Okay this is an excellent excuse for me to talk about Patsy Walker because dudes, you have to know who this character is.
Patsy Walker was one of those teen life/romance comics back in the day, and her imprint got purchased by Marvel in the 50s or 60s. She was super popular and published, much like Archie, regularly and without breaks for something like three decades. Think about that for a minute: a title that in one iteration or another has no breaks and unending continuity for thirty years. Pretty cool. She was popular enough that Al Jaffee was the primary artist for a while.
SO then Marvel becomes, you know, Marvel. Super heroes. All that good shit.
It all started when, to capitalize on her popularity, they crossed her over with Fantastic Four in 1965, and from there she became part of the main Marvel Universe, what we call 616 these days.
It became established that the wildly popular comics existed in universe, and were fictionalized stories that Patsy’s mother wrote and published when she was a kid. Holy meta, Batman. She made a few more cameos, but fell by the wayside when her comic went defunct.
Then, Steve Englehart, bless his dorky, romance-comic reading soul, decided to pull her into his run on the Avengers in the 1970s (a great run, if you haven’t read it.) In the run, Patsy was Hank McCoy’s assistant and, through adventuring with him, borrowed a costume that gave her powers and became Hellcat, which wasn’t so much a legacy name as one the author stole from another character he found boring.
In The Avengers, Patsy finds out that her mother — you know, the one who made the comics based on her life? — had promised her soul to Satan. Satan attempts to screw with her and pretend to be her father, but by meeting her real father (and having Important Moments) she realizes it’s all not true.
She also gets offered a place with the Avengers, but she turns them down. She decides instead to go with Moondragon (another awesome character I should glee about some time) and visit Titan and learn how to use psychic powers and ‘advanced martial arts’. They’re advanced.
After her training, she helps Doctor Strange save the universe and joins a hero team called the Defenders (ahem), and all this, Moondragon decides is her wasting her powers so she gets her psychic goodies revoked.
Through her fun trip to hell and Defenders adventures, she also meets Daimon Hellstrom, and they fall in love and get married. I just want to reiterate: Patsy Walker, adorable career girl from romance comics, now has superpowers and got married to the son of Satan. This is not the best part of her story. I repeat: THIS IS NOT THE BEST BIT YET.
Patsy and Daimon decide to become supernatural PIs, but when Daimon’s hell powers start making him you know, evil, Patsy is driven insane by them, to the point where she commits suicide. Daimon fucks with Hawkeye’s head (it’s always Hawkeye’s fault, isn’t it? Aw, Satan.) and convinces him to do terrible things to resurrect Patsy.
In the meantime, Patsy is going through actual by-god Hercules level gladiatorial combat and tests in hell. And winning. Winning like you wouldn’t believe. She’s kicking so much demon ass her psychic powers reassert themselves and when she comes back to Earth thanks to Hawkeye and Daimon she keeps them. She also ditches the husband — you know, the Son of Satan who just got her out of hell to bro it up with FIrestar, Black Cat, and Photon, because lady heroes gotta hang with lady heroes, especially when one of’em gets breast cancer.
I guess my question here is, where in the everliving fuck is my Patsy Walker movie. You’ve got teen romance career girl, you’ve got urban fantasy supernatural PI, you’ve got ties to known characters including the X-Men and Avengers, you’ve got a fuck of a heroes journey from normal girl who borrows a flashy suit to goddamn hero with her own powers…
I love you, Patsy Walker. Forever.
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