For reasons that are beyond our comprehension, DC decided to fully pass on Ben Caldwell's idea for a girl-friendly Wonder Woman in favour of further alienating any and all female attention their superheroes might attract. American comic books have a well-documented history of sexism and generally being a bit crap unless you're a straight male, but Japan might actually have them beat: there's whole genres out there where the main crux of the shows are how many times they can show the women characters' underwear and breasts in the space of a half hour. Which usually means they've got costumes on designed to show as much of those things as possible. They make Power Girl's boob window look like a Bell Hooks text. In the early noughties DC decided to forgo any of the usual trivialities like making a manga or anime, and went straight for the lucrative market of gross statues aimed at perverts. In Japan there's a huge demand for statues of anime and manga characters which let you peek up their dresses or down their tops without getting a slap, and DC hopped joyfully on that bandwagon with the bishoujo and later Ame-Comi merchandise, with Japanese artists redesigning most of their female characters to have even more revealing outfits than the less-than-modest skin tight affairs they're usually clad in. That is not a part of Japanese geekery that needs bringing over here.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
