I have so many supporting characters that I barely know what to do with them all, so I think I might actually enjoy seeing someone else handling one of them for a while.
Jingo Belle is the public face of Army Captain Josephine "Jo" Simon, a pretty little blonde-haired, blue-eyed, creamy-skinned, twentysomething Public Affairs Officer for the military who got recruited into being a "superhero" with no real superpowers and a "costumed crimfighter" who wears a costume but doesn't really fight any crime.
She's about as actively involved in real-world warfighting as, say, Smokey the Bear is in real-world forest fire fighting, which is to say, not at all, other than lending her image and voice to serve as the public face and mouthpiece of The Powers That Be in the American military industrial complex.
What makes her interesting is the fact that she is a patriot and a supporter of the current administration (a lifelong Republican and moderate conservative, she voted for Bush and really does believe that "compassionate conservative" is NOT a contradiction in terms), but she is starting to have some problems with the slightly Machiavellian methods that many of her superiors are encouraging her to use.
Even though I'm a liberal, I don't think that being a conservative makes someone any less intelligent, which is why I don't want Jingo Belle to be shown as being stupid, either.
Likewise, I'm a Navy Journalist in real life, which means that I know all about what it meant to do the job of military public affairs, since you basically have two goals in your mission, which don't always mesh perfectly:
1. Do not tell the American civilian public things that are untrue (which is a bit different from always telling them the total and unedited truth);
And 2. Do not divulge information that could allow the American military or civilian populace to come to harm.
Since Capt. Simon has been doing her job as an Army PAO for a few years, I'd say she's made her peace with the compromises that often come with that level of her duties, but now, as Jingo Belle, she's suddenly finding herself being ordered to make herself a bit more appealing to boys in the eye-candy sense, which includes keeping any possible romantic relationships on the down-low so as not to interfere with the fantasies that any of our fighting men have developed about her, and to start spouting off political positions that even she feels somewhat uncomfortable with, when it comes to their degree of xenophobia regarding Arabs, Islamics and mutates.
The difference between Simon and many of her superiors is that, when she talks about "compassionate conservatism" and "Christian tolerance towards other religious faiths", she actually means it, and a great deal of them do not.
She's a soldier who wants to do the right thing while still following orders, but as a soldier, she's much more of an administrative functionary than an actual frontline fighter.
I believe Ian Watson should still have a copy of the story I posted in which I introduced Jingo Belle, and the "Who's Who" section of his webpage should include a link to a few more of my notes on her.
The other thing that you might want to know is that Simon is actually the SECOND Jingo Belle ... the first was Navy Ensign Patricia "Pat" Pike, a Nurse who was part of Sgt. Drury's Prowling Commandoes of Sleazy Company, who donned a costume to go adventuring with her future husband, archaeologist Terrence "Terry" Lucas, the CrazySugarBlast-OffLad! of World War II (basically, CrazySugarFreakBoy! as a Rocketeer/Hawkman analogue).
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
And please excuse any typos or grammar errors, because it's been a long fucking day over here.
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