Jasmin Townsend-Ng

Some superheroes look like linebackers and dress in custom suits made from mysterious (and probably expensive) materials. Others look like 12-year-old girls wielding art supplies, imagination and brains. Jasmin Townsend-Ng is of this latter category, and makes questioning the rules of superhero-dom and gender her business — and her art. What’s up with girl characters so often being damsels and princesses? Why do boy characters tend towards violence? The fruits of Townsend-Ng’s efforts are currently on display in an exhibition at Shelburne’s Pierson Public Library. The show, tellingly, is named “Comic Art: Awesome Sauce,” and in it viewers will meet a tutu-clad Batman and Jinx, a girl supervillain whose weapon of choice is cotton candy. How’s that for sugar and spice?