The Power of Elasti-Girl

In “The Supergirls,” Mike Madrid writes of #DoomPatrol’s Elasti-Girl, “She is an emancipated superheroine, with strength and power to put her on part with her male counterparts.” In the 1960s, Elasti-Girl was almost unique in this regard, pushing boundaries & making space. 1/11

Where most female superheroes of the 60s are either inspired by (and subordinate to) male heroes or “transformed into a heroine as a result of the work & machinations of the older men in their lives” (Madrid), Elasti-Girl/Rita Farr’s story & powers are (largely) her own. 2/11

Created by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani in “My Greatest Adventure” #80 (1963), Rita is an Olympic swimmer turned Hollywood actress granted shape-changing powers via unusual volcanic gas. Her initial inability to control her powers ruins her career & she becomes a recluse. 3/11

The Chief gives Rita a new sense of purpose by inviting her to join the Doom Patrol. But this is also true for the men on the team. Moreover, the Chief is not the source of Rita’s powers, nor does he teach her how to use them. She does that all on her own. 4/11

Elasti-Girl often uses her powers in innovative ways that demonstrate her creativity, like using her shrinking powers to become a human key. She also has diverse technical skills. Here, she calmly performs a modification of a bathysphere with a radio control system. 5/11

But the most dynamic images of Elasti-Girl from the early Doom Patrol comics involve her growing to tremendous sizes. She often towers over skyscrapers while carrying her male teammates, playing with missiles & tanks like toys. 6/11

An obvious reference for Elasti-Girl is the 1958 film “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.” In that film, the title character is a monster & a warning. She spends part of the film chained like King Kong & is killed in an explosion with her philanderer husband crushed in her hand. 7/11

But where the eponymous “50 Foot Woman” is presented as a threat—a fearful specter of quasi-feminist revenge—Elasti-Girl is a hero. Her male teammates are not intimated and neither is the general public. She is a figure of hope, not fear. 8/11

Within patriarchal culture, women are often expected not to take up space—to be self-effacing, consumable, and literally small, as represented by things like extreme pressure to be thin. Elasti-Girl is conventionally beautiful, but she definitely claims space. 9/11

Elasti-Girl’s size & power strongly contrasts Marvel’s female superheroes of the 1960s. As famed cartoonist/historian Trina Robbins observes, Marvel’s 60s superheroines generally shrink & disappear while possessing non-physical “strike-a-pose-and-point” powers. 10/11

As Madrid observes, Elasti-Girl was not, sadly, the quintessential superheroine of the 60s; she was an outlier, not the norm. But that’s exactly why she deserves greater recognition. At the dawn of second-wave feminism, Rita Farr was a woman with little regard for ceilings. 11/11