Zita from Zita the Space Girl
I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for my reserves of these graphic novels to come through the library system, but it turns out it was worth the wait.
Having read the afterword in the final book, the genesis of this character is its own little story: originally conceived by a girl called Anna in high school, Ben Hatke began to expand the character’s adventures (presumably with Anna’s permission) in a bid to impress her. The gambit paid off, and the two are now married with four daughters – one of whom is called Zita.
The fictional Zita is a young girl hanging out with her friend Joseph in the fields behind their houses when a meteorite crashes close by. Naturally they investigate, and discover a strange device that looks like a big red button. And as it happens, Zita is exactly the type of girl who – on finding a big red button – presses it immediately.
A portal opens in the crater, and tentacles drag Joseph through. She runs away in terror, hesitates, thinks for a bit, and then rushes back to follow him to Who Knows Where. That’s a pretty good summation of Zita’s character: a girl whose impulsiveness makes trouble for others, only for her to then try her darndest to get them out of it.
The adventures that follow regularly have Zita use the phrase: “don’t tell me who I can’t save!” as she’s very much a big-picture-comes-last kind of hero. If someone is in immediate danger, then their life is prioritized before any world-saving shenanigans, which naturally creates for her a very tight circle of loyal friends.
The stories are pretty fun space adventures for the most part – though this underlying theme of Zita’s choices and what she deems most important provide an interesting look at a very popular moral equation that comes up a lot in fantasy/sci-fi: her thirst for adventure often comes across as selfish, and yet she’ll put her own safety and happiness on the line every time to help someone in need.
So she’s deeply flawed, and yet truly inspirational at the same time. It’s nice to see a story get that balance right in a female character.
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