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Nancy Drew Killed in New Comic So the Hardy Boys Can Hunt Her Murderer


Pour one out for Nancy Drew—murdered so that men could valiantly investigate her death.

It’s just like Nancy says, in the books: “Ah, gee! There’s no mystery more urgent than how to make men feel needed.”

An upcoming comic book, descriptively titled Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew, will celebrate the teen girl detective’s 90th anniversary by killing her, Polygon reports. This comic—an installment in the Drew/Hardy Boys reboot that writer Anthony Del Col has been making with Dynamite Entertainment since 2017—will give The Hardy Boys the chance to crack the case.

Weird—it’s almost like the most legendary fictional comic book detective had to die to give her male competitors a chance to shine.

Look, Nancy Drew is a fictional character, and for all we know the “murder” in the story is just an elaborate fake-out, not to mention a smart stunt to get the comic book some press. But there is so much violence against women—and such a fixation in our culture with women’s dead and maimed bodies, from gruesome tabloid headlines to Law and Order: SVU to murder podcasts to thrillers about decapitated rape victims—that one has to wonder whether killing off an iconic children’s character was…essential?

In Del Col’s comic, the brilliant teen sleuth—whom Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oprah, Sonia Sotomayor, Barbra Streisand, and Hillary Clinton have named as a major inspiration—is older and more sexualized, described as a “femme fatale.”

To be fair, her appearance is a big part of the books—the writers (who used the collective pen name Carolyn Keene) never get more than a page into the story without calling her “attractive, blonde Nancy.” But the classic Nancy books were published in the 1930s. It’s funny that more than 80 years since Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, our girl is being written with even more male gaze and less agency.

Happy birthday, Nancy. You’re making a lot of men a lot of money.

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour.



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The CW's Nancy Drew Review: It's an Even Sexier, Scarier Version of Riverdale


As for the Riverdale comparisons, McMann gets it. Both shows are melodramas that center on beautiful teens in frightening situations—but she makes it clear there are a few significant differences between the two.

“There are very natural similarities you can draw,” she says. “It’s a group of friends going around, solving mysteries, getting themselves wrapped up in some dark and scary things. But there’s a little bit more grittiness [in Riverdale]. I think our show is a little more subtle. Part of the whole Riverdale thing is that they’re playing comic book characters, and it’s a comic book world.”

McMann makes a good point here. Because Riverdale is based on Archie Comics, the storylines and characters can be a bit more outlandish. Archie, Veronica, and the gang are all painted colorfully with broad strokes, while the characters in Nancy Drew are more difficult to define. Take Nancy’s coworker Bess (Madison Jaizani)—she seems like a Cheryl Blossom archetype at first, but she softens as the pilot unfolds. And George Fayne (Leah Lewis), Nancy’s boss, appears type-A and straight-laced but is actually hiding a monumental secret. (I won’t tell you what.) In that respect, the show is a bit more grounded in reality than Riverdale.

But it’s not realistic in other ways⁠—namely, the ghosts. Yes, there are spirits in this Nancy Drew reboot. One, in particular, is Nancy’s primary suspect in the show’s central murder mystery. I’m not kidding: She thinks a ghost killed a living, breathing human being. In this world it’s totally plausible.

“There’s a huge slant to the supernatural,” McMann says. “This is a ‘Ghosts are real. Very, very real’ story. There’s this darker side of the reality of all these supernatural beings and how actually terrifying they are. Though there have definitely been nods to the supernatural throughout the Nancy Drew book series and the original canon, it was definitely surprising to me when I first read the script. It still is as we get more and more scripts. I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re really going there.'”

McMann thinks the show’s horror elements make it more compelling. “It’s like this weird combination of Scooby Doo and Twin Peaks,” she says. (Riverdale, if you remember, also garnered Twin Peaks comparisons when it first debuted.) “It’s so mysterious and scary, but then the characters kind of make light of it. There are moments where it’s very intense, but then afterwards it’s like, ‘Hey, guys! Wow, wasn’t that wild?'”

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One thing McMann hopes viewers don’t find wild is Nancy’s inherently feminist characterization. In this version she’s viewed as a reliable crime scene investigator—the fact that she’s an 18-year-old doesn’t factor at all. “Nancy’s always been a little bit of a rebel, paving her own way and defying female expectations,” she says. “Nancy is who she is, and nobody’s questioning what she’s doing. There’s no, ‘Wow, she can do that and she’s a girl!’ Of course she can. Nobody questions it because that’s who she is, and that’s the world that we’re living in.”



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Emma Stone Shares a Photo She Drew of Her Anxiety in Therapy at Age 9


PHOTO: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

There’s no shame in speaking openly about or seeking help for your mental health, but if you’re nervous to do so, let Emma Stone be your guide. The Academy Award winner has done both and, in the process, made huge strides in destigmatizing issues like anxiety and panic attacks.

During an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on Tuesday to promote her new film, Battle of the Sexes, in which she plays tennis champ Billie Jean King, Emma revealed that she’s been in therapy for anxiety since she was seven years old and shared a picture she drew in one of her sessions. “I was nine. I was in therapy at that time, I drew this at therapy,” she said, then described the drawing, which has “I’m bigger than my anxiety!” written across the top in neat handwriting. “This is me, I guess, it’s really great artistry, with my shoes. And then this is anxiety here,” the 28-year-old said, pointing to a tiny green figure standing next to her in the picture. “It’s a little green monster that looks a little bit, as someone backstage said, a uterus with some ovaries. But I didn’t mean for it to be hormonally related in any way—as I said, I was nine.”

The La La Land star’s years of therapy have given her much more than just a collection of creative illustrations. “I was a very, very, very anxious child, and I had a lot of panic attacks. I benefitted in a big way from therapy,” she said, adding that acting and improv were also a huge help in learning to cope with her anxiety. And although her panic attacks have mostly gone away (“knock on wood”), Emma noted, “I still have anxiety to this day.”

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Emma has been refreshingly open about her mental health issues many times before, and has even previously spoken about the meaning behind her elementary school drawings of the little green anxiety monster. “I wrote this book [in therapy] called I Am Bigger Than My Anxiety that I still have,” she told Rolling Stone last year. “I drew a little green monster on my shoulder that speaks to me in my ear and tells me all these things that aren’t true. And every time I listen to it, it grows bigger. If I listen to it enough, it crushes me. But if I turn my head and keep doing what I’m doing—let it speak to me, but don’t give it the credit it needs—then it shrinks down and fades away.”

Related: Emma Stone Opened Up About How She Copes With Anxiety



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