And I wanted to do a superhero title. I wanted to do a superhero title that had an all-female creative team. I tried to find something that had either one woman doing both the writing and the art or two different women taking the main roles.

X-men: Firestar Buy at Amazon.com

I’m sure this exists but I just couldn’t find it (if you know of any, please tell me). Writers were easy, but finding artists were harder — I know they’re out there. For instance, I really wanted to include something by Marie Severin, but collections that are just of her pencils seem to mostly not exist (part of my goal here is to point people to things they can buy easily. I don’t want to send people after individual issues).

So yes, Firestar and Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds.

The collection of the Firestar limited series from the ’80s, revealing the character’s origin story. It’s a slight book, sure, but it’s a lot of fun. Mary Wilshire’s art is honest and appealing — it’s maybe a little dated, but in a charming way. Angelica Jones is all flowing hair and teenage emotions, and Emma Frost is awesomely icy here. And you can always laugh at the fashions (I loved Angelica’s “formal” dress. But surprisingly — or not — Emma’s outfits haven’t changed much over the years).

Tom DeFalco’s story is simple and melodramatic, but highly entertaining. I get the feeling this is probably going out of print, but it’s cheap enough that it’s worth seeking out (and the original issues don’t seem like they’re that much more expensive).

Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds Buy at Amazon.com

Everyone, of course, loves Gail Simone (the whole #gailhateswomen thing notwithstanding). Those of you who weren’t around in those days don’t know how cool it was when people figured out the Gail who wrote “You’ll All Be Sorry” at Comic Book Resources was the same Gail behind Women in Refrigerators. We’re lucky to have women like her in comics.

Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds isn’t the very first story of Birds of Prey but it is Simone’s first, and provides a good entry point into the title.

I love Simone’s deft handling of the characters here. Her women are well-rounded — intelligent, thoughtful, funny, but also prone to making mistakes. She has a wonderful talent for letting women be in peril without making them victims. I love this and need to read more of Simone’s work. Ed Benes’ pencils are strong and clean. This is just appealing all around and I’m going to be buying more soon.

So that’s this month’s books. I promise I’ll go back to one for March.

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And just to piggyback on this post, I am associate editor of Geek Girl on the Street (in case you haven’t noticed from Twitter). There will be some comic stuff there (like my preview of Crogan’s March) but there will also be plenty of other geekiness that won’t necessarily fit here.

It’s a new but growing site and I think we’re doing a lot of fun things. Follow us on Twitter and add us on Facebook.

I’ve been reading comics long enough to remember the version of The Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren and the Captain America starring no one who’s particularly notable to me. Not that I really sat through these — I just remember they’re out there, despite Marvel’s best attempts to erase everyone’s memory of them.

But oddly, while Hasselhoff-as-Nick-Fury was being discussed, I suddenly remember that Fox made a Generation X movie from 1996.

I liked the Generation X comic quite a bit. Yes, it had a stupid title, but it had a bunch of characters I liked. It had Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo as the creative team. It’s a title I would love to see collected in full.

But the Generation X movie? It was bad. It didn’t need to be as bad as it was, even with the budget it had.

For those of you who didn’t watch it (which was basically everyone), here’s a clip:

Yeah. I actually don’t know if I managed to get through the whole thing when it first aired. And I really wanted to like it. I would’ve watched the series. You know, if it hadn’t been so terrible.

Which also brings me to the Birds of Prey series. We’ll go with the official clip from Warner Bros.:

I know I taped the first few episodes of Birds of Prey, but we didn’t have the WB at the time. Instead, our NBC affiliate would show the WB programs really late on Sundays or Saturdays or … basically whenever they felt like it. If some sort of sporting event ran late or they needed more time for infomercials, oh well. So keeping track of Birds of Prey was next to impossible.

I do remember wishing it was a little bit better than it was. But I still kind of liked it. So I was pretty delighted to see it’s newly out on DVD, and the Gotham Girls Flash-animated shorts are included (and I’m surprised and delighted to see they’re still online). I will probably buy this set.

I imagine there is more superhero TV that has long been forgotten about. I had fun looking up both of these on YouTube (and learning Generation X didn’t get better with age).