"Fixing" Wonder Woman('s costume) - Win Letters from me!

[Linda Lee Danvers]

Well, here we are 7 months later, and DC's decision to change Wonder Woman is causing ripples. For those of you who might have missed it (is that possible?), here is Wonder Woman's new costume.

That's right, a cropped jacket, bustierre, fingerless gloves and bootpants are the outfit that says "2010 and beyond" for Wonder Woman, according to DC.

And so, after all the discussion we've had in this thread, and I do hope there's more after this, I'd like to hold a contest.


DESIGN A NEW COSTUME FOR WONDER WOMAN

Here's the deal. I don't care if you're graphically inclined or if you can only draw stick figures. Before July 10, post your OWN proposal for a new Wonder Woman costume here on this thread. On the 10th, I'll look them over, and award the ones I like best a Monthly Collectible letter.

Other sites have hosted awesome "Draw Batgirl" and "Redesign Supergirl" memes. I'd like people to think of this in that spirit. Nothing is verboten, and I'll reward you handsomely.

That's right, I'm practically begging to stick 100,000 gold in your pocket. No rules other than it has to be TOS-appropriate and posted before the 10th.

It'd also be nice if you give a little explanation WHY you designed her costume the way you wanted.

Original Post

For those of you who weren't around in 2005, this is a bit of a sequel to a thread I put forth in that year about "Fixing Batman." At that point in time, we were emboiled in Infinite Crisis. Batman was, to put things frankly, an unrelatable jerk. A lot of people were unhappy with how Batman was being portrayed, and in the light of the upcoming status quo change, we put forth our ideas of what we wanted to see happen to Batman coming out of Infinite Crisis.

Shortly afterward, Gaia suffered a Data Migration Crisis, and that thread seems to have vanished in the dust. But it was to many peoples' surprises that, as time went on, the ideas and themes we wanted to see show up in Batman came true! Batman certainly seems to be in a better, more entertaining place now than he was in the days of telling Superman that no one loves him and siccing Brother Eye on the other heroes.

Yes, even with his currently being dead.

But enough about Batman. He had his turn for the grousing pit. This is about Wonder Woman.

DC has been struggling for years (decades~) to find a niche for Wonder Woman. Creator after creator have taken her, remolded her, grounded her, made her more celestial, changed her costume, removed her powers, given her more powers, rewritten her history, changed it back, changed it again and struggled to keep comic-dom's foremost female superhero from the cancellation stamp.

In a few months, Wonder Woman will celebrate her 600th issue. To facilitate the renumbering of her current series to this end, Dan Didio asked that he receive 600 postcards from Wonder Woman fans.

"Justice League of America" has around 100,000 readers each month. Dan received about 800 postcards. Although enough to fulfill his quota, it really was rather apathetic that Diana couldn't even break the 1/100th mark of people who read about her every month.

Why don't people read Wonder Woman, which is currently selling about 27,000 issues of her own comic (and falling each month)?

To put it in simple terms, Wonder Woman isn't relatable.

Superman puts on a suit and tie, goes to a daily job, kisses his lovely wife on the lips and goes home on weekends for pot roast and mashed potatoes with his mom in the country. Batman worries about filling his predecessor's large boots and tries to deal with an ADD kid chock full of self-entitlement.

Wonder Woman....well, what is Wonder Woman? It hasn't been consistent even within the last 3 years. Is she a naive visitor to our culture? A super-secret agent? A goddess? A warrior princess? That gal who lets the giant talking gorillas crash at her house?

Wonder Woman is nice. Wonder Woman is powerful. Wonder Woman is sexy. But none of these traits give her a characteristic that you can relate to when reading. It's difficult to put an issue of Wonder Woman down and go "Wow, I know just how she feels!"

Wonder Woman is an odd mixture of iconography. She is, of course, the go-to girl for fetishistic fanservice in comic-dom. Everyone knows that Wonder Woman and sexual bondage are intertwined. And yet, also, she's supposed to be an empowering icon for females, a woman who does man's work without compromising her femininity. And she's also the balloon-chested, scantily-clad template for comic superheroine-dom. But is there anything else that can or should be there?

Please note, this isn't about bashing Wonder Woman's writers or artists, or people who ARE reading the comic (like myself). What I am asking here, is....what would you do to make Wonder Woman worth reading for you? What would you like to see in her comic that would fix her, make her the must-have pull on your list? What would turn Wonder Woman from an abstract contradiction of iconography into a full-fleshed person?

I'd like to see some other peoples' reactions before I post my own idea on the matter. 3nodding

[iMethuselah]

Linda Lee Danvers

A super-secret agent?

I think this was a mistake, or rather it was something I didn't enjoy. I felt like she could use a secret identity and when they give her one, it's a secret agent? It's hard to relate to that when she's already a goddess/warrior.

Now, I don't know too much about Wonder Woman, so a few of my ideas may have already been done or they may be out of character. I'm strictly going off of the few things I have read of her or ideas that I think could work.

Wonder Woman is a part of the Big Three in the DCU. Batman and Superman being the other two. What do these two have in common that Wonder Woman doesn't have? A city to call their home. Bruce with Gotham and Clark with Metropolis. Does Diana have a city? I've seen her in Washington D.C. a lot. That's a little weird to me, though. The other two have a fictional city while Diana is based in a real city? They should keep the theme going and place Diana in a city that resembles her, much like Gotham to Bruce and Clark to Metropolis (okay, now I'm just repeating myself).

I also think a secret identity that's not similar to being a superhero would be better. Why not make her a history teacher at a high school or university? She'd have a chance to understand the human race, help teach the future generations, and it would be an interesting concept to see her struggle with the balancing of being Wonder Woman and Miss Prince.

This is me just spit-balling ideas of what I think would make Wonder Woman more interesting.

[Nekotalim_II]

I believe she had a desk job at the Millitary as Diana Prince waaaay back during the Moulton Days. Probably not a good idea to go back to that, but maybe making a few links from that point in time, like some (non-superhero) friends she could hang out with for a while could good for making her more relatable. I mean Clark has Jimmy, Lois, Perry, Ma and Pa..err scratch that last one.

And Bruce is obsessive and suspicious almost to the point of paranoia, so it make sense if he focused more on being Batman than Bruce and hence have more links (The various robins and batgirls, Selina, Oracle, you see what I'm getting at here) as Batman. Probably shouldn't pull that with Diana, unless we're willing to have her I dunno having a coffee break with some of the other Superheroes and Superheroines.

Also, I want to see her do battle with some mythical foes and not just Greek myths dammit. Lets expand the horizons of some of these grubby perverts. Like walking into the House of Clay to rescue the soul of Enkidu because he's due for a reincarnation. Or hitting Sun Wukong with a fisherman's Suplex.
Heck, I'd love to see Diana fight an Evil roman Wonderwoman.

A teacher's job sounds nice, I bet it could even be used as exposition for whatever antagonist she comes up against, while simultaneously showing a more human side to her, and give her some worthwhile fleshing out.

Only thing that worries me is that well, isn't being a teacher a bit demanding as work goes for someone who is going to be pretty occupied? Saving the world is a time consuming venture after all.

[Crimson Ankh]

Linda Lee Danvers

Wonder Woman....well, what is Wonder Woman? It hasn't been consistent even within the last 3 years.

Wonder Woman is one of those characters who has a lot of potential, a loyal fan base, and quite the status amongst the DCU's heroes.

The real problem there? She doesn't have a good writer, and hasn't had one in a good while.

It's not that the art isn't there, or the stories aren't there, but there aren't any writers to actually carry out a decent idea. The recent arch were W.W. went off and disowned the Olympian gods? Great stuff, but the writers didn't really think it through, and decided to end it poorly from what I remember of that little arch (Borders has a terrible habit of being outdated in most of the popular comics).

As for who she is or was, I think that they really ever did anyone with such a convoluted past any sort of justice was Donna Troy, though just barely. Diana's past is much more confusing and unconnected in key places and connected in places it doesn't matter that it's connected or not. And the idea of giving her a secret identity, I have to agree with iMethuselah, when she was the secret agent she was was much too close to her own self, and something that would have been interesting to see would her in a position where she had little to no reason to use her powers, or even think about being Wonder Woman.

Again, the fault lays with the writers in my opinion.

[Zatanna_Zatarra]

I've gotta say that the idea that Diana's busted irks me more than a bit. I'm not you know, pointing fingers or anything for starting the topic, more like blinking in disbelief that it's 2010 and all the nonsense hasn't settled down yet. All you've got to do in order to make Diana a viable, top selling character is do what you do to any female character to get her taken seriously; have her raped!

To several writers in the industry, that last sentence seems perfectly legitimate, but I'll get back to that later. Diana was doing phenomenally under Greg Rucka. I'd never read a single issue of hers before I bought a copy of The Hiketeia in a fit of 2004-05 era I Hate Batman pique and fell in love with her instantly. From there I transitioned into Rucka's ongoing, which had been going for a while by that time, but didn't stop me from enjoying it in the least. Neither did the complex tangle of sexual politics or kinks of her original creator.

Everyone gets way too wrapped up in that whole thing, it's like wringing your hands and losing sleep over the Wertham reading of Batman and Robin. The majority of female superheroes have some kind of uncomfortable sexual undertones based on the key demographics creating and consuming superhero comics. Diana's lasso doesn't really bother me any more than Catwoman's whip or Power Girl's boob window. If you go to the right fan art repositories on the Internet, everyone is being tied up.

Gail Simone, I think, had the best response to the whole morass when she was asked in an interview about how she was going to approach the whole "woman in man's world" thing, and all she had to say was that her first issue was going to open with Diana punching a gorilla off a waterfall.

Elsewhere, Richard expressed a certain amount of dismay over Diana being used as a completely unironic feminist symbol in the 70s, which seems logical. I mean why would you want what started out as an outlet/manifesto for BDSM as a symbol of female independence and power? Well if you really think about it, one of the first hurdles of feminism was to overcome the perception of women as being exclusively sexual objects and be taken seriously in all the ways men take each other seriously. Besides which on a metafictional level that's been Diana's primary struggle since day one, hence the constant overcompensating.

The bugbear plaguing Diana is that editors and writers keep doing really stupid s**t that just obscures her obvious strengths, like take her powers away and make her dress in white lycra or give her to an author famous for writing about weak women in search of strong men right after giving her to a talented, unfocused writer who doesn't understand the word "deadline."

I always come back to this on the topic of Diana, but my first issue of Wonder Woman after The Hiketeia was the one with the Adam Hughes cover where it's a close up shot of a fighter pilot in the cockpit throwing his hands up in fear and Diana's flying right at him in the reflection off his visor, fists first. One of the greatest covers in the history of comics. Anyway, the actual issue itself is pretty much A Day in the Life of Wonder Woman in which she stops a coup in a foreign country, negotiates a book deal, and shows a new staffer around the embassy. That's Diana.

Before Maxwell Lord and Amazons Attack when she got busted down so far, she wasn't even Wonder Woman anymore. Pretty much around the same time that the same a*****e who wrote Amazons Attack incomprehensively suggested that Catwoman only does occasional good because Zatanna and the Identity Crisis crew mind raped her into it as a misguided favor for Batman then knocked her up and out of the Catwoman suit for a year and a bit.

Didio's whole postcard thing was a sham. It's great that he gets to look so awesome for giving Wonder Woman fans a chance of justifying her to him, and it's awesome for him to say "Well you guys musn't really like her all that much if this is all the cards I got!" He was at the helm when Diana got busted down, it's on his shoulders as far as I'm concerned. If you want a character to prosper, the key is to not bust them down and dilute their brand through wildly inconsistent creative teams. How many team changes have there been on Wonder Woman since Grant Morrison took over Batman?

Then again, I'm just not sure how bankable a proper Diana really could be. I'm not asking for some dry as a brick tract about international politics and feminism. I'm probably just asking for another two years of Gail Simone. Yeah, sure Grant Morrison is coming on, but that doesn't exactly fill me with glee since it was not that long ago that he was talking about how hung up he is on her origins and how he deliberately wrote around her in Final Crisis. I like gorillas being punched over waterfalls, and I like satirical Wonder Woman movie productions even better. I just don't know how all that fits in with what sells and what The Real Readership wants. That seems to have a lot more to do with getting raped, suffering properly, and wearing a rilly slutty costume. My real honest opinion here is that we aren't going to get a consistent, proper Diana out of DC until there are more Lindas, Sorces, Aidans, and Scotties than there are Criers for Justice, or at least a hundred thousand Lindas, Sorces, Aidans, and Scotties.

[Kay_Challis]

Don't think this is me contributing yet. Just a quick clear up.

Zatanna_Zatarra

Elsewhere, Richard expressed a certain amount of dismay over Diana being used as a completely unironic feminist symbol in the 70s, which seems logical.

My dismay's really over the way that the cultural misunderstanding between feminism's use of her and DC's use of her have left her all a muddle.

When the 70s feminists put her on the cover of Ms, then it was ironic. It was a cheeky, playful appropriation. "Wonder Woman, you say? Well in that case she's ours and we're having her." It was an act of reclaimation; Feminists weren't especially interested in either the fictional history of a WWII action character, or in Marston's attempts at social engineering and 'psychological propaganda'. They were just saying, on a fairly superficial level, "Look, if there's an archetype of a 'Wonderful Woman' in pop culture, then were're having it, see?"

Good for them.

But DC either misunderstood the backhanded nature of the compliment, or cannily affected to. "Feminist icon, you say? Yes! That's right! She's a feminist icon! *cough*"

So we get the idea that Wonder Woman, a character designed to indoctrinate girls into being "submissive [...] as good women are" is unproblematically a feminist figure. Wheras the point was...

Prof. Carlos Procession

point point pointy pointed point pointer pointing pointlessly at pointed points of pointy and pointedly pointed pointness

Quiet you.

Whereas the point was that Wonder Woman was something that could be stolen and used as a feminist figure.

So we're left with a character who's a hollow icon. She's very ill suited to saying anything about feminism because we've ignored the irony that made her feminist, and she's now ill-suited to saying anything much about anything else since she has to be preserved as an ICON.

Which is a shame because...

Zatanna_Zatarra

I mean why would you want what started out as an outlet/manifesto for BDSM as a symbol of female independence and power?

...there're all sorts of reasons why one would want to do that. The most studied feminist novelist in British universities spend her career doing exactly that.

As you bloody well know, BDSM and female independence/empowerment are super-duper compatible. But in ways that're complicated, controversial and interesting.

Nothing anyone could use Wonder Woman to explore then. Since she's trapped being some bloodless PerfectNiceGoddessStatueIconPristinePrincessThing who thinks and talks like Mister Spock's adolescent poetry.

[Sorcette]

The problem with Wonder Woman isn't necessarily that she's being written poorly, it's that she's being written inconsistently. There's two camps of writers at DC; Those That Get Diana, and Those That Think They Get Diana. From what I've seen currently at DC, the first camp has maybe 4 people in it; with Rucka and Simone leading the charge. The problem is that Diana's one of the Big Three, so she's being written a lot by people in the other camp; Johns, Morrison, the Battery Hens, and Didio. (Note: There's a lot more writers at DC than these, of course, but uh... look over there! a distraction!) There's also the case that in the current boot of her book, she had endless delays of the first arc, multiple writer syndrome, and forced tie-ins. And Jodi Piccoult. I'm sure all of this was "meant well" by the higher-ups. DC even tried giving her an event, something long overdue, since WW is one of the Big Three and the Other Two get events all the time in their book(s). It just so happened that said event was an aborted role-reversal from it's original idea that just happened to be shitcanned the first time around. Oops. (The US was supposed to invade Themyscira in Infinite Crisis, in case you're curious.) My thought on that was Didio didn't want to get rid of the "awesome title" Amazons Attack!. And they tried to make it a DCU thing instead of just a WW thing. Which was a mistake. But I digress.

How to fix Wonder Woman? Take her out of the Big Three. This shouldn't be a problem because the Other Two have been replaced (even in the short term) by others, and Donna will be stepping up in the Crying for JLA. Leave Simone to write her in one book for the next few years. When someone needs Diana specifically, bring Simone in as a voice over the shoulder. Heck, give Diana another book in the mainstream DCU that can focus on Wonder Girl, or Troia, or Hippolyta, or Artemis, or anyone else of the Wonder Family so that we can actually see them interact. They're supposed to since them above the Other Two (or at least one), are actually family instead of just acting like it. It fleshes out their part of the world when we're seeing more than one view/comic of it. Then of course after she's been around, and people know who she is and what she's stands for, bring her back into the fold.

DC's treating Wonder Woman like an Icon when they haven't even made sure she's a full-on character first.

[Linda Lee Danvers]

I have three different proposals for what I think would draw more readers to Wonder Woman. This is the first.

If Wonder Woman is unrelatable, take that idea and run with it. Make Wonder Woman's comic be about people's reaction TO her. Wonder Woman is this pristine, unbelievably beautiful virginal goddess heroine who descends from the skies, makes things right, and then returns to her strange world of woman warriors.

-A man about to make the wrong decision in life and rob a bank has an encounter with Wonder Woman and turns his life around.

-A professional wrestler with a slight resemblance to her discovers she loves the attention of being mistaken for Wonder Woman until the wrong people do so.

-A woman falls in love with Wonder Woman and it consumes her life.

The idea here is to take a step back from explaining and defining the mythology around Wonder Woman and idealizing her as a myth itself. 'Promethea' took steps towards this, in the idea that, no matter who co-opted her name and powers, we never got to see how Promethea the girl felt about things (except for hearing her cry the time her soul was nearly ripped apart in court).

In this take on things, Wonder Woman is an ideal. People have interactions with her, but what the comic follows is THEIR point of view, not hers. She is mysterious and the only hints we have as to what she's thinking is her facial expressions and her dialogue with others.

Think of the series starting out from Etta Candy's point of view. Wonder Woman is a friend, but also someone she's jealous of, and someone that she can't know or understand completely. Etta is a fully realized human being; she has gas and electric bills to pay, and a job in the military trying to track down and gather intel on Wonder Woman. But when the day is done, the magic goes back to Themscryia and Wonder Woman has finished answering reporters' questions, we're left alone with Etta, wondering at what we've just seen.

I'll post ideas 2 and 3 later.

[Kay_Challis]

Sorce

The problem with Wonder Woman isn't necessarily that she's being written poorly, it's that she's being written inconsistently. There's two camps of writers at DC; Those That Get Diana, and Those That Think They Get Diana.

I think 'Get Diana' is a little strong here.

Rucka and Simone have got a very consistent and well-realised take on the character, largely based around the modern 'Warrior...of Peace!' concept. While I'm happy for those of you who enjoy it, I'm not sure it's entirely the same as 'getting'.

It deals with the problem of "What does this character mean?" by sweeping most of the awkward and tricky details under the carpet and it deals with the problem of "How do we find this character an audience?" by... actutally, no. It doesn't deal with that problem at all.

[Kay_Challis]

Linda Lee Danvers

If Wonder Woman is unrelatable, take that idea and run with it. Make Wonder Woman's comic be about people's reaction TO her.

That was my first thought as well. Sounds very Gaiman-ish, would make a nice read and it puts the stress on the right word in her name.

But I keep recoiling from it because of the ICON thing. It's very hard to say something about Wonder Woman without it appearing to say something about Woman.

"Women! They are unknowable! They are distant, mysterious things unto themselves! They are the Other!" way of thinking has been such a tricky dragon for the forces of "No, love. They're people" to slay that I think it'd be a terrible admission of defeat to make the one female at comics' top table into a totem of the unknowable, distant and mysterious.

[Crimson Ankh]

Wonder Woman's problem isn't that there isn't any interaction between her and normal people, or really the writers either, but more so in the way she's presented. In all honesty perhaps a whole arc dedicated to several 'past' interactions with normal folks, and how they shape her up to this point (Blackest Night).

As far as the whole 'what is a woman' that's a rather moot point to me, we constantly ask that question in movies and TV shows, so why subject Diana to that?

Going back to my idea, recently Diana's been trying to fight the influence of the Black Lantern Ring yes? How about explaining how, because she's supposed to be this impressive figure, her life's changed due to interactions with Artemis, Donna, Cassie and other folks in the Wonder Woman family or normal people. I actually liked the Wonder Woman movie, and felt that was a great take on her since it showed her as she was supposed to be, someone who doesn't conform to the norm for a woman and tries to be a figure to follow. It's hard to come up with a decent story for someone like Diana simply because of who she is and what she's supposed to be has been lost and found more times than rap beats.

[Kay_Challis]

RichardGraysonNightwing

As far as the whole 'what is a woman' that's a rather moot point to me, we constantly ask that question in movies and TV shows, so why subject Diana to that?

I couldn't agree more. In an ideal world then people would look at Wonder Woman stories and ask, "Ah! But what is Woman?" about as often as they look at Spider-man stories and ask, "Ah! But what is Man?"

My point is just that the ammount of baggage Wonder Woman carries as a result of having been specifically created as "psycological propaganda" for one set of ideological propositions about gender identity, and then having been established as an icon for a different set of ideological propositions about gender identity makes it very hard to do anything drastic with the character without ending up saything something about gender identity.

[Zatanna_Zatarra]

Zatanna_Zatarra

So we get the idea that Wonder Woman, a character designed to indoctrinate girls into being "submissive [...] as good women are" is unproblematically a feminist figure.

Here's what frustrates me about that; if we were talking about this in the 70s or 80s then I'd have to agree. But I'm not sure how relevant either that original symbol of submissiveness or the language gap of the Ms magazine incident is to a discussion of Diana in 2010. It's certainly interesting and would make for an electric discussion if you put NekoTalim at the same pub table as Grant Morrison and Naomi Wolf, I just doubt it's relevance to her current situation.

Quote:

So we're left with a character who's a hollow icon. She's very ill suited to saying anything about feminism because we've ignored the irony that made her feminist, and she's now ill-suited to saying anything much about anything else since she has to be preserved as an ICON.

In theory it makes sense, but I just do not see DC approaching her like an icon or handling her property that way. It's looking more like they're getting ready to jettison her.

Quote:

...there're all sorts of reasons why one would want to do that. The most studied feminist novelist in British universities spend her career doing exactly that.

As you bloody well know, BDSM and female independence/empowerment are super-duper compatible. But in ways that're complicated, controversial and interesting.

Nothing anyone could use Wonder Woman to explore then. Since she's trapped being some bloodless PerfectNiceGoddessStatueIconPristinePrincessThing who thinks and talks like Mister Spock's adolescent poetry.

Who's this, then? I bet I'll be practically begging for something like that once I'm done all this mucking about researching organized crime and drug cartels. The wheels in my head keep turning about just what I'd do with Diana narratively speaking- she's much easier to write than Jean- but I'm constantly dogged by the fact that the only way it'd achieve a readership is if it were serialized in b***h magazine. Which probably isn't a terrible idea.

[Hartley Rathaway]

Kay_Challis

But I keep recoiling from it because of the ICON thing. It's very hard to say something about Wonder Woman without it appearing to say something about Woman.

This is why, in my approach, you'd want to have a strong female presence on the 'human' side, the reactionary side. Because then you make a distinction between a Feminine Ideal and a real-life woman.

[Hartley Rathaway]

Second idea for Wonder Woman:

"Take the Hercules Route"

Worry less about 'who' Wonder Woman is. Don't fret over making her 'relatable.' Make her FUN. That means more fighting apes atop a Waterfall and less angsting. Her Gods just spent the better part of a year hanging out with space alien Gods. Why is this concept awesome in Hercules, but boring and confusing in Wonder Woman?

I'm not saying Wonder Woman should go the full-on Byrne She-Hulk treatment, where she's talking back to the audience, but that she should be acutely aware of what she is and totally just run with it. Just like Hercules does.

Giant amazonian riding kangaroos. Crossdressing villains. The Holliday Girls. Take the strange and the fantastic and wrap it in the joy of comics as a medium. Put Wonder Woman on a world tour where she meets other avatars of other Gods....and they team up and do awesome things. Instead of getting bogged down in "Who is Wonder Woman," change it to "Wonder Woman is _____" and fill in the blank with the things you hear six year olds playing in the back yard.

Wonder Woman is a magical princess with a flying kangaroo who flies around the world and saves people.

I'm not calling for a full-on return to the Wonder Woman of 1949, but that maybe those sorts of things should be embraced in a way DC isn't comfortable with at this point in time.