Joker: 10 1970s Comic Book Movies DC Should Make Next

Both on TV and at the movies, adaptations of DC Comics have been increasingly successful at pushing for a more diverse line-up of characters. One thing that they have not yet given us, but that we got plenty of from the pulp movies of the 1970s, is a movie built around a strong black, female lead, a movie in the vein of Pam Grier blaxploitation adventures Coffy or Foxy Brown.

The originator of this style of powerful black pulp heroine was the eponymous Bond-style secret agent and martial arts expert from 1973's Cleopatra Jones, a movie that would provide a perfect model for a big screen take on DC's top black heroine, Vixen.

Like the classic version of Mari McCabe, Cleo is a statuesque model who uses this glamorous globetrotting career as a cover for her work as a special agent. The modelling aspect would allow a new movie to go in hard on a strong sense of seventies style and fashion. Vixen could adopt Cleo's period-appropriate big afro hairstyle as a sign of strong black beauty, while the latter's love of furs and animal prints (designed by Cleopatra Jones's crew to tie her to her African heritage) would be a connection to Vixen's animal-based powers.

Cleopatra Jones's plot sees her tangling with the international drug trade, something that was also part of Vixen's storyline during her 1980s run with Suicide Squad. Combining the two could also give this seventies blaxploitation version of Vixen a supporting cast of strong black DC characters from Bronze Tiger to Amanda Waller.