The Forgettable Molls

It's time for a little side-step on the Rungs of Villainy. It's not a "career track" position and leads nowhere, except perhaps to the Women's Reformatory and a waiting job at the Wayne Foundation. Yes, it would surely be a less colorful world if the Rungs of Villainy didn't have some room for:

the Forgettable Molls.

They serve several auxillary function in a solid villainous gang. First and foremost is as the Recipient of Exposition. Characterization, logic, art; all these are minor considerations in a comic book story compared to Exposition. Such is the imagination of comic book readers, twisted by years of suspending disbelief and suffering from retconitis, that they can misinterpret virtually any occurence in comic book story if it is not spelled out in endless and excrutiatingly labored exposition. Why, I've even heard that some folk, because of their interpretation of the Protector story, believe that Speedy sold his body for drug money. A member of Team Arrow act dishonorably due to weakness of character? Inconceivable.

The Forgettable Moll is crucial to prevent such misunderstandings and it's significant that her absence in recent decades has lead to an unraveling of the Comic Book Common Consensus on Continuity. With the Moll around, the villain has someone to explain the plot to, repeatedly, at every turn (which is why a certain, how shall we called it, obtuseness is one of the job requirements).

The Forgettable Moll also can serve as the Not-so-innocent Lure for Our Hero. She seems so fragile, so overwhelmed, so endangered, until BAM she sprays you with technocolored knockout gas and you fall faster than the live-action Batman's third season ratings.

The Forgettable Moll is also the Versatile Mole. Can you send three guys in black turtlenecks labelled "GOON" into the jewelry store to case the joint? No, you cannot. You need a Forgettable Moll, whom the shop owner /curator /bank manger can only describe later as a "lovely young woman."

And of course in the clench the Forgettable Moll becomes the D-Cup Shield, a living pog for your Mastermind, a hapless hostage, eternally surprised that her deranged supervillainous boss, the guy who gave her that nice fur coat at the gang Christmas party, would unhestitatingly toss her into the slow-moving gears of a piano roll factory if it meant he might escape the hero. Think, woman; what's HE going to do with a fur coat (unless he's Dr. Somnabula)?

The Batman TV show made them famous; well, at least, as famous as Forgettable Molls get. Cordelia. Queenie. Eenie. Venus. Pussycat. Lyla. Chickadee. Blaze. Emerald. Lydia. Undine. Finella. What a powerful force such women might have been had they banded together in groovy group girl power!