I’m a tremendous Marvel fan, but you’re right. It’s incredibly embarrassing for them that, for as bad as DC’s current run of movies is, they beat Marvel to the punch with the female-led superhero movie.

I’m reminded of a Max Landis video I saw a few years ago (back when Marvel only had 13 movies out) where he talks about realizing there were no female movies, and trying to decide who should be the first. He could only think of a handful of female Marvel characters, and he had a moment when he started to freak out, wondering if Marvel was not as inclusive as DC — until he realized that he was forgetting the X-Men and Spider-Man universes.

And that’s a decent point. A lot of Marvel’s most famous female characters are ones that they don’t have the rights to use in film. Jean Grey, Storm, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, Psylocke. FOX has the rights to all those characters. For a little longer, at least.

And maybe because of that, I can let them off the hook just a little. But only a little.

Because it doesn’t excuse why they haven’t made a Black Widow movie.