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

[Kay_Challis]

Zatanna_Zatarra

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.

Three reasons why it matters spring to mind.

The first is that all this baggage doesn't vanish when we try and ignore it. It just rattles around in the subtext and makes what's going on in the foreground seem horribly inauthentic.

The second is that the most concrete problem the character has is that she's widely seen as a bland and near personality free Mary Sue. All this difficult, contradictory material that's there at the core of the character's genesis and at the character's greatest moment of cultural relevance? At least it's interesting.

But the big one...well it's to do with this bloody 'Trinity' thing, isn't it?

With yer Superman and yer Batman you've got characters who've had wildly different takes over the years, but somehow all those takes combine together to function as one symbol. You've written convincingly about this yourself.

'Batman' has a meaning beyond, "This specific Batman right now" and 'Superman' has a meaning beyond, "This specific Superman right now." It's not that the differences between the iterations can be easily glossed over or reconciled...it's that having those differences there makes the 'Batman Myth' and the 'Superman Myth' bigger and stronger.

It's not like that with Wonder Woman. There isn't a 'Wonder Woman Myth' or a 'Wonder Woman symbol' that stands for or means anything substantial. Nothing that transcends specific takes. The Marston character and the Post-Perez character aren't part of a larger whole in the way Adam West and the Dark Knight are. They're just two totally different women in the same underpants.

"So?" you may very well say. And you'd be right to say it. Nobody goes around expecting there be some weighty, cross-cultural, transcendent symbology of Deadpool or Haunt in order for those characters to sell.

But Wonder Woman's THE superheroine. She's part of the Trinity. That you can't tell a It's a Bird or a Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader about her is a problem. That she only exists as unconnected fragments is a problem. She's presented as the third term in some sort of symbolic system...where the other two terms carry huge symbolic weight and she carries none. That there are no 'classic' Wonder Woman stories is no coincidence.

There's two ways to go, really. She either needs a drastic icon-ectomy... Demythologise her right down until she's as much 'Just People' as a Buffy or a Natasha Romanoff and can stand just on the strength of how she's written as a character... or otherwise all this gubbins needs to be somehow synthesised and integrated into an icon that works.

Zatanna_Zatarra

you put NekoTalim at the same pub table as Grant Morrison and Naomi Wolf

Fixing Wonder Woman is going to have to be put on the back-burner for a while. Making this happen is now our top priority. Go, go go!

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Who's this, then?

That's be Angela Carter, that would.
Arch-practioner of deconstructive feminism and sadistic erotic fantasy. Imagine...oooh, I dunno, if Buffy Season Six had been written entirely by an unwavering literary genius. A bit of a reach i know, since Buffy Season Six is a very long way away from unwavering literary genius...but if you can imagine what it'd might have been like if it was, then you're close to imagining Carter.

She'd have this all sorted out in about quarter of an hour.

[kissmekillme]

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.

My only issue with that is- and this is I think another problem with Diana as another character becomes more and more a spotlight focus- if you take this route, how do you separate her from Peeg? Because that's basically what a Vartox-infused book is.

That's the same problem with establishing a Diana Prince. It feels like the search to reclaim Karen Starr going on.

[Hartley Rathaway]

Ironically, I almost put Vartox into my proposal up there, and then took him out because I didn't want to seem like I was pitching "Power Girl."

[Stuntman Bob]

A great video about Wonder Woman

I love Linkara's reviews. This is his prologue to his review of "Amazons Attack." During this review, he gives a brief history lesson on the character. He also gives some great Wonder Woman recommendations.

[Hartley Rathaway]

I half-expected at this point in the thread to get the cursory "What are you talking about, Wonder Woman is fine, no changes needed" post. That it hasn't happened either speaks to the fact that Wonder Woman isn't fine, or to the fact that there's just plain no Wonder Woman fans here on Gaia to take a look at the thread. neutral

[Katherine Kane]

Kay_Challis

But the big one...well it's to do with this bloody 'Trinity' thing, isn't it?

Yeah, that certainly puts things in a very specific light.

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You've written convincingly about this yourself.

By thieving directly from Grant Morrison.

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There's two ways to go, really. She either needs a drastic icon-ectomy... Demythologise her right down until she's as much 'Just People' as a Buffy or a Natasha Romanoff and can stand just on the strength of how she's written as a character... or otherwise all this gubbins needs to be somehow synthesised and integrated into an icon that works.

Wheels are turning. Wheels involving gubbins and the synthesis thereof.

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Fixing Wonder Woman is going to have to be put on the back-burner for a while. Making this happen is now our top priority. Go, go go!

Glad my powers of misdirection are as sharp as ever.

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That's be Angela Carter, that would.
Arch-practioner of deconstructive feminism and sadistic erotic fantasy. Imagine...oooh, I dunno, if Buffy Season Six had been written entirely by an unwavering literary genius. A bit of a reach i know, since Buffy Season Six is a very long way away from unwavering literary genius...but if you can imagine what it'd might have been like if it was, then you're close to imagining Carter.

Were you aware of the fact that I am currently knee deep in that morass and losing my will to continue with every minute or is that another one of those savage synchronicities that plagues me?

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She'd have this all sorted out in about quarter of an hour.

I think I've got it mostly sorted, and in a way you could actually publish. As long as you could sell the editors on a six issue Psychic Rescue.

[Crimson Ankh]

Hartley Rathaway

I half-expected at this point in the thread to get the cursory "What are you talking about, Wonder Woman is fine, no changes needed" post. That it hasn't happened either speaks to the fact that Wonder Woman isn't fine, or to the fact that there's just plain no Wonder Woman fans here on Gaia to take a look at the thread. neutral

I love my Diana dearly, but honestly her history is more convoluted than Logan's history is, and she hasn't been fine god knows how long.

The fans here are, I hope, willing to admit that Diana has her good points, but the purpose of this thread was to come up with ways to improve upon her current status and story life. It's also a neat little way to see what other fans would love to have happen to Diana in later comics.

[Kay_Challis]

Hartley Rathaway

...the Hercules Route... Crossdressing villains... the strange and the fantastic...a magical princess with a flying kangaroo who flies around the world and saves people

I shan't bother enthusing about that because you know me well enough to know how much that sounds like My Sort Of Thing.

But would changing the 'local reality' around the character really do the job?

One of the reasons the 'Hercules Route' works for Hercules is...it's got Hercules in it. At the centre of all the fantastic wonderment is a big, rambunctious embodiment of OUTRAGEOUS who we know is having a blast and whose excitement and joy we, as readers, can share.

If we...

Hartley Rathaway

Worry less about 'who' Wonder Woman is. Don't fret over making her 'relatable.'

...and stick on on a kangeroo, then have we really solved anything if we don't know how she feels about being on that kangeroo?

James Bond and the Eighth Doctor could both parachute down behind enemy lines and the two scenes would read totally differently because Bond's face would be a mask of nonchalant yet dutiful stoicism... and the Doctor would have a ******** huge grin plastered across his chops.

If you went 'New Awesome' with the current Diana then, yeah, it'd be a bit nifty. In the same way that her albino gorillas are a bit nifty. But I'm not sure it'd touch the problem, because 'the Hercules route' sort of relies on having a relatable lead.

[Linda Lee Danvers]

The question is, then, what makes Hercules relatable? And can that translate to Wonder Woman?

Hercules is interesting in that we rarely if EVER get inside of his head. We know he's a outrageous lover of life who's having a blast because we have Amadeus Cho there to look amazed at Amazons attacking and to talk to Athena to find out that yes, Herc DOES have feelings.

Maybe Wonder Woman doesn't need to be relatable so much as she needs her own Jimmy Olsen or Robin...a relatable sidekick that she never got in the 50's because hers was, in fact, her younger self.

[Katherine Kane]

I think whatever route you go you've got to get in there and figure out- then clearly demonstrate -what makes her tick. That's what a story like "For The Man Who Has Everything" does. It makes you nod in awe, and say "That's Superman."

[Linda Lee Danvers]

But that's part and parcel of what Gail is trying to do now; and it's confusing.

[Kay_Challis]

Linda Lee Danvers

The question is, then, what makes Hercules relatable? And can that translate to Wonder Woman?

Hercules is interesting in that we rarely if EVER get inside of his head. We know he's a outrageous lover of life who's having a blast because we have Amadeus Cho there to look amazed at Amazons attacking and to talk to Athena to find out that yes, Herc DOES have feelings.

Maybe Wonder Woman doesn't need to be relatable so much as she needs her own Jimmy Olsen or Robin...a relatable sidekick that she never got in the 50's because hers was, in fact, her younger self.

That's interesting. I would have said that it doesn't take much to make Herc relatable; we can tell he's enjoying himself, in a way we can't with Diana, and that's enough. But now you point it out... the two definitive Herc runs have both rested on the strength of his interactions with his sidekick - Recorder in the Bob Layton stuff, and Cho in the current book.

Looks like we might end up fixing Cassie at the same time then.

[Katherine Kane]

It's pretty much got to be confusing because of how tangled her history is. Like Richard was saying, you've got at least three distinctly different women wearing the same outfit. Gail's job is to somehow sell us on the idea that it's all the same woman without telling us that every version we saw before now was a work in progress that went back to the kiln.

[Linda Lee Danvers]

But that's very much not the case here. It's not like Morrison's assertion that 'every Batman story actually happened.'

This Wonder Woman you see in Gail's run is in no way related to the one William Marsten created.

[Crimson Ankh]

Katherine Kane

It's pretty much got to be confusing because of how tangled her history is. Like Richard was saying, you've got at least three distinctly different women wearing the same outfit. Gail's job is to somehow sell us on the idea that it's all the same woman without telling us that every version we saw before now was a work in progress that went back to the kiln.

It's been tried, and well it sort of worked. Her mom was the Wonder Woman that showed up in WWII, then Artemis took over when Diana and her mom had a falling out (not for the first time), and then Donna took over during that "One year later" thing.

It's not exactly the smartest thing but it tried to rectify that mess, and semi worked. Semi because well c'mon we've got writers try to ret-con that, just to try and say that Diana has always been Wonder Woman, when most fans know that she hasn't always been Wonder Woman.