justice League I have a problem with the “one girl” trope of superhero teams. It was a problem for me when the original Avengers movie only included Black Widow, and not the Wasp (who actually was the “one girl” founding member of the team). It’s a problem for me now that the Justice League trailer (which I kind of loved) has been released into the world, with Wonder Woman clearly marked out as the only female character in the team. This isn’t me complaining about how super hero teams *should* look. I’m campaigning for realism based on a long, deep, fannish association with the Justice League. But that’s the thing about history—it often gets forgotten beneath the sinking weight of what people think history was like. That’s why the word “tradition” has so much power. In the 1960’s Justice League comics, sure, there was one girl and that was Wonder Woman. In the early 1970’s, when Wonder Woman left the Justice League and Black Canary joined up instead, there was […]