Underrated. Ignored. Undervalued. Overlooked. Shamelessly ripped-off in The Incredibles. Susan Storm has been wronged in pretty much every way a popular comic book character can be wronged. I come to you here to say that Susan Storm is worthy of more than your respect, she is worthy of your vote.
Susan is, too many people, “the girl” on the Fantastic Four. She’s seen as being the one who gets kidnapped, the one that the men have to save. She’s seen as shy and underwhelming. She’s seen as the weakest member of the team. Yet, on several occasions, their greatest enemy, Victor Von Doom has said that Susan is in fact the most dangerous member of the FF. Granted this is testimony from another fictional character, but it is still accurate.
How do you fight what you can’t see? Fine, that’s a cliché question but it’s still true. As the Invisible Woman, Sue can completely conceal herself and other objects/people, but what your average person usually doesn’t know is that she can also make force fields of any shape or size, and HIT you with them. So now it becomes a matter of how do you fight what you cannot see AND how do you defend yourself against what you cannot see while it is hurling giant invisible spheres of force into your skull? Easy answer, you can’t. Really, the only thing that keeps Sue from slaughtering all of her enemies is that she is just a really good and decent person, which is probably her greatest flaw.
These days, it seems that just being a good person and a strong character aren’t enough; one has to be overtly sexual and/or borderline mentally ill to capture the imagination. Sue is not an ego-maniacal lingerie model or a deranged murderer who’s hopelessly in love with another deranged murderer who physically and emotionally abuses her for kicks. No, she’s no Emma Frost, nor is she Harley. She’s a wife and mother. Right?
But she is also so much more than that. She is the person who holds the Fantastic Four together. She manages their wildly disparate personalities. She fights extremely devious and dangerous enemies alongside her family. She doesn’t back them up, she doesn’t stand behind them, she’s right up their in front. The FF doesn’t work without her. She’s one of the strongest characters in the Marvel Universe. She can smash you, cut you, or, my favorite, make a force field inside your head and just explode you. Sue is compelling not because she can kill, but because she doesn’t. It’s so easy to be an anti-hero, it’s a lot harder to be a decent person. I’m not even talking about trying to be a hero, I just mean a decent person. Think about how hard it is for you to be a decent human being on a daily basis. It’s taxing isn’t it? Now imagine if you had the power to utterly crush deal with everyone who annoys you and no one would ever find out. You would abuse the hell out of it wouldn’t you?
Sue is great not only because she isn’t a male-fantasy sex object, because she’s in control of herself, or because she can put a whole in your sternum with just a thought, but mainly because she has the urge to. She has an alter-ego who is basically the oversexualized Domme fetishist that fanboys everywhere craved. She puts up with so much crap from people that she secretly wants to bash heads in. She wants to run off with Namor and leave her responsibilities behind. She’s thought about divorce seriously on at least two separate occasions. She’s not afraid to speak her mind. She’s a bad-ass bitch without announcing it to the world every 5 minutes. Even though they bear a striking resemblance, she’s the anti-Emma Frost. In fact on two occasions she knocked Emma out. Sue has gone up against Galactus. In role-playing terms Susan has about 1000 times the XP of a Harley or Emma Frost. Next to Storm she’s the woman you want in charge. SHE CAN STOP BULLETS WITH HER MIND! She doesn’t need the family, they need her. She’d probably be unstoppable if she was a single woman on the prowl. I love Sue because she could be like the “sexier” females on this list, but she doesn’t want to. She’s practically a model human being with the power to crush a building. And, like I said, she pummeled Emma Frost. Twice.
Old school always wins.
– John
