Angry Puppy

We put together this list of our 15 favorite witches and noticed that (with a few exceptions like Julien Mayfair) most of our honorees are actually just powerful women trying to make their way in a man’s world. Misunderstandings, misinformation and misogyny might be responsible, but we’re glad these characters exist to give us so many hours of entertainment. Honorable mention goes to Baba Yaga from Russian folklore and Tabitha from Passions (because, well, because of Spike.)

#15 - Yubaba (Spirited Away, voiced by Mari Natsuki [Japanese], Suzanne Pleshette [English])

At first glance, Yubaba seems like your typical evil witch. But as the story progresses, you realize that, no, she’s just a sensible business woman, trying to keep her bathhouse running despite the appearance of stink spirits, ravenous wraiths and whiny little girls on coming-of-age journeys. And we might add that she has some fairly spry moves for an old woman with a head the size of a small elephant.

#14 - Witch Hazel (Looney Tunes, voiced by Bea Benaderet and June Foray)

For starters, she aspires to be the ugliest witch of all, she provided inspiration for William Shakespeare, and she eats kids. And then there’s the cackling and the thing with the hair pins. That never got old.

#13 - Azkadellia (Tin Man, portrayed by Kathleen Robertson)

The wicked witch of the Tin Man universe, Sci Fi Channel’s recent reinvention of The Wizard of Oz, wins hands down in the style department. We’re not sure where she shops but we suspect it might be somewhere in BioShock’s Rapture City. Aside from being gorgeous, stylish, and wicked evil, her special talent alone lands her a coveted spot on our list: we highly doubt anyone else on this list has the ability to send forth flying monkeys from their bosoms.

#12 - The Scarlet Witch (The Avengers)

Zatanna looks cooler and Magik has a sword, but Magneto’s favorite daughter wins in the wacky talent department. She started out with the ability to manipulate probability (which, in itself, is fun), but upgraded more recently to manipulate reality enough to spark massive crossover stories. Plus she married a robot and was brought up by a cow. Cool.

#11 - Lamia (Stardust, portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer)

The first of two Michelle Pfeiffer witches in our list is Lamia from the under-appreciated Stardust, based on Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name. Lamia masters both the cackling, old crone and the tempting, young vamp, sometimes simultaneously. Is there any movie Michelle Pfeiffer can’t save? (Oh, yeah. Wolf.)

#10 - The Witches of Eastwick (The Witches of Eastwick, portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher)

Cherries anyone?

#9 - Prue, Piper, Phoebe and Paige (Charmed, portrayed by Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan)

OK, so the morality of the show is not complex and the writers seem to forget basic plot points from season to season. But it’s like 90210 - with witches! Let’s put aside the revolving eye candy and simple plot lines for a moment. There’s enough drama backstage that you don’t even really need to watch any episodes. Shannen Doherty’s friend Holly Marie Combs shows up to the audition and gets cast in a leading role. Ms. Doherty herself leaves after a few seasons because of problems on the set (read: tensions with Alyssa Milano) and is replaced by the hottest woman on the planet, Rose McGowan.  Oh, and I think there’s some supernatural stuff that happens on the show too.

#8 - Endora (Bewitched, portrayed by Agnes Moorehead)

Does this really need an explanation?

#7 - Miss Price (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, portrayed by Angela Lansbury)

Treguna Mekoides and Trecorum Satis Dee! Oh, why couldn’t Miss Price dance into our childhood, all dancing and singing and talking to cartoon fish and making suits of armor parade around to attack Nazis? Glinda is supposed to be the preferred childhood witch of choice for us gays, but somehow floating around in a bubble and a party dress failed to impress us. We’ll take Angela Lansbury dropping in and flying our bed to cartoon land to play soccer with the lions any day. Note: as much as that sounds like some kind of naughty and very weird euphemism, we can assure you it’s meant to be taken literally.

#6 - Mad Hettie & Thessaly (Vertigo comics)

We love the witches of the Vertigo/Sandman universe. Whether you know Mad Hettie from the pages of Hellblazer or Sandman, you can’t help but love the batty old queen of Compton Street, even if she does smell like a storm drain. And as mad as Hettie is, she’s a pixie compared to Thessaly. Sure, Thessaly was a good deal responsible for the death of the dream king but by the end of that story who wasn’t? We love her cold efficiency and take-charge attitude; just don’t ever date her. Or release psychic ravens out of your chest cavity to poison her dreams. She hates that.

#5 - Elphaba (Wicked)

An atheist, animal rights activist who gets written up by history as a wicked witch. Surprised?

#4 - The Blair Witch (The Blair Witch Project)

We still don’t know what the deal is with the Blair Witch. Is it because we didn’t bother with the sequel? In any case Blair (as we like to call her) wins the scary witch award for totally freaking us out. It’s a decade later and we’re still unnerved every time we see someone standing in a corner.

#3 - Willow, Tara and Amy (the Buffyverse)

Long-time readers: Aha! Willow’s not number 1! New readers: See here.

#2 - The Mayfair Witches (Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy)

Witches! Intrigue! Architecture! Ignore the fact that this trilogy becomes a bodice-ripper every 13 pages or so, and this will be one of your favorite witchy series.

#1 - The Bene Gesserit (the Dune novels)

They’ve been around for millennia, and thanks to their inherited memories, they haven’t forgotten a thing. They manage a rockin’ breeding program, mastered the always entertaining power of Voice, and carry around an internal catalog of hilarious STDs that they can release at will on people they don’t like. Sure, when nobody else answers the call it’s the Bene Gesserit looking out for the future of the human race, but more importantly even tens of thousands of years in the future the BG continue to successfully reinvent basic black.

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I came across the game Escape from Rehab on Kotaku and thought I’d share it with you fun kids. I swear that I had no intention of bringing up Willow (again), but look what happened!

Lee: “Oh, fun! Someone made a Flash game in which Amy Winehouse must battle her way out of rehab! Haha, oh lulz, she uses drugs as her weapons. And she’s…fighting Batman? And Iron Man…and Hellboy? (Wait. What?)”

Internet: “Pssst… It’s a promotion for Disaster Movie.”

Lee: “You mean that franchise with all the random pop culture non sequiturs that stopped being funny after Scary Movie 2?”

Internet: “Yeah, that’s it. But Scary Movie 3 was decent, no? Anyway, shut up a minute. You know, you can kill at least another quarter of an hour by reading the comments on this post. Look! There’s one about a spoof of these spoofs called Vague Genre Movie.  Let’s watch?”

Lee: “No, really, I have things to d…”

Lee: “Hey, that’s Willow at the one minute mark! I mean, Alyson Hannigan. Is that a scene from Date Movie? Why, oh, why, cruel Internet, have you reminded me of her filmography just as I was coming to terms with it?”

In conclusion, I’ll be over here re-watching Buffy Season 6 now. Oh, and that Amy Winehouse game sucks ballz.

Last week, this unaired clip from Buffy the Animated Series appeared on YouTube.

The series, greenlit for Fox Kids in 2001, was meant to take place somewhere around the end of Season 1 in the Buffyverse, but when no suitable timeslot or network could be found for it, the whole project was shelved. The timing explains Willow’s continuing boy-crush on Xander in that clip, but something tells me that if this project had happened, Fox-Kids-Willow would never have come out at all.

Now that we have Season 8 in comic form, the slot for an animated/drawn Buffyverse in my brain is already filled (partially with shirtless, boxing one-eyed Xander), so this clip doesn’t excite me as much as it would have a few years ago.

I have my doubts that anything will come of this series, and, frankly, I don’t want to see Willow neutered in terms of sexuality or witchery! But if you want to join the movement to “support and hype Buffy the Animated Series and to have it possibly return at some point in the future”, here’s a Facebook group for you.

(Who am I kidding? I just joined too. Long live the Buffyverse!)

[Xander image via Shirtless Superheroes]

At long last, we present our list of the 9 Greatest Gay and Bi Female Characters in Sci-Fi/Geekdom. As usual, pick your top three and let us know in the comments where you think we got it right and where we got it wrong.

#9 - Maxine Lund (Being John Malkovich)
We knew from the opening moments in which we met her, hunched over as she dodged the low ceilings of LesterCorp, that this hard-edged, no-nonsense babe had a buried heart of gold. Watching her transformation from manipulatrix to heart-warming lesbian mom is one of the best things in a film that’s loaded with best things. It’s also fun watching her try to grasp who it is exactly that she’s in love with in this highly complex gender-blending story.

#8 - Mystique (X-Men comics)
We’ve seen so many iterations of her over the years that it’s hard to know who’s the real Mystique. But then, that’s the point of the character, isn’t it? It was (barely) clear from the beginning that Mystique had a special relationship with Destiny. That was unusual enough in the early 80’s but even today she’s one of the few bisexual characters in mainstream comics. She certainly qualifies as interesting - good, bad, who knows what the hell she wants? And, of course, Rebecca Romijn stole the show with her portrayal in the X-Men films; too bad the bisexuality didn’t carry over.

#7 - Inara Serra (Firefly)
While we never had the chance to find out whether Inara was bisexual by preference or just professionally, we dig her cool, gorgeous Companion self. We didn’t meet many other of these highly respected courtesans, but we can’t imagine that very many of them were as beautiful or as well grounded as Inara, the rock in the Firefly storm.

#6 -  Rear Admiral Cain (Battlestar Galactica)
While not exactly the most pleasant officer in the colonial fleet, Cain was unquestionably a great character, who so brilliantly illustrated how the story of the Galactica could have turned out with a different personality at the helm. She meant well for her crew, and even the future of humanity, but somewhere along the way she crossed, well, a few lines. But, damn, was she entertaining! Re-live Admiral Cain’s downfall (in a nutshell) set to “The Imperial March” from Star Wars in this clip. ‘Cause, um, why not?

#5 -  Jadzia Dax (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
OK, we’re obsessed. We admit it. Setting aside the tremendous honor we bestowed upon her earlier this year, we also love the way her character is written. Jadzia is given dialog and reactions that a male character would traditionally get, and Terry Farrell delivers both with ease. We love that she’s a big ol’ science geek, and she’s the no-nonsense friend to everyone in the universe’s favorite space mall.

#4 -  Æon Flux (Æon Flux)
As with Mystique, we should specify that this is the bisexual Æon Flux of the animated series and not the non-bisexual character of the live-action film. We love both, but no live actors could move like our favorite lanky terrorist no matter how much CGI is thrown at them. Æon Flux is not a little scary, but she’s cool as hell. Not only do we wish we could move like her, we also wish we could pull off that outfit.

#3 - Number Six (Battlestar Galactica)

Anyone whose spine glows red during a three-way with Baltar and Xena is an instant winner in our book. And, my gods, she’s hot. I mean HOT. Yes, we totally see how Baltar became a party to the near-genocide of the human race for this woman. In fact, if anyone’s going to turn us straight it’s Six. And we’ll take any of them. Or better yet, several of them.

#2 - Hazel McNamara and Foxglove (Sandman)

We love so many things about this pair, who are just a hair’s breadth away from being the greatest lesbian characters in our favorite genres, but we mostly love how real they are. Hazel and Foxglove aren’t superhuman or extraordinary, but their lives are repeatedly intertwined with what neighbor Barbie’s former housemate Rose once referred to as “weird shit”. Watching their relationship progress over the life of the Sandman series was awesome in the early 90’s when authentic LGBT characters in comics were unheard of. But the real treat was their center-stage involvement in the two Death spinoff series. Kudos, Mr. Gaiman, and thank you for the many years of terrific lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans characters!

#1 - Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Oh, like you’re surprised. After taking second place here, we’re so excited to give Willow a long-deserved #1 position in one of our many silly lists. Both computer geek AND mega-powerful witch, Willow rocks our world on so many levels we don’t know where to begin. She’s cute, she’s smart, she’s magic, she makes her own fun, and she can make her girlfriend float in the air during musical numbers about having sex. She even has an evil, sadistic dominatrix twin in another dimension (with hands in new places!) who was bisexual long before Willow met Tara. We’re so glad her adventures are continuing in the Buffy comics and look forward to being under her spell for years to come.

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We didn’t mean to do it, but Joss Whedon turns up a lot in this week’s episode:

• Headlines: Sarah Michelle Gellar’s favorite male roles, Doctor Horrible gets a trailer
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Volume 2: “No Future for You” and “Anywhere but Here”
• The Astonishing X-Men: Volume 4; Also Whedon.
• Pride High; No Whedon.
• Doctor Who: “Silence in the Library”
• Solar Flare; Yeah we also found a Whedon reference there somehow.
• Wonder Showzen
• Frameline: The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman
• The 9 Greatest Bi and Gay Female Characters in the Sci-Fi/Geek World

All this and Marc’s tour of San Francisco comics shops.

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the trailer for Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog that we mention in the episode: