The rise of retrofuturism has introduced a fantastical new line with the DC Bombshells -- heroines without the men, all set in World War II. Their aesthetic and clever adaptation mirrors the best of steampunk rewriting. There's also Gotham by Gaslight, JLA: Age of Wonder, The Golden Age, Batman: Leatherwing, Batman/Houdini, and more. Marvel has offered their own retellings, in the alt-Battleworld, with J. Michael Straczynski's Golden Age-style The Twelve, and with even earlier fantasies back to 1602: Witchhunter Angela. Who's doing it right, and how steampunk are these stories? (Presented at Clockwork Alchemy, May 28 2016, San Jose, CA)

1. Steampunk Superheroes
AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

2. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
•The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (1999). According
to Moore, the concept behind the series was initially a "Justice League of Victorian England."
•The film arrived in 2003. It was even more “superhero” style, with heightened powers and more young characters
like Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray. Allan Quatermain (played by star Sean Connery) was elevated to the central
character over Mina, much as the X-Men series focused on Wolverine. In this and especially in its advertising it
cleaved close to the new X-Men franchise.

3. Legenderry
• Dynamite Entertainment’s Legenderry: A Steampunk
Adventure (2013) by Bill Willingham (Fables) teams up The Phantom,
Vampirella, The Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, Red Sonja, Zorro, and
others in a steampunk setting.

4. Girl Genius
• Kaja Foglio and Phil Foglio created the genius
inventor with her many gadgets. Agatha Heterodyne
discovers she has magical powers of invention in a
world ruled by the tyrannical Baron Klaus
Wulfenbach and his rather attractive son Gilgamesh.
These powers link her with the legendary
swashbucklers of the past, as she discovers her
heritage piece by piece. Girl Genius is an ongoing
"gaslamp fantasy" in web comics/ graphic novels and
a series of prose novels. At the end of December
2013, the comic was over 1650 pages in length.

5. Lady Mechanika
• Lady Mechanika is a top PI
with a set of pistols. A detective
of the supernatural, the lady is
more than a little mystical
herself. Part human and part
machine, she has no concept of
the past that made her this way.
She was created in 2010 by Joe
Benitez and Peter Steigerwald
for an original series with
Aspen publishers.

6. Athena Voltaire
• From APE Entertainment, she reads like a
female Indiana Jones, battling Nazis and
their Thule Society for artifacts in the
1930s. A widowed stunt-pilot, sharpshot,
and fencer from Hollywood, she’s
formidable in this delightful pulp comic.
• In Flight of the Falcon, she quests for the
secrets of the hollow Earth and a lost race
of super-mortals.
• Writer/Artist/Creator: Steve Bryant.
Writer: Paul Daly. 2006. 2 Eisner Award
nominations. Kickstarter to create more.

7. More Indies
• The Jekyll Island Chronicles: Created by Steve
Nedvidek, Ed Crowell, and Jack Lowe, and released
by IDW Publishing, this comic features Woodrow
Wilson, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford who recruit
a strongman with mechanical legs, an elctro-woman,
an ace pilot of a steam-powered warplane, and a
Tuskegee cryptologist, as they combat the rising threat
of Anarchists.
• The Five Fists of Science: A steampunk graphic novel
by Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders (2006, Image
Comics)
• The Steam Engines of Oz crossover

8. Janus Stark
• The Incredible Adventures of Janus Stark, a British
comic strip by Tom Tully and Francisco Solano López
ran in the British magazine Smash 1969-1971. It
featured a Victorian escapologist using his powers to
battle crime.
• His bizarrely rubbery bones made him similar to
Reed Richards, especially in how he was drawn.

9. TV
• Adam Adamant Lives! ran 1966 to 1967 on BBC. It starred an
Edwardian swashbuckler played by Gerald Harper who fought
crime and solved mysteries. Frozen in stasis since the turn of
the century, he teamed up with a modern young woman and
butler to solve modern crimes.

10. Novels
• The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam, #1) by Andrew P. Mayer
• The Girl in the Steel Corset

11. DC Comics: Elseworlds
• Gotham by Gaslight (1989) is a DC Comics one-shot by Brian
Augustyn and Mike Mignola, with inks by P. Craig Russell. A sequel
followed, Master of the Future (1991), also written by Augustyn, but with
drawings by Eduardo Barreto. This was the first Elseworlds story, a
logical channel for Steampunk

12. JLA: Age of Wonder
• DC's Elseworlds series has Superman
land in Kansas in the 1850s and emerge
on the world stage at the 1876
Centennial Exposition

13. Civil War and Turn of the Century
• Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham Turn-of-
the-century Gotham is full of greedy industrialists so
railroad worker Bruno Vaneko dons a bat costume and
joins a citywide strike.
• The Batman of Arkham (2000) - Set in 1900, Bruce
Wayne is head of Arkham Asylum.
• Superman: A Nation Divided Superman as a Union
soldier
• Steel Annual #1 - "Crucible of Freedom" - John
Henry Irons as a plantation slave fighting for his
family's freedom.
• Green Lantern: Evil's Might New York City 1888.
• Justice Riders (1997) - The JLI as a team of marshals,
gamblers, inventors, etc. in the Wild West.

14. Batman/Houdini and Wonder Woman vs Jack the Ripper
• A 1993 Elseworlds one-shot
narrated by Houdini: They meet
at a séance and discover
something supernatural is
happening in 1907 Gotham. He
brings up Batman's
comparatively poor lock picking
and escapology skills, though
Houdini teaches him.
• Wonder Woman: Amazonia

15. Batman 1600-1800
• Let’s make Batman a pirate! In
Leatherwing, he works for James II, putting
this in the 1680s. Robin Redblade, Capitana
Felina, and the trusty Alfredo…Batman's
ship, the Flying Fox is a reference to Zorro
• Batman: Reign of Terror in the French
Revolution makes him a French nobleman
and masked crimefighter, like The Scarlet
Pimpernel.
• Batman Annual #18 - "Black
Masterpiece" - Leonardo da Vinci's
apprentice uses his master's hang-glider
design and fights crime.

16. 20s and 30s
• Batman/Tarzan: Claws of the Cat-
woman Batman/Tarzan 30s teamup
• Batman: The Doom That Came to
Gotham by Mike Mignola involves fighting
Lovecraftian monsters in the 1920s
• Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the
Jungle Guess who’s raised by apes?
• Superman: War of the Worlds: the Martian
invaders from H. G. Wells in 1938.
• Elseworld's Finest: Batman and Superman in
a 1920s pulp adventure

17. Frankenstein
• DC Elseworlds
• In 1819 Bruce Wayne revives his father from
the dead, paralleling Frankenstein (both novel
and Boris Karloff film). He clothes him in a bat
costume, but is tormented as his creation
menaces the countryside. This emphasizes the
Batman vs Bruce struggle, now making it
external.
• Philosophy student and scientist Vicktor
Luthor revives Kal-El. His new creation learns
ethics and fights to bring him to justice as they
fight over the heroine Eloise.

18. Batman Does Classic Gothic
• Batman: Masque retells the Phantom of the Opera,
with Batman and Two-Face in the Phantom role.
• Batman: Two Faces (1998) - A recasting of Jekyll and
Hyde, as a Victorian era Bruce Wayne tries to purge his
own evil side, a version of The Joker, and that of Two-
Face.
• The Batman and Dracula trilogy "perhaps the finest
written [Elseworlds story] to date" and "flawless in its
execution."
• JLA: The Island of Dr. Moreau Set in the 1880s, the
League is combined with Dr. Moreau's animal-men.

19. DC Comics
• DC Bombshells is currently doing World War II retro reenvisionings,
with no men. This was based around statuettes in cool costumes.

20. DC Comics: Steampunk Variant Covers

21. DC Comics: Cosplay
• There’s too much cosplay and fanart to list, all over the web.

22. Marvel Comics: Cosplay
• DC Bombshells is currently doing World War II retro reenvisionings,
with no men. This was based around statuettes in cool costumes.

23. X-Men’s Logan
• Logan, from X-Men, goes back this far. Born in Alberta, Canada
during the late 19th Century, James Howlett was a frail child, the
son of rich landowners. When his friend Dog Logan, abused son
of the groundskeeper, was expelled from the estate, Dog’s father
then attacked James’ parents. Shocked as he is, James erupts with
claws and more tragedy follows. This backstory, divulged in
Wolverine: Origins, reveals him as a Victorian hero. Hilariously, in
Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men: Torn, he reverts to the
Victorian fop he might have been.

24. Marvel’s Runaways:
• Joss Whedon’s six-part story arc in the Marvel comic Runaways,
“Dead End Kids,” took them back to 1907, meeting runaways,
heroes, and villains in three different New York teams.
The Runaways are the children of a team of supervillains
who delighted readers by sounding like real teens: Nico
Minoru can do magic through her mystical Staff of One.
Molly Hayes (codenamed Bruiser and Princess Powerful)
is nine but has Hulk-like superstrength. Chase Stein
(codenamed Talkback) has technological prowess from
his mad-scientist parents. Karolina Dean (Lucy in the Sky)
discovers she is an alien with the powers of flight and light
manipulation. Victor Mancha, the son of Ultron, can
control electromagnetism, and Xavin, an alien Skrull,
changes shape (and is in a lesbian relationship with
Karolina). They recruit a 1907 adolescent, Klara Prast, but
must deal with her horror at lesbianism, even while
expressing their own at her abusive marriage.

25. Marvel: The Twelve
J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston in 2008 created The Twelve:
40s heroes from Timely Comics frozen by the Nazis and awakened in
modern times to a new world. The contrast gives it a delightful retro
aesthetic and comments on how morals and heroism have changed.

26. Marvel: Battleworld
• Battleworld was assembled by The
Beyonder, who used parts of different
planets to create a battlefield for the
heroes and villains of Earth.
• Valley of Doom (1872, Wild West)
• King James; England 1602: Witch
Hunter Angela Created by Neil Gaiman
and Andy Kubert, Marvel 1602 was a
series that asked, “What If Marvel’s
heroic age began in the age of
exploration?” So we get The Fantastick
Four, Peter Parquagh, and more.
• Noir Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil

27. Agent Carter

28. Discover More about Superheroes