DC Comics: Bombshells Volume 1: Enlisted

Let's talk about DC Bombshells: DC's comic line that re-imagines the female DC heroines and villainesses as pinup girls from the World War II era. It was inspired by the DC Bombshells figurines designed by Ant Lucia (Wikipedia).

What might at first glance look like an opportunity to showcase a work of nothing but fan service, but this volume of Bombshells delivers more with a poignant story of the ladies picking up the baton to protect the world while the men are off fighting the war.

The aesthetic is dead on to the era it mimics (with some colorful exceptions). They use fairly sexy designs, but they never come off as overtly trashy. The fan service levels are considerably low for the subject matter. It screams that quote on the cover: "She Can Do It," and it never strays from that girl power feeling.

The story spends most of its time introducing its main cast, including but not limited to Batwoman (complete with her baseball 'bat'), Wonder Woman (pretty much unchanged, other than her outfit), Mera (complete with a chariot o' dolphins), Zantana (up to her usual 'tricks'), a retro Supergirl and Harley Quinn (who goes from zero to whacko in zero to ten). The rest is to set up the conflict and the villains.

Even though all of the characters are portrayed as versions of them in World War II, they are all reasonably true to their mainline versions. Lex Luthor is rubbing shoulders with Nazis, Catwoman slinks around in their shadows, the Joker('s Daughter) is their most dangerous weapon, and Supergirl and Stargirl get tired of being Soviet weapons very quickly. Everything feels right without being entirely predictable.

I know this isn't a new book, but if it's in your backlog, you must start reading it. It's challenging to find a starting point in comics where you don't need a ton of prerequisite reading. You can find it here on Amazon.

What do you think of this first volume of DC Bombshells? Let us know in the #comics-chat in the Blade's Edge Media Discord.