The trailers for the "Jem and the Holorams" movie make our favorite childhood rock star girl band seem Bieber-fied and stripped of all the self-empowering and sci-fi elements that young 80s girls could look up to. Nevertheless, we can always look back to the driving force that made the original Jem so successful – creator Christy Marx.
Marx, who developed the entire world of Jem and the Holograms for Hasbro, was cut out of the movie in its early stages. In addition, she does not own any of the characters she created. Nonetheless, her influence on the progression of positive female characters in the world of comics and animation cannot be ignored.
As revealed in an interview for the debut episode of the web show Off Hollywood, Marx shows off her "Jem and The Holograms" collection, her cat Jetta (named after the British member of the Holograms' rival rocker chic group, The Misfits), and her work with Stan Lee and on other male-dominated shows.
In the show, Marx revealed that the desire to create strong female characters came a personal longing to see female role models in the comics books that she loved to read growing up. She even went so far as to draw long hair and skirts on Batman's sidekick Robin in her personal comic book collection so she'd have a girl to look up to.
Her career then brought her to Los Angeles where she landed a job a Marvel Comics by presenting her idea to tell the story of “Conan the Barbarian” from the point of view of one of the female characters to then editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas.
She then got hired as an animation script writer for Marvel Productions alongside Stan Lee on shows like “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.” Marx also worked closely with Lee in making Firestarter's character.
She then worked on the animated series, “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero” where she wrote episodes and helped work on the background story for Scarlett.
According to the interview, this led to her being asked to develop "Jem and The Holograms" for Hasbro. She was given the concept of a woman having a secret identity via holographic projection and just went with it. The rest is girl power history.
Marx managed to turn what many criticized were just 30-minute long toy commercials into characters that little girls of a generation could look up to. Jem was arguably the first foray of many girls into science fiction, technology - even music. The original Jem was voiced by Samantha Newark and Britta Philips sang all her songs.
As for the new Jem movie, Marx shared that she had attempted to get a Jem reboot off the ground for years but the project never got through the door. She was not even informed about the reboot finally being made until a day before it went into production.
She also reminds fans that she does not own the rights to Jem or any of the characters she created for the show. In a separate interview, she revealed her reservations about not even being consulted by the new production or Hasbro, and the project being completely dominated by a male team.
“I see two male producers, a male director and a male writer. Where is the female voice? Where is the female perspective? Where are the women?” she said unhappily in an interview.
Check out the complete interview with Christy Marx from The Front.
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