Will the Spice Girls’ Newly Announced Animated Superhero Flick Be As Good as These 6 All-Female Power Teams?
We just learned that the beloved pop group the Spice Girls are about to get their own animated superhero film (voiced by the actual Spice Girls) in which each girl has a unique super power reflecting their personality. We’re excited for the Spice Girls cartoon. In fact, we haven’t been this excited since we heard about the She-Ra reboot. But the upcoming Spice Girls cartoon got us thinking about other all-female superhero groups. Here are six others that reminded us about “Girl Power!”:
1. Batgirl and the Birds of Prey
Part of the DC Rebirth series that debuted in July 2016, this monthly comic shows the crime-fighting team of Batgirl, Black Canary and Huntress. Their team also includes part-time villains-turned-superheroes Poison Ivy and Catwoman — meow!
2. Josie and the Pussycats
A spinoff of Archie comics, Josie and the Pussycats was published in comic book form from 1963 to 1982. Their comics was more a teen-girl drama with the band’s three members traveling to gigs while navigating relationships and the band leader’s jealous (and sometimes magic-using) sister.
When the comic turned into a 16-episode Hanna-Barbera cartoon in September 1970, it mimicked the Scooby-Doo cartoon, showing the girls solving mysteries while traveling to exotic locales: Josie was the level-headed leader, Valerie was an intelligent mechanical whiz and Melody was air-headed, but cheerful and optimistic.
Though the cartoon barely lasted on the air for four months, they later popped up for an additional 32 episodes on Cartoon Network in 1992.
3. Femforce
Originally published in 1985, this is actually the oldest and longest-running female superhero group of all time. It consists of 40s- and 50s-era female comic book heroes who had lapsed into the public domain.
The group united the likes of World War II-era heroes Miss Victory, She Cat, the Blue Bulleteer and Rio Rita, but in the ‘80s, the group grew to include weapons mistress Colt and environmentalist Tara. In the ‘90s they added the electric Rayda, an alien named Stardust and others.
Femforce is still published to this day, an important milestone considering that it’s released by an independent comics producer.
4. The All-Female X-Men Team
Seeing the success of its X-Men franchise, In 2013, Marvel released an all-female team of X-Men including such butt-kickers as the weather-controlling Storm, energy-sucking Rogue, ghost-like Kitty Pryde, energy-blasting Jubilee and psyche-kinetic warriors Psylocke and Rachel Grey.
As far as power and name-recognition goes, it’s probably one of the most famous all-female superhero groups of all time.
5. The Powerpuff Girls
This superheroic sister team was made up of known as the confident red-haired Blossom, innocent blonde Bubbles and tomboyish brunette Buttercup, three girls created out of sugar, spice, everything nice and Chemical X. Born in a lab, the girls repeated save the city of Townsville from villains including a problematic transgender villain known as “Him.”
The original release of this Cartoon Network cartoon ran from 1998 to 2005, but it actually returned for a reboot in 2016 and added a fourth Powerpuff Girl a year later, a dark-skinned heroine named Bliss.
6. Jem and the Holograms
It’d be criminal to exclude Jem and the Holograms from any list of all-girl music and superhero groups. Jem, you may recall, could easily change her appearance and through rockin’ live concerts with the help of her holographic supercomputer Synergy.
Her dramatic TV series ran from October 1985 to May 1988 and had a live-action film released in October 2015. The cartoon was also turned into a comic series in 2017.
