Before writing this article, I decided to conduct an experiment. I plugged the words “Dazzler” and “worst superheroes” into Google. The search gave me about seven articles from publishers ranging from Cracked.com and Buzzfeed to The Guardian that took Alison Blaire to task for her converting-sound-into-light powers, her already-dated-when-it-was-made disco-inspired outfit or her overall superheroism. There’s even a thread that asks if Dazzler is worse than NFL Superpro, a nearly-forgotten Marvel hero who wears an indestructible football uniform.
If you’re a casual fan of comics, it’s easy to make fun of Dazzler. This is a medium that features talking, gun-toting raccoons; villainous cats that puke blood that is also fire; and the Great Lakes Avengers (my knowledge of whom brought the house down at a party of my most intimate friends — although to be fair they were drunk at the time). Sometimes this genre is just a silly one. Superman’s outfit is based on circus uniforms, for instance. Usually as comics readers we can accept some silliness, yet there’s something about a singing superheroine with seemingly-useless powers in a dated outfit with rollerskates that sticks in people’s minds and makes them say, “You’re kidding, right?”
And, you know what? I’m here to say that’s not fair. Dazzler started her career in comics in The Dark Phoenix Saga — one of the greatest comic book stories of all time. She has been a mainstay of the Marvel Universe for decades, appeared in an incredibly well-loved X-Men arcade video game, and once, like Captain America, briefly became President of the United States in an alternate reality… and then died ignominiously. Okay, scratch that last part, but look at her prominent placement on the cover of A-Force. Doesn’t that get you pumped? It gets me pumped. (Sit down, Dr. Lepore, you already shared your uninformed thoughts.)
Dazzler also has something a lot of so-called “worst” superheroes don’t: she was once the star of a comic series that was actually pretty good, at least for awhile (as of this writing I still haven’t read the back-half of the series). Knowing that these collections were out of print, I bought her first Marvel Essential trade paperback last year along with the Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel Essential (which was mostly awesome) and the second Jessica Drew Spider-Woman Essential (which was mostly terrible). When I finally got around to reading it a few weeks ago, I was struck by how unique it was, especially compared to her superheroine contemporaries.
Most heroines in the late 1970s/early 1980s were drawn to fight evil due to a dark compulsion — Ms. Marvel’s alternate Kree warrior personality, She-Hulk’s rage-induced alter ego, Spider-Woman’s overall alienation from normal people. Dazzler doesn’t want to be a superheroine, but she doesn’t want to be normal, either. She wants to sing and perform, and she loves doing it, but she lives in a world that won’t let her sit on the sidelines. She beats the Enchantress in a singing contest, and the Asgardian villainess wants revenge. Dr. Doom needs her as an emissary. The Hulk is smashing up her concert. The Enforcers are kidnapping her boss. Galactus enlists her as a herald. It’s not Dazzler making herself become a heroine, it’s the world that needs her to be one.
You could take this concept and make something like the current ongoing The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl, just playing a silly-sounding superheroine for laughs. But writer Tom DeFalco, who wrote the first few issues and created the ideas that would set the stage for the first eleven or so, is, if nothing else, good at making concepts that might seem silly in a pitch compelling for readers (Witness Spider-Girl/Mayday Parker’s contemporary Wild Thing, the child of Wolverine and Elektra, whose claws are made out of Psylocke-esque psi-bolts. What I find weirder is that this character lives in a typical middle-class high school existence when her parents are two former assassins). Plus, I think there’s a beauty in a heroine who nobody expects to be competent rising to the occasion again and again. Adam Warren’s been making money off this concept for the past few years with Empowered but Dazzler does it in a more mainstream form.
Another thing that makes early Dazzler unique is, unlike Peter Parker, she seems to have a fairly successful personal life. I didn’t care for any of her love interests, who were pretty boring and generic (except for Warren Worthington III a.k.a. Angel, who takes some time out from the X-Men to try to woo her by doing creepy things like buying the entire restaurant where her other love interest is taking her for the night). But I did like how she seemed to have a somewhat-working music career, which had its share of great nights alongside some ignominies, such as singing as backup for a stuck-up John Lennon lookalike or in a line of chorus girls opening a fast food burger joint. The cast can be fairly one-dimensional — the obnoxious roadie, the drummer who likes to eat a lot, her manager’s jealous and bitter secretary — but her manager goes from being a blowhard to a more sensitive and thoughtful sort, and overall the cast keep things compelling. There’s also a great running subplot where Dazzler is fighting with her father, who would rather her drop her singing career and become a lawyer, while simultaneously looking for her mother, which comes to a satisfying conclusion in issue #21.
Finally, I like how Dazzler being a mutant was handled. While I still don’t understand how nobody realizes that Dazzler’s lightshows at her concerts aren’t special effects (wouldn’t her band know they’re not carrying the equipment for that?), I do like how exposure of Dazzler’s powers and mutant status is something in the back of her mind as a concern. She isn’t defined by possible persecution, would probably rather just live her life and never think about it, but once in awhile something happens that makes her look over her shoulder and scares her, especially with her career in the balance. It would take until the early 2000s before Marvel would create mutant superheroes who were partly shielded from prejudice by their celebrity (the Peter Milligan/Mike Allred X-Force/X-Statix) but I liked how this comic turned it into a subtle narrative about “passing” while a minority.
I’ve heard that the comic gets worse as it goes along, and there are definitely some not-as-good-issues. Dazzler #13 features the heroine getting put into Ryker’s prison for the night and having to fight supervillainess prisoners and the whole thing has a very pulpy, women-in-prison feel. I also didn’t care very much for Dazzler being pitted against the chauvinistic, forgettable Blue Shield, a superhero dedicated to busting up gangs from the inside. Overall, though, I like how this comic puts its “silly” heroine against super-tough bad guys and sees her rise to the occasion instead of getting humiliated. I like how it allows her to try to build the life she wants instead of seeing it get knocked over constantly. And I like how it’s committed to letting Alison Blaire be Alison Blaire, even if the world sometimes needs her to be something more than that. The early Dazzler comics are a great, overlooked gem, and Dazzler the character deserves a better reputation because of it.
Oh, one more thing. The “sound into light” powers? Sometimes those lights can become powerful laser beams, so lay off about Dazzler’s powers being “useless.” I can’t defend those skates, though. I mean, the preponderance of heels and belly-button-length cleavage is silly, but … ehh, on second thought, lay off the skates too. Dazzler’s great. Period.
(P.S. If you’d like to hear me talk more about Dazzler, check out Introducing … The First Appearance podcast, where I’ll be guesting to talk about Dazzler’s first appearance in The Uncanny X-Men #130 on an upcoming episode. See you then!)
