Off My Mind: Female Characters Made From Male Characters

I think it's just a matter of wanting to trade on the popularity of an existing character (Supergirl, Lady Deadpool) mostly to give their initial popularity a little boost, most new characters fail pretty miserably after all, but that's a WHOLE other discussion.

You are missing the point that I and others brought up.  We are getting more of these female knock offs now, and less "original" work now, and more recycling of dead / established heroes.   

This is actually something that I've been contemplating for quite some time.
 
Speaking of which; Has anyone else noticed that Huntress' costume is pretty much a female version of Hawkeye's?

It's not about anything except copyrights/ trademarks.  DC has Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Superwoman, and several "____ the Super(pet-type)" to monopolize the "Super" names.  If you look at the Price Guide, the very first magazines for some of the derivative characters were rushed to the copyright office with mock covers and the insides of a completely different title.  For example, the cover might say "Supergirl #1," but the insides are "Action #40" (just an example - that's probably not the actual combo). 
 
Now, that's really securing rights to a title, not to the character, but I've always heard that DC has teams of lawyers that exist simply to copyright character names.  The only reason derivative characters exist though is so the competition doesn't jump on the name for themselves.  The Wonder Woman/ Wonder Man thing that several have mentioned is the perfect example. 
 
To another degree, there's the Captain Marvels at both DC & Marvel, and their counterparts Mary Marvel/ Ms. Marvel.  That's nothing except competing companies trying to outdo each other.  I mean, has Marvel ever really made good use of the names Marvel Boy or Marvel Girl?  I am a firm believer that the only reason Marvel's using those names is so DC can't give Mary Marvel and Cap' Marvel Jr. better names.  They want to own all "Marvel" names, and can't because of DC's Marvel Family, so they used up every "Marvel" name they can. 
 
It's that kind of namegrabbing by competitors that keeps the derivative characters coming.  I mean, c'mon: there's even been a Lady Punisher. o.O

" @Rheged said: 

You are missing the point that I and others brought up.  We are getting more of these female knock offs now, and less "original" work now, and more recycling of dead / established heroes.   

I didn't miss it, I don't think it's factually accurate at all.  There's no decade without derivative characters and there's no decade without original characters.  I think you're taking a pretty small sample set of data points and trying to make more of it than is there. 
 
At the end of the day, most of the creators worth giving a damn about are professionals who do their job.  If there are those "hoarding" creativity such that they're not doing their jobs then they won't have jobs, it's just that simple.  Nor is it an all or nothing proposition... plenty of creators do both and allow their works to inform both and, in fact, benefit from the cross pollination of independent creation without restraints and the more structured storytelling within limits.  There are creators who's bread and butter is essentially telling us the same story over and over (cough, Millar, cough) where I'm skeptical as to whether "hoarding" made any difference in terms of his storytelling one way or another. 
 
You can study and train for the NBA. "

" @cbishop: Bingo!  It's not about creative bankruptcy but typically legal rights for economic reasons. In the end it's economics, as I point out X-23 (not named "She-Wolvie") as an economic attempt to capitalize on Wolverine, but played out as a creative decisions (the execs would have been just as happy to have Wolvie suddenly frolicking with teens as with the creation of X-23) that makes the same amount of dollars and cents (pun intended). "

I enjoy the girl versions O_O
 

A bit of a cop-out but, as long as it is interesting, I don't see why not.

Of course, you are welcome to believe whatever fancy you like.  However, the facts are, there were more original characters created for Marvel and DC in any decade of the era of non-Independent books, than there are presently, in this decade. "

I think initially a lot of the female (and children) version of characters where created during a different time in comic books where a child, female and family dynamic in comics was wanted in order to serve the vision of the companies. So I throw those characters (who haven’t been retcon’d) out of this discussion as dinosaurs of the industry. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the newer school cloning (with stipulations) and alternative universe introduction of female characters because we should have learned from the bad decisions of yesteryear. 

SHE-THING?!

GOOD GOD! WTF!?

It's alays kind of a given. The more famous heroes usually tend to have a female counterpart. Heck, Spider-man had to different Spider-women, and Arana, another Spider based hero. Captain Marvel has Ms. Marvel, who has really budded into her own hero than just a female counterpart.

Except that Spider-Man and Spider-Woman are really only similar in name only. Spider-Woman does'nt even have the same powers.

I cringe everytime I see Lady Deadpool especially one time someone showed me her one shot...I felt like vomiting. This trend is not for me although I'm always glad to see X-23 & Thor Girl

" @InnerVenom123: From what I know Venom had gender swapped version as well. "

Gallery

" @InnerVenom123: Patricia Robertson looks exactly like Venom. How is she female? WTF is this?! "

" @ComicMan24 said:

" @InnerVenom123: Patricia Robertson looks exactly like Venom. How is she female? WTF is this?! "

Fixed. "

namora and namorita or whatever. and she-thing. and lady deadpool. those are stupid, and just trying to reproduce the same character for girls. but harley quinn? not at all. the only simialrity to her and joker is they are crazy and pull pranks. i dont think she was made as a female joker, she was made as jokers sidekick/girlfriend.

I think it is great because some of those characters that were made from other characters are great. My favorite character Spider-girl would not exist if this happened. So, some characters I do not think they should have another character. But Spider-girl, She Hulk, Batgirl I think are strong characters that we need. So, in my opinion some characters are good and some are not so good. 

That ending caught me off guard xD
I feel like the problem with female versions of characters isn't there gender... Some of them are just being unoriginal...

What I REALLY hate is when they kill the male character to replace them with a female. I don't care if both versions are alive, leads to some nice rivalry.

She-Hulk,Spider-Woman,Ms.Marvel,Phyla Vell,Goddess,Lady Bullseye,X-23,Thor Girl, & Supegirl are awesome characters.That's just to name a few.I think G-Man first statement really sums up why this keeps happening.Everything is already done so it's hard to do something new.I think writers have done a good job though of making these characters their own characters.Bendis' Spider-Woman motion comic was amazing.Every She-Hulk series i've read has been good,I love Power Girl's book and Supergirl.Manhunter was a really good book before it got cancelled.i think a character like Lady Deadpool is an unnecessary addition to Marvel's roster as so with the female MODOK that G-Man mentioned and there are other ones that seem forced like that too, like She-Thing and Abominatrix.Those types of characters aren't needed.

I don't mind as long as the two characters are distinct in some way.

If the male/female incarnation is uniquely characterized, sure, go for it. If not, screw that.

" @Rheged said:

Of course, you are welcome to believe whatever fancy you like.  However, the facts are, there were more original characters created for Marvel and DC in any decade of the era of non-Independent books, than there are presently, in this decade. "

What "facts"?  Stating it doesn't make it a fact.  The only difference between Wolverine and, say, the Authority or Great Ten or Dennis Sykes is that 1) Wolverine is older and 2) Wolverine has more investment.  Of course, you're going to think there are "more" original characters of the past because they made it through the past to the present for you to know about them.  There are tons of new characters being made right now they just haven't had the time to build up steam (both Wolvie and Punisher were one-off characters developed for other books... becoming big was not a product of originality but of investment creators going back and redeveloping an existing character).  In terms of investment the rule has always been the same... characters who get invested into do better and older characters get more investment than new because it builds the trademark. 
 
Basically, you're arguing that there is creative bankruptcy or creative hoarding when we've had just as many original and derivative characters as ever with respect to creativity.  If you want to argue there's less investment or risk taking due to the state of the industry as as whole that's a more reasonable position, but that's got nothing to do with creative limitations and everything to do with trademark development / investment.  If anything, the creative restraints on character development have been lifted far beyond what you've presented as a period of "original" character creation... mainstream creators can make gay characters, MAX characters, morally ambiguous characters, scientifically sophisticated characters, etc. far beyond anything permissible or genre-friendly in the past. 
 
You're saying that at conception independents are draining originality.  I'm saying 1) They were never that original to begin with and 2) Only character development really matters (post-conception) and there's been no evidence of drained creativity there. 
 
The other problem might be reading Marvel. :P  Consider.  In last decade, Geoff Johns easily tripled the Flash's rogue gallery, added entire hosts to the GL mythos, and gave us another Legion.  Grant Morrison has been going nuts with new Batman characters.  Superman saw the introduction of 100,000 kryptonians and surrounding supporting characters, villains, etc.  You might argue they're not fully developed, but was Wolvie?  Was Punisher?  Was Deadpool?  Of course not, they were all half-baked but came into their own later.  There is absolutely no shortage of characters being created (only maybe developed, and that's a TM thing rather than a creator incentive thing). 
 
Wolvie, Punisher, Deadpool... they all started out as villains.  Villains are always being generated.  The genre requires it.  It's only when someone goes back and develops them they become a meaningful property and that's happening irrespective of the independent publishers. "

I think the real question is, what about all the superheroes who has a dog version of them. Eh? eh?
 

" I think the real question is, what about all the superheroes who has a dog version of them. Eh? eh?
 

"

This makes me think of an issue of MAD Magazine I used to have with a story called " Ex-Men " where they we're all women.
I think even Onslaught was.

I thought babs was lady G man...lol  
i think they do it out of copyrights so a rival company wont try to make a character like that in the case of super girl and spider woman...

" @Rheged: What do you call M-Day? Ever since Grant Morrison's run on the X-Men books, marvel created a slew of original characters (all mutants mind you). But original characters. M-Day just took away a crap ton of powers from characters; but those new characters are still around.  "

Ah, here's the quote from Warren Ellis that I was looking for ... 
 
 The tenor -- and, frankly, the informedness -- of online comics conversation over the last five years has changed to the point where I probably need to explain once again why I don't stay long on company-owned works.
 
 It's as simple as this -- if I don't own it, I'm not going to spend my life on it. Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley know that, they're fine with that, and they hire me on that understanding. EDITED TO ADD: I am work-for-hire exclusive to Marvel, and I move between projects at Marvel with their agreement. I think a few people forgot that.

Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else's house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day.

I'm okay with painting other people's houses for short periods, because I'm good at it and it pays well and on nice days it's fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people's houses, I wouldn't be able to build houses of my own.

The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.
 
 For those of you who harbour a wish to write comics, consider this today: you're either on this side of the line, with me and Brian K Vaughan and Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison and Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction... or you're not.
 
From Whitechapel  about the time Ellis left the Thunderbolts.
 
Of course, I think Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction and Grant Morrison have moved a bit off Warren's side of the line, since they are doing substantially more work for the Big Two today, than not.

"

"

Simple.
Original female characters don't sell as well as these knockoff characters because fans are scared s****less of characters they don't know.  Outside the X-Women, they just don't venture off to explore new characters, and really, it's just sad.
X-23 would not have 3/4ths the popularity she has now if it weren't for her connection with Wolverine.  Really, it's just naive fans that don't explore the characters out there and stick with what they now, and it pisses me off.

meh, seems like a lazy way to create "new" characters.